Bangkok—The new Thai government is following the path of its predecessors, breaking drug patents and not spending enough on health. It’s a recipe for ill-health and international trade battles. It doesn’t have to be this way. Thai leaders can improve trade relations and public health by taking the following steps.

China’s May 12 earthquake was massive in scope and ruthless in intensity, visiting destruction on a mountainous, peripheral region where the Tibetan plateau meets the Sichuan basin in the southwest. The death toll is now more than 12,000 and is sure to climb higher as soldiers and rescue teams pull bodies from the rubble. The initial temblor was magnitude 7.9, and there were nearly 2,000 aftershocks within the first day, three of which were magnitude 6 or greater at the epicenter in Wenchuan County.

As the death toll continues to climb in Sichuan and surrounding provinces, it is hard not to think back to the Tangshan earthquake of 1976. That quake, which unexpectedly struck the heavily populated city in China's northeast, left an estimated 250,000 dead. Just a month before the Tangshan quake the FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW published a tragically prescientarticle, recounting China's chronic seismic troubles in the wake of a 1975 quake in Liaoning and a 1976 quake in Yunnan. It is easy to forget that China, in spite of its large population, covers a geographically inhospitable region, straddling deserts, mountain chains and several fault lines.

In 2005, there were 191 million international migrants, or people living outside their native countries, according to data from the United Nations. Compare this to as many as 210 million Chinese migrant workers moving from their rural homes to cities, and it's easy to see why some immigration experts call it the largest mass migration in human history.

Tokyo—Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Chinese President Hu Jintao were all smiles this week as Mr. Hu toured Japan and the two men did their best to improve strained relations between their two nations. But political conditions within Japan make it unlikely that the two leaders will make significant progress in solving the contentious issues in the relationship.