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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[Graphic News] Number of coffee franchises in S. Korea rises 13%
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S. Korean children, teens grow taller, mature faster than before: study
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Some junior doctors are returning: Health Ministry
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Army takes group action against Hybe for neglecting BTS
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[Robert J. Fouser] AI changes rationale for learning languages
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Woman dangling from power lines rescued by residents holding blanket
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Naver Q1 net income soars 1,171.9% on growth of major businesses
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Marine Corps commander summoned by CIO for questioning on alleged influence-peddling case
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Military sexual assaults demand a new approach
Last year a military jury convicted Air Force Lt. Col. James Wilkerson of aggravated sexual assault against a civilian woman who worked at his air base in Aviano, Italy. He was sentenced to spend a year in confinement and be expelled from the military. But then his commander decided to toss out the verdict and keep Wilkerson.The trial was irrelevant. A convicted rapist was back in the good graces of the U.S. Air Force. And the victim? “I was assaulted. I reported it. I endured the public humilia
July 31, 2013
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How to scare people at your summer cookout
How about a cheat sheet that you can carry around during the summer cookout season to help you strike up conversations with friends about some topics worth worrying about? While people have been contemplating the possibility of New York City being run by mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, whose underwear seems to be engaged in an ongoing quick-draw contest with his cell phone camera, there are far more formidable threats worth your concern:1) The Taliban is back, baby ― and it’s like they never l
July 31, 2013
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U.S. government blinded by war on terrorism
“This is a great time to be a white-collar criminal.”An assistant U.S. attorney I know startled me with this remark in 2002. The bulk of her FBI investigators, she explained, had been pulled off to work on terrorism, which left traditional crime investigations sorely understaffed.Little has changed since then. For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been focused on one type of threat above all others: terrorism. This obsession has not only been used to justify an erosion of Americans’ pr
July 30, 2013
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[Max Boot] Korea and the power of politics
Americans like to pretend that politics don’t matter and to bemoan the slight differences between our political parties. These are luxuries we can afford as the world’s richest and most stable country. But for much of the world, politics are a matter of life and death. That is particularly evident in South Korea, which over this past weekend celebrated the 60th anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean War.It is hard to exaggerate how devastated the Korean peninsula was in 1953; Gen. Do
July 30, 2013
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China is set to suffer the skyscraper curse
Auditors seeking to head off a Chinese crash are rushing to scrutinize the debt-swollen books of the country’s local governments. Economists are poring over statistics, bond spreads, electricity gauges and stock valuations. They might all have more luck if they got their noses out of the books and looked up. On July 20, the Broad Group broke ground on Sky City on the outskirts of the south-central city of Changsha. The skyscraper will rise 838 meters (2,749 feet) into the heavens to become the w
July 30, 2013
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[Kim Seong-kon] The Korean version of ‘A Man and a Woman’
I still vividly remember the day I watched the mesmerizing French movie “A Man and a Woman” for the first time as a college student in the mid-1960s. The movie is about a young widow and a widower who fall in love after meeting by chance at their children’s boarding school. But because of the beautiful memories of their deceased spouses, their relationship cannot progress. Anne, a movie scriptwriter, cannot forget her beloved stuntman husband who was accidentally killed on a movie set as she wat
July 30, 2013
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Prince William’s charming choice to take leave
On the face of it, Prince William’s decision to take two weeks of job-protected, paid statutory paternity leave is absurd. The heir to the British throne can live without the approximately $206 a week in taxpayer funds that men in the U.K. are entitled to receive if they take time off to welcome a baby. But as a symbolic gesture, the prince’s choice is, as the Brits would say, brilliant. For in William’s subtle, necessarily apolitical, good-guy way, he has issued the boldest possible statement o
July 30, 2013
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Keeping robots from destroying humans
In the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea, SGR-1 robots are on patrol, equipped with cameras and radar to detect intruders as well as speakers to warn them off. If that fails, they also carry machine guns and grenade launchers. In the U.S., the Home Exploring Robotic Butler can retrieve a book from a shelf, a meal from a microwave or a drink from the kitchen. It can even separate an Oreo cookie. In Japan, a seal-like robot called Paro provides companionship for seniors ― and seems
July 29, 2013
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[Trudy Rubin] Dangerous U.S. Syria policy
Anyone who doubts the dangerous consequences of White House waffling on Syria should note some startling statements by U.S. officials in recent days.Let’s start at the top. After two years of insistence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go, the White House started publicly hedging last week. No doubt that was a reaction to the fact that Assad, armed and aided by Russia, Iran, and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, has been scoring major victories against the Syrian rebels.The new W
July 29, 2013
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McCain goes maverick again as Obama’s ally
