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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[Graphic News] Number of coffee franchises in S. Korea rises 13%
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Army takes group action against Hybe for neglecting BTS
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Some junior doctors are returning: Health Ministry
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Marine Corps commander summoned by CIO for questioning on alleged influence-peddling case
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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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[Ashoka Mody] Recent market uncertainty wake-up call for rupee
PRINCETON ― The Indian rupee has weakened rapidly in recent months, with the exchange rate against the U.S. dollar dropping by 11 percent to around 60 rupees, since early May. As a symbol of India’s economic strength, the rupee’s fall has provoked more than the usual hand-wringing and angst at home and abroad.There is indeed reason to be worried, but not because the rupee’s value has declined. In fact, the slide has been long in coming, and recent market uncertainty has merely been a wake-up cal
July 7, 2013
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Foreign outrage over Snowden affair laughable
Ever since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden fled the job he held for three months, taking four laptop computers full of U.S. intelligence with him to Hong Kong and Russia, other countries have become “outraged” by the Snowden disclosures about American intelligence practices. What, exactly, is so alarming? Apparently, the fact that spies actually spy. Give me a break.The average person might be excused for being surprised at what spies actually do, and by Snowden’s revelations about passive
July 5, 2013
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[Robert Reich] Economic strategy for better jobs
Jobs are returning with depressing slowness, and most of the new jobs pay less than the jobs that were lost in the Great Recession.Economic determinists assume that globalization and technological advancement necessarily condemn a large portion of the American workforce to underemployment and stagnant wages, while rewarding those with the best educations and connections with ever higher wages and wealth.Many on the right of the political spectrum say we should accept this outcome because we must
July 5, 2013
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Egypt’s military coup can’t be sugarcoated
Egypt has undergone a military coup, carefully choreographed and wrapped as a democratic act, but a coup d’etat nonetheless. How badly this ends will depend entirely on what the army and the Muslim Brotherhood do next. It’s true that this wasn’t an ordinary military seizure of power. The generals won’t, for example, be taking any formal political position; they acted on a wave of genuine popular anger at President Mohammed Morsi; and they set out a road map for new elections. They also lined up
July 4, 2013
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[Noah Feldman] Democracy loses in Egypt
The framers of the U.S. Constitution feared that democracy could devolve into rule of the mob. Events in Egypt are a reminder of why that concern was justified. Essentially the same pro-democracy activists who enabled Hosni Mubarak to be removed from power in February 2011 have now done the same to his democratically elected successor, Mohammed Morsi. In both cases it was the protesters who made the government vulnerable. And in both cases it was the army that delivered the coup de grace in the
July 4, 2013
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Taiwan’s filibuster fiasco
On June 25, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis held an 11-hour filibuster that successfully delayed the passage of a new abortion regulation in the state. In order to block the bill that would close most of the abortion clinics in Texas and ban abortion for women over 20 weeks pregnant, she needed to keep talking on the rostrum until midnight when the legislature session ended. She was not allowed to drink, eat or have a toilet break. She could not sit or lean on anything or anyone. She had to stay
July 4, 2013
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Outspoken China princeling takes on President Xi
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s conservative stance on political reform has led to a major split within the princeling community, whose members share a common interest in preserving the ruling status of the Chinese Communist Party.Hu Dehua, the third son of the late party chief Hu Yaobang, openly criticized Xi at a seminar held by the liberal magazine Yan Huang Chunqiu in mid-April. It was by far the most severe criticism lodged against Xi since the latter became CCP general secretary last Novemb
July 4, 2013
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Seoul, Tokyo should reconstruct relationship
At a time when the situation in East Asia has become increasingly unstable, cooperation between Japan and South Korea is becoming even more important. Both sides should step closer to each other to put bilateral relations back on a more normal footing.Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se recently held talks in Brunei and agreed to stably develop a “future-oriented” bilateral relationship.These were the first such talks between Japanese and South Korean fo
July 4, 2013
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[Nirmal Ghosh] Hate speech gripping Myanmar
In an age of an abrupt new openness after decades of repression, the line between freedom of speech and human rights is blurred in Myanmar, injecting a dangerous volatility into even commonplace incidents.“People cannot differentiate between freedom of speech and human rights. They think they can say what they like,” prominent monk Ashin Dhammapiya said at a conference on hate speech in Yangon last Friday.The government is also mulling over how to cope with a flood of chatter, propaganda and hat
July 4, 2013
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How did the U.S. lose the Egyptian people?
