Most Popular
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Russia sent more than 165,000 barrels of refined petroleum to N. Korea in March: White House
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Key suspects grilled over alleged abuse of power in Marine death inquiry
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S. Korean children, teens grow taller, mature faster than before: study
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Army takes group action against Hybe for neglecting BTS
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Marine Corps commander summoned by CIO for questioning on alleged influence-peddling case
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[Graphic News] Number of coffee franchises in S. Korea rises 13%
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Some junior doctors are returning: Health Ministry
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[Robert J. Fouser] AI changes rationale for learning languages
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Ador CEO's request for exclusive right to terminate NewJeans' contract with Hybe refused in February
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Woman dangling from power lines rescued by residents holding blanket
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Alaska’s ‘road to nowhere’ is still a boondoggle
It has been said that nothing dies harder than a bad idea.Nearly two decades ago, while I was serving as U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Alaska’s Sens. Frank Murkowski and Ted Stevens wanted to build a 38-mile gravel road in their state, with 11 miles going through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The road would connect the salmon canneries in King Cove, population 948, with a larger airport in the neighboring town of Cold Bay to expand and speed shipping.My boss at the time, President Clin
March 16, 2014
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[Shin On-han] The debts we owe to overseas adoptees
A total of 167,000 Korean children were adopted by families in the United States, Europe and other nations after the Korean War. During this period, it seemed to be much better for them to grow up outside of Korea. I thought that it would be good for them. In fact, some of the early adoptees have become successful government officials, members of congress or famous sports stars.However, my thinking has changed through meeting the overseas adoptees and reading the books they wrote. I totally over
March 16, 2014
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Obama late to the realpolitik table in Saudi Arabia
PARIS ― Later this month, U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Here’s hoping he decides to stay home and help his daughters with their homework instead.America’s decreasing influence in the Middle East and Eurasia might be the result of deliberate strategic policy. Or it’s simply ineptitude ― in which case it’s infinitely better for indecisive paralysis to prevail over uninformed proactivity. Either way, it’s not a bad thing.The Middle East is a mess, but what else is new
March 16, 2014
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[Yu Kun-ha] Abe should throw away historical revisionism
Japanese officials are continuing to make contradictory remarks on historical issues, throwing their counterparts in Seoul into confusion and fueling distrust of the incumbent Tokyo government.Their inconsistent comments on such important issues as the sexual enslavement of women from Korea and elsewhere during World War II are hindering their efforts to reset frayed bilateral relations.Worse, they are reinforcing the impression that the current Japanese administration is treacherous, and is try
March 16, 2014
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[Robert Reich] America’s great U-turn
Do you recall a time in America when the income of a single schoolteacher or baker or salesman or mechanic was enough to buy a home, have two cars and raise a family?I remember. My father (who just celebrated his 100th birthday) earned enough for the rest of us to live comfortably. We weren’t rich but never felt poor, and our standard of living rose steadily through the 1950s and 1960s.That used to be the norm. For three decades after World War II, America created the largest middle class the wo
March 14, 2014
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Flotsam and false leads in Flight 370 search
One of the few facts we’ve learned for certain from the international search and rescue mission for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is that the South China Sea is very, very polluted. The disappearance is, above all else, a human tragedy for the families of the passengers and crew, and the state of the sea should in no way distract from the efforts to find them. Nonetheless, the ecological tragedy will have a profound impact on the South China Sea ― and the more than 1 billion people living in its
March 14, 2014
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[David Ignatius] On Ukraine, where next?
WASHINGTON ― It’s still possible to imagine a fuzzy, face-saving compromise in Ukraine: Crimea would have a new, quasi-autonomous administrative status blessed by Moscow and Kiev. The problem is that few analysts think Russian President Vladimir Putin will swallow this diplomatic pill. Secretary of State John Kerry will make one more try, seeing his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in London on Friday; Kerry hasn’t ruled out traveling on to see Putin himself. But that’s unlikely to stop the pla
March 13, 2014
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‘Average’ Barbie is just as fake as original
When I was a little girl, my favorite dolls came from Mattel and had wildly inhuman proportions. To me, they were magical and special and didn’t look the least bit strange. But once, probably when I was making a Christmas wish list, my mother let her adult perspective slip. “You mean,” she asked, with a disapproving edge, “one of those dolls with the huge heads?”Yes, I spent my childhood playing with Liddle Kiddles, whose heads were roughly the height of their torsos and twice as wide. Yet never
March 13, 2014
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With peace accord unlikely, Taiwan’s future in jeopardy
Lien Chan, honorary chairman of the Kuomintang, met Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party who doubles as president of the People’s Republic, in Beijing on Feb. 18 to exchange views on how to further improve the peaceful development of relations between Taiwan and China. Lien urged Xi to face squarely the reality of the Republic of China. It’s the first time any leader of Taiwan mentioned the Republic of China in a CCP general secretary’s face.Xi tacitly agreed, because Lie
