The Economist says Margaret Thatcher is “one of the few peacetime politicians who can claim to have changed the world.” If so, who could be the rest of “the few?”

Margaret Thatcher, the penultimate British Conservative Prime Minister, was a revolutionary.

When North Korea's latest round of bluster and threats subside, hopefully without a shot fired in anger across the Korean Peninsula, how should America and its allies proceed? For almost two decades, Pyongyang has been able to outwit and out-negotiate Washington because America holds on to the prospect that it is possible to persuade or else compel North Korea to give up its weapons of mass destruction.

There's a strong and welcome trend toward appointing the leaders of major international organizations through competitive processes — except in Asia.

This week is “Indian Water Week,” with New Delhi emphasizing efficient water management amid concern that China's construction of three dams on the Yarlung Zangbo River — the name of the Brahmaputra in Tibet — may reduce the flow of water into India.

I often hear the lament that we Filipinos are not as mindful as our neighbors appear to be of the impending closer integration of the Southeast Asian economies into the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), to culminate less than two years from now. I have heard none of our candidates for national office in the coming elections address the topic, for example, in the way it figures in public discussions within our neighboring countries. And yet, this move of the 10 nations that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) promises to have profound implications within and across their respective economies.

It has been confirmed for the first time that humans have been infected with a new type of avian influenza, the H7N9 virus, in Shanghai, Jiangsu province, and neighboring areas in China.

It was one of those statistics in which one bland number stood for history. According to the latest data from the International Monetary Fund, central banks around the world have been dumping the euro from their official national reserves: Europe's single currency now accounts for only 24 percent of the money held in the reserve vaults of developing countries, the lowest such figure since euro banknotes first physically came into circulation back in 2002.

It's disappointing, especially after all the brouhaha over giving all Malaysians living abroad the right to vote.

The lesson from the history of totalitarianism is clear: The controlling logic behind the acts of a closed regime is paranoia. It sees enemies everywhere. North Korea's unusually bellicose statements and provocative actions of late may be best understood, then, as paranoid — but, to borrow Henry Kissinger's infamous phrase, even a paranoid has real enemies.