It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. That’s why, in an appearance Friday with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Obama declared that “If we want more good...

Samuel Huntington was one of America’s greatest political scientists. In 1993, he published a sensational essay in Foreign Affairs called “The Clash of Civilizations?” The essay, which became a book, argued that the post-cold war would be marked by civilizational conflict. Human beings, Huntington...

If there is a lesson from this week’s resignations of two scandal-tainted European ministers it’s this: Once a leader loses trust, it’s best to exit quickly. France’s now departed foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, and Germany’s departed defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg,...

IN the last two months, the editor of French Vogue has resigned; the president of Yves Saint Laurent said she will leave her dream job to run the vanity label of Reed Krakoff, the Coach creative director, whose one dream is apparently to be successful. Gucci Group cut its chief executive loose. The...

IN BENGHAZI, LIBYA When Benghazi fell into the hands of the opposition a week ago, Saleh Zayani grabbed two sound mixers and a microphone and headed to the radio transmission building. His friends were too afraid to join him, so Zayani went with an armed guard, plugged in his equipment and began to...

If President Obama, senior policymakers and members of Congress feel that they were “caught off guard” by the events in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere in the Middle East, maybe they should focus the blame on themselves. Intelligence does not “trickle down” to the president: he is the intelligence...

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have found that less than an hour of cellphone use can speed up brain activity in the area closest to the phone antenna, raising new questions about the health effects of low levels of radiation emitted from cellphones. The researchers, led by...

What’s unfolding in the Arab world today is the mother of all wake-up calls. And what the voice on the other end of the line is telling us is clear as a bell: “America, you have built your house at the foot of a volcano. That volcano is now spewing lava from different cracks and is rumbling like...

Bernard L. Madoff said he never thought the collapse of his Ponzi scheme would cause the sort of destruction that has befallen his family. In his first interview for publication since his arrest in December 2008, Mr. Madoff — looking noticeably thinner and rumpled in khaki prison garb — maintained...

A judge in a small jungle town in Ecuador on Monday ordered Chevron to pay more than $9 billion in damages, finding the energy giant responsible for the oil pollution that has fouled a stretch of land along Ecuador’s northern border. The case, which began in a New York court in 1993, has been...