Most Popular
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Tensions heighten ahead of first president-opposition chief meeting
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Seoul to provide housing subsidy to married couples with newborns
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[KH Explains] No more 'Michael' at Kakao Games
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Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
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Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
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Samsung chief bolsters ties with Germany’s Zeiss
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NewJeans pops out ‘Bubble Gum’ video amid troubles at agency
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Med schools expect 1,500+ new admission slots next year
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[Grace Kao] Hybe vs. Ador: Inspiration, imitation and plagiarism
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Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
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Abe’s provocations threaten regional stability
A series of recent blunt statements from U.S. officials have left no doubt that Washington blames China’s maritime expansionism for rising tensions in Asia. Now, America’s main ally in the region needs to hear a similarly forthright message.Japan had been clamoring for the U.S. to speak out more forcefully after China imposed an “air-defense identification zone” over a set of islands claimed by both countries. Officials in Tokyo have warned that any hint of daylight between Americans and Japanes
Feb. 17, 2014
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Why Comcast-Time Warner deal makes business sense
Say this about the deal announced Thursday for Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable: It’s big. Big price tag of $45 billion. Big combined subscriber base of 30 million households. And, big risk of a veto from government antitrust regulators, whose approval is needed for the deal to proceed.Remember when AT&T wanted to acquire T-Mobile in a similarly big acquisition? President Barack Obama’s administration blocked that merger in 2011. In our view, that transaction should have won approval. Combining
Feb. 17, 2014
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[Jeffrey Frankel] Why politics fails to address market failures
PARIS ― Markets can fail. But, as has been demonstrated in areas like air pollution, traffic congestion, spectrum allocation, and tobacco consumption, market mechanisms are often the best way for governments to address such failures. So why are such mechanisms now in retreat?Consider markets for emissions allowances, in which firms that can cheaply cut air pollution trade with those that cannot. A decade ago, the idea that such markets could achieve desired environmental goals at relatively low
Feb. 17, 2014
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The world’s most dangerous software
At what point does a cyber-attack become an act of war?My question is prompted by last week’s news that a highly sophisticated malware program called Mask has spent the last six years stealing valuable intelligence from supposedly secure government and diplomatic computers around the world.Researchers are certain that Mask itself was produced by a government. Intrusions by one country into the networks of another have become so common that it’s reasonable to wonder whether all this cyberwarfare
Feb. 17, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Gold-medal corruption
WASHINGTON ― Amid the television extravaganza of the Sochi Olympics, I had a chance to visit last week with a Russian whistleblower named Sergey Kolesnikov. Back in 2010, he had revealed what he claimed was a network of corruption that included a billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea allegedly built by wealthy businessmen for Vladimir Putin.As with the athletes who are taking great risks in Sochi, the wonder with Kolesnikov is that despite the dangers, he’s still on his feet. He hasn’t been bac
Feb. 16, 2014
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Forget about her shoes, go after Imelda’s art
Where the Marcos family is concerned, even good news is bad for 95 million Filipinos and their economy.What else can one say about Andres Bautista’s depressing news conference in Manila? The man charged with recovering the billions in state wealth looted by ex-President Ferdinand Marcos said his team had recovered the last $29 million sitting in Swiss bank accounts, bringing the final haul to $683 million. If one includes other booty ― gold, jewels, property, art ― Filipino investigators have cl
Feb. 16, 2014
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[Yu Kun-ha] Washington’s role in thawing icy Seoul-Tokyo ties
When it comes to Japan, the United States and South Korea are in the same bed but with different dreams, as the Chinese saying would have it. Their differences on Japan manifested themselves at a news conference jointly held by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se, in Seoul last week. Kerry came here as part of his Asian tour, which also took him to Beijing, Jakarta and Abu Dhabi. His visit came one day after the two Koreas held their first high-level conta
Feb. 16, 2014
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Put safety first on Seoul’s icy roads
[Letter to the editor] “His bone is broken. No, he can’t get up to his feet,” a woman’s voice came to my ears from among the crowd of onlookers gathered around me. As I lay flat with my belly on the ice, my body grew colder, and my coats and pants stuck to the ice. I thought that I should be able to get up in a few minutes. Five minutes, 10 minutes, I had a few tries to lift myself, but I failed each time because my left thighbone was seriously fractured. On a very cold winter evening years ago,
Feb. 16, 2014
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How to stay sane on Facebook
For the 48th World Communications Day, Pope Francis produced a remarkable (and mostly enthusiastic) message about the effects of social media. He contended that the Internet is “something truly good, a gift from God.”At the same time, he warned that the “variety of opinions being aired can be seen as helpful, but it also enables people to barricade themselves behind sources of information which only confirm their own wishes and ideas, or political and economic interests.”For that reason, Pope Fr
Feb. 16, 2014
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[Brahma Chellaney] A diplomatic opening to N.K.
