Japanese women and work: Holding back half the nation; Women’s lowly status in the Japanese workplace has barely improved in decades, and the country suffers as a result. Shinzo Abe would like to change that

Japanese women and work: Holding back half the nation; Women’s lowly status in the Japanese workplace has barely improved in decades, and the country suffers as a result. Shinzo Abe would like to change that

Mar 29th 2014 | TOKYO | From the print edition

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Japan’s consumption tax: The big squeeze; A tax goes up while recovery remains fragile

Japan’s consumption tax: The big squeeze; A tax goes up while recovery remains fragile

Mar 29th 2014 | TOKYO | From the print edition

AS IN the rest of Japan, shopkeepers on Jizo-dori, the main street of Sugamo in north Tokyo, are nervously awaiting the effect of an imminent rise in the country’s consumption (ie, sales) tax, from 5% to 8% on April 1st. Keiji Kudo, the president of Maruji, a retail chain, has been devising ways to stave off a drop in sales of the shop’s most popular range, the red underwear which elderly customers buy for the colour’s supposedly health-boosting properties. Last week Mr Kudo began selling vouchers costing ¥2,700 ($26), which from April 1st may be exchanged for ¥3,000-worth of goods. It is the trick of a seasoned retailer, but Mr Kudo complains it will be harder to pull off next time. In October 2015 the tax is scheduled to go up again, to 10%. And Mr Kudo is under no illusion that will be the end of the rises. Read more of this post

On the antlers of a dilemma: The ambitions of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s president, collide with popular suspicion of China

On the antlers of a dilemma: The ambitions of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s president, collide with popular suspicion of China

Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition

THE fresh-faced good looks have been lined and drawn by the cares of office. His immaculate English is forsaken for the dignity of immaculate Mandarin. Patient replies to questions come wearily, as if said many times before. Yet, six years into his presidency, Ma Ying-jeou’s hair remains as lush and jet-black as any Chinese Politburo member’s. And, speaking in the presidential palace in Taipei, he remains as unwilling as any leader in Beijing to admit to any fundamental flaws in strategy. Read more of this post

India’s election: The country’s south will do much to shape the coming national election

India’s election: The country’s south will do much to shape the coming national election

Mar 29th 2014 | BANGALORE AND HYDERABAD | From the print edition

LICK your lips: mangoes are coming into season in Andhra Pradesh, piled up on roadside fruit stalls. Hyderabadis claim theirs are the country’s sweetest. So too are the bribes paid by the state’s politicians to get people to vote. Since early March state police have seized more money from politicians aiming to buy votes—590m rupees ($10m)—than the rest of India combined. An excited local paper talks of “rampant cash movement”, reporting that police do not know where to store the bundles of notes, bags of gold and silver, cricket kits, saris and lorry-loads of booze. Read more of this post

Politics in Taiwan: Manning the trade barriers; Students occupy Taiwan’s legislature in protest against a free-trade pact with China

Politics in Taiwan: Manning the trade barriers; Students occupy Taiwan’s legislature in protest against a free-trade pact with China

Mar 29th 2014 | TAIPEI | From the print edition

TAIWAN’S Legislative Yuan, the island’s parliament, is used to rumbustious scenes. But the occupation since March 18th of its main chamber by protesting students is unprecedented in the country’s nearly two decades of full democracy. The demonstrators, whose actions took many by surprise, want the government to scrap an agreement with China that would allow freer trade in services across the Taiwan Strait. They have displayed a large cartoon of President Ma Ying-jeou in the debating hall, portraying him as a Chinese pawn. The president is at the nadir of his popularity, while China struggles to win over public opinion in Taiwan. Signs of public sympathy with the students are growing. Read more of this post

A handful of banks are caught short by the Fed’s annual stress test

A handful of banks are caught short by the Fed’s annual stress test

Mar 29th 2014 | New York | From the print edition

THE current mood in America’s financial markets is enthusiasm for companies that can receive investment now with the prospect of using it to make more in the future. The exceptions are banks, for whom the ability to return capital now rather than later is seen as a critical indicator of health. On March 26th the Federal Reserve disclosed the results of its “comprehensive capital analysis and review” determining which of the country’s 30 largest banks could increase their dividends and share buybacks. Read more of this post

Catholics in America: What crisis? Catholicism is thriving. This is good news for Democrats

Catholics in America: What crisis? Catholicism is thriving. This is good news for Democrats

Mar 29th 2014 | ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA | From the print edition

IN HIS eighth-floor office overlooking a snow-covered city, Father José Hoyos has just finished writing a book about faith and healing, his fourth on the topic. This one contains stories from cancer patients about the miraculous shrinking of tumours that had once seemed unstoppable. Father Hoyos (pictured) was born in Colombia but has been in Arlington, Virginia, for 25 years. On most Sundays he can be found in one of the diocese’s churches, healing by prayer or livening up services by getting worshippers to act out Bible stories. Read more of this post

100 years after 1914: Still in the grip of the Great War; The first world war was the defining event of the 20th century. Thousands of books have been written about every aspect of it. More are on the way

100 years after 1914: Still in the grip of the Great War

The first world war was the defining event of the 20th century. Thousands of books have been written about every aspect of it. More are on the way

Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition

WITH four months to go before the centenary of the start of the first world war, the bombardment of new books from competing historians is growing heavier. Unlike many of the young men who went off to fight in 1914, nobody thinks it will all be over by Christmas. Read more of this post

Investing in higher education; Student numbers are growing worldwide, but profiting is not easy

March 28, 2014 6:18 pm

Intellectual property: investing in higher education

By Adam Palin

Benjamin Franklin once said that “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest”. The structural shifts in higher education in particular, which are seeing new ways of delivering tuition as well as accommodation and finance, present opportunities as well as potential pitfalls for investors. Read more of this post

Shrewd investors assess history’s threat to globalisation

Last updated: March 28, 2014 4:39 pm

Shrewd investors assess history’s threat to globalisation

By John Authers

History, it appears, has restarted. Back in 1990, after the Berlin Wall fell, Francis Fukuyama famously prognosticated that we were witnessing not just the end of the cold war but “the end of history as such”. Our ideological evolution, he said, was complete, with the universalisation of western liberal democracy as “the final form of human government”. Read more of this post

The Next Problem: Too Much Profit? America’s profit-margin miracle has gone on for so long that rather than cheering it on, investors might want to ask what companies are actually doing to keep it going

The Next Problem: Too Much Profit

JUSTIN LAHART

March 27, 2014 4:05 p.m. ET

America’s profit-margin miracle has gone on for so long that rather than cheering it on, investors might want to ask what companies are actually doing to keep it going. Read more of this post