March 13, 2014
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Spring coming soon for Asian economies
The chaos in Ukraine gave markets a brief scare last week, but they soon shrugged it off as a distraction amid signs of improvement in the global economy.As March progresses and the paralyzing effects of the unusually wintry weather in the United States dissipate, the clouds are clearing from the economic outlook, especially in Asia.Malaysia last week reported another double-digit jump in exports for January ― led by higher shipments of electronics, liquefied natural gas and metals ― as well as
March 13, 2014
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[Juan L. Mercado] ‘Perfect storm’ threatens global food system
“Filipinos share one common item in our everyday existence: rice,” National Scientist Gelia Castillo wrote in her book on a cereal that makes or breaks presidents. “Rice In Our Life” reviewed three decades of studies into rice that was sown between B.C. 6,000 and A.D. 400, in the Philippines ― from Ifugao to Lucena.Rice self-sufficiency has been an upward moving target, “always out of reach, even as we calculate we are only three percent short,” she wrote. “Seared deep in the psyche of Filipino
March 13, 2014
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Technology may hold key to answers about MH370
It is too early to speculate, but in the absence of a distress call, investigators looking into the sudden disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing 777-200 plane over the South China Sea are already working on two distinct theories ― a catastrophic electrical failure or a mid-air explosion.Ominously, the plot has thickened since it was discovered that at least two men, an Italian and an Austrian, who were listed among the 239 passengers and crew, both had their passports stolen more than a
March 13, 2014
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[William Pesek] Jingoism won’t help Fukushima
Does Shinzo Abe love soldiers who died during World War II more than Japanese living today?The question might sound disrespectful. But I can’t help asking it as I survey the placards at anti-government rallies commemorating the third anniversary of the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, which left almost 20,000 people dead or missing and erased entire towns. “Abe is AWOL,” says one. Another: “Nationalism Doesn’t Create Jobs!” The one that moved me most was carried by a 30-something mother wearing
March 12, 2014
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A missing plane and a stolen passport mystery
There are 40 million stolen passports in Interpol’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database in Lyon, France, including at least two that were used to board ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 early Saturday morning. Naturally, speculation about what might have caused the plane’s disappearance has fallen on the two people who boarded with those passports. Did they carry out a terrorist strike? Or, like the other 237 passengers and crew on the flight, were they also victims? An urgent global
March 12, 2014
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Make disaster the mother of invention in Japan
Three years after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami nearly triggered a nuclear cataclysm in central Japan, conditions at the shattered Dai-Ichi power plant in Fukushima don’t inspire confidence. Radiation levels in the surrounding area will keep more than 150,000 residents from returning to their homes for years, if ever. Groundwater flowing under the rubbled reactors, where it is contaminated by radioactivity, is accumulating at the rate of 400 tons a day in more than 1,100 tank
March 12, 2014
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[Mohamed A. El-Erian] Risks for citizens’ well-being, global economy
NEWPORT BEACH, California ― Some economists, like Larry Summers, call it “secular stagnation.” Others refer to it as “Japanization.” But all agree that after too many years of inadequate growth in advanced economies, substantial longer-term risks have emerged, not only for the wellbeing of these countries’ citizens but also for the health and stability of the global economy.Those looking for ways to reduce the risks of inadequate growth agree that, of all possible solutions, increased business i
March 12, 2014
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Obama and foreign policy pendulum
When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, one of his selling points was the promise of a more modest foreign policy than that of his predecessor. And when Obama won re-election 16 months ago, he renewed that pledge. Drone strikes against al-Qaida would continue, and Navy visits to the South China Sea would increase, but the U.S. footprint around the world was being resolutely downsized.Mitt Romney warned at the time that Obama wasn’t being tough enough on Vladimir Putin, but the president sc
March 12, 2014
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[Jamie Metzl] A dangerous time warp
NEW YORK ― With Russian troops occupying Ukrainian territory and the Chinese Navy inhabiting Philippine territorial waters in the South China Sea, the world is now entering a dangerous time warp.In geopolitical terms, Russia and China are reenacting the norms of the nineteenth-century, when states competed by amassing hard power in a system of unbridled nationalism and rigid state sovereignty. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be trying to reassemble the nineteenth-century map of
March 11, 2014
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Dot-com IPO insanity returns with Coupons.com
This is one of those days where I realize I don’t understand anything about finance or capital markets. I’m a dinosaur. I don’t get it. People are saying things like “this time is different” again in news articles about initial public offerings by Internet companies, and they mean it. All I can do is watch, dumbfounded.Today a 16-year-old company that loses money called Coupons.com Inc. went public. Had I been paying attention to Coupons.com sooner, I might have guessed after the disastrous post
March 11, 2014
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Dependence on energy: Russia’s Achilles’ heel
Russian President Vladimir Putin is gambling in the Crimea that the United States and Europe will prove incapable of any effective response. Certainly, there is no appetite in the United States or Europe for a military engagement. And Putin is not greatly concerned about the largely rhetorical threats of unspecified consequences being directed his way by President Obama and other western leaders.There is something, however, that might make Putin re-examine his reckless course: The Russian econom
March 11, 2014