The title of a book by the late American sinologist Benjamin I. Schwartz, “In Search of Wealth and Power,” rather accurately sums up the preoccupation of generations of Chinese intellectuals, reformers and revolutionaries in modern times.

Malaysia's ruling party kept power after what was billed as the first election in 56 years in which the ruling National Front was seriously threatened. Although the National Front's share of seats in the national legislature dropped to 133, and it lost the popular vote by 48 percent to 52 percent, it won governing majority. Claiming fraud, the opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, has refused to recognize the results.

South Korea and China blasted Japan last week for the visits by Japanese parliamentarians to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where close to 2.5 million men, women and children who died in the name of Japanese emperors from 1867 to the end of World War II are honored.

“My dear son Martin has died from injuries sustained in the attack on Boston. My wife and daughter are both recovering from serious injuries.

The Boston bombings sent shockwaves across the globe and here in Taiwan the horror left us wondering what harm would have been inflicted on us had the attempted bomb attacks targeting the local public last week succeeded.

Today's world is not the Wild West, but still it is fraught with danger. A lone gunman can easily intrude into a school and unleash unspeakable carnage, and a weapon-welding local bully can terrorize an entire neighborhood by hurling verbal abuses at his rich but timid neighbors or, in some cases, inflicting physical injuries on them.

When Chiang Kai-shek came to Taiwan at the end of 1949 after he lost the Chinese Civil War, almost all his trusted political lieutenants did not come with him. H. H. Kung, his brother-in-law who married Madame Chiang's eldest sister, and her brother T. V. Soong, did not follow him, but went to the United States in exile instead.

After weeks of willfully disregarding as bluffs the exceptionally belligerent rhetoric from Pyongyang, world media are finally letting the fact of a real Korea crisis sink in.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is reported to have cancelled his visit to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo during its spring festival next month and will instead dedicate a “masakaki,” a decorated wood stick in which the wishes of the donor are believed to reside. He will be repeating what he did when he became prime minister for the first time in 2007. The purpose of his absence is the same: He doesn't want to antagonize China and South Korea.

You don't often hear good news from the United Nations. But according to the recently released 2013 Human Development Report, we are making huge progress toward ending global poverty.