Washington being Washington, the hottest relationship in town doesn’t revolve around sex or even the next presidential election: it’s the political courtship of old antagonists, Barack Obama and John McCain. Political relationships, especially those involving the president, are the sustenance of the American capital. Sometimes they are poisonous: President Lyndon Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy, as captured in the latest volume of Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ. At other times, they are lopsided,
July 29, 2013
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[Ruchir Sharma] What the middle classes are really protesting
Still-smoldering protests from Egypt to Brazil have set off a race among scholars and journalists to identify the roots of this summer of discontent in the emerging world. Each major theory starts at the bottom, with the protesters on the street, and notes a common thread: young, Twitter-savvy members of a rising middle class. In this telling, the protests represent the perils of success, as growing wealth creates a class of people who have the time and financial wherewithal to demand from their
July 29, 2013
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Mexico’s ‘new’ drug war
Last week, Mexican authorities arrested Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the leader of the Zetas, Mexico’s deadliest and most feared drug cartel. In Mexico, the news was met with relief, although there is also apprehension that his arrest will lead to a convulsion of violence; historically, taking out cartel kingpins has meant power struggles within organized crime groups, schisms that leave many dead in their wake.Trevino Morales, known as Z-40, was apprehended ― along with a bodyguard and a third
July 29, 2013
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[David Ignatius] NSA weighs its options
WASHINGTON ― The National Security Agency survived a legislative challenge in the House of Representatives last week. But senior NSA officials still face an uphill fight to convince the American public that its operations can enhance security without jeopardizing privacy. The Obama administration had to lobby aggressively to defeat a bipartisan House proposal to defund the NSA’s collection of Americans’ telephone call records. The narrow 217-205 vote shows how fragile public support has become f
July 28, 2013
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Reagan lives! That’s bad news for Japanese
The Ronald Reagan moment Japan investors have long fantasized about has finally arrived. Shinzo Abe’s plan to restore Japan’s economic might draws heavily upon principles long associated with the former U.S. president: welfare-spending cuts, debt-swelling tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations, deregulation, a lowering of trade barriers, and reforms that make it easier to fire workers. Yet while investors have greeted this supply-side shock therapy with enthusiasm, Japan’s 126 million p
July 28, 2013
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[Peter McDonough] Reform is the real mission for Pope Francis
GLENDALE, CALIFORNIA ― Catholicism, among the most tradition-bound religions, contains at its core a paradox that has become increasingly sharp. As Pope Francis is on his first overseas trip ― to Brazil, the world’s most populous Catholic country ― it is difficult, despite the inertia of the past, to tell where the church is headed.The accession of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papacy adds to the puzzle. The chief Jesuit confessor at the papal court used to be called “the black pope,” owing to hi
July 28, 2013
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Egypt needs one-year moratorium on protests
A year ago, it became clear to me that the Arab Spring would not succeed in Egypt unless a deadlock between the Islamists and secularists was broken. That didn’t happen, and now something more is required: a new social contract that includes a moratorium on further protests. Time magazine recently described my country as torn between the “World’s Best Protesters” and the “World’s Worst Democrats.” It was a depressingly apt description. Former President Mohammed Morsi failed to create an inclusiv
July 28, 2013
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Show some appreciation for Britain’s new prince
Royal baby haters.They’re out there. They’re everywhere.And with the birth of the beautiful royal baby boy in England the other day to the lovely Kate Middleton and her husband, Prince William, a horde of royal baby haters have been revealed, venting their anti-royalist spleens.“I don’t hate the royal baby,” said a fellow of Irish extraction with the middle names Thomas Aquinas Francis Xavier. “Not the baby. The baby’s fine. It’s the royal part I don’t like.”Ah, but you can’t pick and choose and
July 28, 2013
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Looking beyond the killing fields in Cambodia
“Dho ri min dho?” The cry rings out every night in Phnom Penh, chanted by thousands of teens as they roar past on cheap motorbikes. The riders are merry; they wave flags, bang drums, call out to passers-by. The oldest among them look like they’re in their 20s. They have one question about this weekends’ elections, the fourth round of polls since the United Nations restored civil rule to Cambodia in 1993: Change or no change? For many Cambodians, the answer isn’t obvious. Survivors of the demente
July 26, 2013
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[Robert Reich] Detroit and the social contract
One way to view Detroit’s bankruptcy ― the largest bankruptcy of any American city in history ― is as a failure of political negotiations over how financial sacrifices should be divided among the city’s creditors, city workers and municipal retirees, requiring a court to decide instead. It could also be seen as the inevitable culmination of decades of union agreements offering unaffordable pension and health benefits to city workers.But there’s a more basic story here, and it’s being replicated
July 26, 2013
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[David Ignatius] Kerry’s Captain Ahab quest
WASHINGTON ― Two qualities rarely associated with modern secretaries of state are patience and keeping your mouth shut in public. But in his first six months, John Kerry has demonstrated both ― and his stubborn silence appears to have brought him to the door of renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. “The best way to give these negotiations a chance is to keep them private,” Kerry insisted last Friday in Amman while announcing an agreement to resume direct final-status talks after a thre
July 25, 2013