HONG KONG ― At a time when China’s territorial assertiveness has strained its ties with many countries in the region, and its once-tight hold on Myanmar has weakened, its deteriorating relationship with North Korea, once its vassal, renders it a power with no real allies. The question now is whether the United States and other powers can use this development to create a diplomatic opening to North Korea that could help transform northeast Asia’s fraught geopolitics.China’s ties with Myanmar bega
Feb. 14, 2014
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Transatlantic cooperation in missile defense
BRUSSELS ― An American ship sailing into a Spanish naval base this week is making history. The arrival of the USS Donald Cook from Norfolk, Virginia, to its new home port in Rota, on Spain’s Atlantic coast, marks the first time that a U.S. Navy ship equipped with the high-tech Aegis ballistic missile-defense system will be permanently based in Europe.The USS Donald Cook is the first of four U.S. Navy destroyers that, with around 1,200 sailors and personnel, will play a central role in NATO’s mis
Feb. 14, 2014
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[Robert B. Reich] Why did we forget lessons?
Why has America forgotten the three most important economic lessons we learned in the 30 years following World War II?Before I answer that question, let me remind you what those lessons were:First, America’s real job creators are consumers, whose rising wages generate jobs and growth. If average people don’t have decent wages, there can be no real recovery and no sustained growth.In those years, business boomed because American workers were getting raises and had enough purchasing power to buy w
Feb. 13, 2014
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Student loans: Middle-class kids get hammered
Last October, in between arguments over the debt ceiling, the federal government somehow found time to send me an email. My student loan payment was 70 days past due, the message read, so the government had negatively reported me to each major credit bureau and would continue to report me until my account was brought current.I’m betting the government sent out a lot of those letters to people like me: college graduates from middle-class families who didn’t qualify for much in the way of scholars
Feb. 13, 2014
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[June HL Wong] School bullies triumph in the wake of apathy
Public sentiment, coupled with government action, can make a difference in protecting innocent children from bullies.The news hit me like a thunderbolt. T. Kavinraj, a 13-year-old Malaysian student, was driven to suicide by bullies in his school. He drank pesticide and died a painful death at a clinic in Semenyih, Selangor, on Saturday.I am horror-stricken and deeply saddened because we have all collectively failed this young boy. Despite The Star’s anti-bullying campaign that we launched last y
Feb. 13, 2014
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China-Taiwan meeting marks ‘new era’ in cross-strait ties
The relationship between China and Taiwan has entered “a new era,” the island’s top official overseeing mainland affairs declared at the first government-to-government meeting between the two sides.Wang Yu-chi, chairman of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, on Tuesday told his mainland counterpart Zhang Zhijun, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, that simply sitting across the table from each other and formally discussing affairs of mutual interest marks a “historic moment” for cross-stra
Feb. 13, 2014
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Sharia for non-Muslims: Between respect, coercion
Aceh is commonly associated with conflict, tsunamis, peace and sharia law. The latter has remained an interesting topic of discussion, if not a source of controversy, among the public as well as policymakers.Political upheavals that plagued Aceh for about three decades have earned it special autonomy, which eludes almost all regional administrations in the country. Thanks to its status, Aceh is the only province in Indonesia invested with the right to enforce sharia law along with the Criminal C
Feb. 13, 2014
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[Cass R. Sunstein] Is it even better to win bronze than silver?
Imagine that for most of your life, you have been preparing for the Olympics. You are intensely competitive, and you badly want to win. But you know that in your event, only one person can win Olympic gold, and that only three can bring home a medal. Silver is better than bronze, of course; it’s great to be third in the world, but it’s even better to be second.Or is it?Research suggests that in the Olympics, those who finish third are likely to be a lot happier than those who finish second. The
Feb. 12, 2014
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Infrastructure attacks are cause for concern
PARIS ― At a time when many of us have become fixated on U.S. intelligence agencies’ “big data” programs, authorities are becoming aware of a much more insidious kind of threat ― one that could successfully exploit the growing blind spot created by our overreliance on technology.Jon Wellinghoff, the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, told the Wall Street Journal that an April 2013 attack by multiple gunmen on Pacific Gas and Electric’s Metcalf power station in San Jose,
Feb. 12, 2014
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Germany’s Pyrrhic victory
BERLIN ― The German Constitutional Court has ruled against the European Central Bank’s pledge to buy potentially unlimited quantities of distressed eurozone countries’ government bonds, and has called on the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to confirm its decision. Until that happens, the “outright monetary transactions” (OMT) scheme is effectively dead, weakening the ECB’s ability to act as an effective and credible financial-market backstop at a time when European governments remain unwilling t
Feb. 12, 2014
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Outright monetary infractions, not transactions
MUNICH ― The German Constitutional Court has delivered its long-awaited decision on the European Central Bank’s “outright monetary transactions” program. Since its launch in 2012, the OMT program has allowed the ECB to buy, if necessary, unlimited amounts of troubled eurozone countries’ government bonds, provided the affected countries subscribe to the rules of Europe’s rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism.Thousands of Germans appealed to the Constitutional Court against the OMT program
Feb. 12, 2014