The Korea Herald

G20 to work on imbalances plan

World BusinessApr 13, 2011
Indonesian clinic touts smoking as cancer cure

World NewsApr 13, 2011

JAKARTA (AFP) ― An Indonesian woman exhales cigarette smoke into the mouth of a gaunt, naked patient at a Jakarta clinic, where tobacco is openly touted as a cancer cure. The Western patient is suffering from emphysema, a condition she developed from decades of smoking. Along with cancer and autism, it’s just one of the ailments the Griya Balur clinic claims it can cure with cigarettes. “I miss...
Train running late? Blame high copper prices

World NewsApr 13, 2011
Chernobyl tours offered 25 years after blast

World NewsApr 13, 2011

Abandoned town, reactor building lure hundreds of visitors a week to site of 1986 disaster CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) ― For the visitor, Chernobyl makes heavy demands on the imagination ― much of what’s important can be seen only in the mind’s eye. From the outside, the building where a reactor blew up April 26, 1986, in the world’s worst nuclear disaster mostly looks like an ordinary, dull indust...
[Editorial] Offshore tax evasion

EditorialApr 13, 2011

According to the National Tax Service, a shipping magnate is under investigation by the prosecution on charges of offshore tax evasion. The case draws our attention because the fine imposed on him is 410.1 billion won, the largest ever levied on an individual for stashing away personal wealth abroad. The NTS said the shipping tycoon, who is little known to the public, operates a fleet of 160 ves...
[Editorial] Chaebol’s responsibility

EditorialApr 13, 2011

Under the incumbent Lee Myung-bak government, domestic business groups have expanded their assets and operations at an alarmingly fast clip, and concerns have been rekindled about excessive concentration of economic power. According to data recently released by the Fair Trade Commission, the top 20 business groups increased their asset holdings by 54.2 percent and the number of subsidiaries by 3...
Sports bolster spirits in time of national crisis

ViewpointsApr 13, 2011

Japanese professional baseball’s regular season starts Tuesday as the 12 teams of the Central and Pacific leagues play their openers. The pennant race begins, though belatedly, while wounds from the March 11 catastrophe remain fresh. As the nation faces a difficult time, players are urged all the more to do their best to give hope and vigor to disaster victims and the nation as a whole. Both le...
[Laurence Kotlikoff] U.S. squabbles over peanuts to tame elderly

ViewpointsApr 13, 2011

The time to disagree agreeably is over for health care policy in America. U.S. President Barack Obama and Congress last week approved a measly budget cut of $39 billion and no tax increases. That leaves us with a massive deficit equal to 9 percent of gross domestic product and a debt-to-GDP ratio that will exceed 90 percent within six years. Our politicians touted this deal as the biggest compr...
America’s Arab world comeback

ViewpointsApr 13, 2011

AMMAN ― Without much fanfare, the past few months have seen no anti-American demonstrations and no burning of American flags across the Arab world. Arabs seem increasingly willing to accept ― and even applaud ― the Obama administration’s policy toward the region. Of course, Arabs are still unhappy with the United States’ continued bias toward Israel. Its inability to end the 44-year military occ...
[Michael Smerconish] Birthers’ conspiracy plot: Plants are legion

ViewpointsApr 13, 2011

Every time I hear Donald Trump talk about President Obama’s birth certificate, I think of O.J. Simpson. The conspiracy theory invented by Simpson’s defenders was every bit as loopy as the fantasies concerning Obama. Remember the O.J. defense ruse? Years before the murder, conspirators would have had to incite Simpson to commit domestic abuse, laying a foundation for a future motive. Several we...
[Peter Lovenheim] Social experiment: Know thy neighbor

ViewpointsApr 13, 2011

When I was growing up in upstate New York in the late 1950s and ‘60s, people didn’t exercise in public the way they do now. You didn’t see adults jogging, biking or power-walking on the street. Except one. Nearly every day, a middle-age woman of slight build walked rapidly through our suburban neighborhood, usually with her head down. No one knew her name, so we called her the Walker. She usuall...
[Shahid Javed Burki] India-Pakistan diplomatic test match

ViewpointsApr 13, 2011

LAHORE ― In 2005, during a visit to Islamabad, I met Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and told him of a conversation I had had with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India. The Indian leader, whom I have known for years, had said that he wanted better relations with Pakistan as one his legacies. Musharraf’s response was interesting. He said he had the same aspiration, but that it would need e...
Egypt detains ex-president’s sons in probe

World NewsApr 13, 2011

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Cairo (AP) ― Egyptian prosecutors ordered the detention of the former president’s powerful sons for 15 days allegations of corruption and the abuse of their authority are investigated, state television said early Wednesday. The move, the most dramatic in a series of investigations against top regime officials, comes just hours after former President Hosni Mubarak, 82, was hospit...
#Mubarak, two sons detained for 15 days

World NewsApr 13, 2011

Detentions authorized as part of inquiry into use of force against protesters CAIRO (AFP) -- Egypt’s ex-president Hosni Mubarak has been placed in detention for 15 days, prosecutors said Wednesday shortly after state media reported his two sons had also been detained. In a statement on the public prosecutor’s Facebook page, a spokesman said the prosecutor Abdel Maguid Mahmoud authorized the det...
Japan says nuclear crisis stabilizing

World NewsApr 13, 2011