So here’s a question that’s nagging at me as we watch millions of Egyptians express their loathing for Mohammed Morsi, their hapless, power-grabbing president, and for his Muslim Brotherhood movement: How exactly did the U.S. come to be seen by Egyptian secularists and liberals as the handmaiden of a cultish fundamentalist political party whose motto includes this heartening sentiment: “Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope?” I mean, how did the U.S. fail to formula
July 3, 2013
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[David Ignatius] People power rises again
WASHINGTON ― “Authoritarianism in the name of Islam is dead,” messaged one Egyptian activist last Sunday, as millions gathered to denounce the rule of President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government. There’s a new wave of popular dissent this July 4th in Egypt, Iran and Turkey, the region’s three biggest Muslim democracies. Authoritarianism is still very much alive in the Middle East, but it’s under pressure from a surprisingly broad movement for change that defies religious or na
July 3, 2013
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Ireland’s experience and the austerity debate
DUBLIN ― Both sides of the austerity debate that is now gripping economists and policymakers cite Ireland’s experience as evidence for their case. And, however much they try to position the country as a poster-child, neither side is able to convince the other. Yet this tug-of-war is important, because it illustrates the complex range of arguments that are in play. It also demonstrates why more conclusive economic policy making is proving so elusive.Here is a quick reminder of Ireland’s sad recen
July 3, 2013
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U.S. officials shouldn’t go to bat for Egypt’s Morsi
Mohammed Morsi holds a singular distinction.As Egypt’s president, he is the world’s only democratically elected leader to motivate more than 20 million of his people, one-quarter of the population, to sign a petition calling for his ouster.Millions of these people began showing up at angry, sometimes violent demonstrations in Cairo and other cities on Sunday, the one-year anniversary of his rule. They’re irate about Morsi’s blatant leadership failures. Egypt is riven with enervating economic, po
July 3, 2013
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[Naomi Wolf] The rape culture embedded in the U.S. military
NEW YORK ― Around the world, people’s understanding of why rape happens usually takes one of two forms. Either it is like lightning, striking some unlucky woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time (an isolated, mysterious event, caused by some individual man’s sudden psychopathology), or it is “explained” by some seductive transgression by the victim (the wrong dress, a misplaced smile).But the idea of a “rape culture” ― a concept formulated by feminists in the 1970s as they developed t
July 3, 2013
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China’s slowdown could slam Hong Kong
In the run-up to Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, the world wondered what officials in Beijing would do with the place. Would Hong Kong’s dynamism and openness catalyze change in China, or would the Communist Party try to remake the freewheeling city-state in its image? Sixteen years on, we know it’s more the latter than the former. Beijing has shackled Hong Kong with one bad, handpicked leader after another. China’s commissars and their local lackeys continue to push anti-sedition laws, pat
July 2, 2013
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A rational approach for Korea
Last year, a Vietnamese woman involved in a divorce from her South Korean husband left the country with their 13-month-old child and traveled back to Vietnam. Her husband pressed criminal charges against her for kidnapping and each successive court found her not guilty. Eventually the case reached the South Korean Supreme Court and the court, in its first live broadcast, heard the case. At the time choosing such a case for the very first live broadcast was roundly criticized for feeding into the
July 2, 2013
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[Kim Seong-kon] Why are we still carrying illegal, defective weapons?
Some time ago, I heard a funny joke from one of my colleagues. When I was about to enter the women’s room on campus by mistake, a professor warned me solemnly, “If you go in there, you will be arrested for carrying an illegal weapon.” Then he added teasingly, “If you are over 50, you will be arrested for carrying a defective weapon.” Since “illegal weapons (bulbeob mugi)” rhymes with “defective weapons (bulyang mugi)” in Korean, it made a fine joke. With newspapers filled with reports of sex cri
July 2, 2013
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Grumpy old Scalia versus those pesky kids
You may have heard that Justice Antonin Scalia referred to the majority opinion striking down the Defense of Marriage Act as “legalistic argle-bargle.” Intemperate as the dissent was, derision for Justice Anthony Kennedy’s jurisprudence of dignity and personhood was nothing new for Scalia, who has been castigating what he once called Kennedy’s “sweet mystery of life” rhetoric for a decade. What’s new about Scalia’s numerous dissents issued over the U.S. Supreme Court’s remarkable June is how muc
July 2, 2013
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Why are so many college graduates driving taxis?
It’s a parent’s nightmare: shelling out big money for college, then seeing the graduate unable to land a job that requires high-level skills. This situation may be growing more common, unfortunately, because the demand for cognitive skills associated with higher education, after rising sharply until 2000, has since been in decline. So concludes new research by economists Paul Beaudry and David Green of the University of British Columbia and Benjamin Sand of York University in Toronto. This rever
July 2, 2013
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Securing nuclear material from wrong hands
VIENNA ― World leaders have devoted increasing attention in recent years to the risk of terrorists obtaining nuclear or other radioactive material. That’s the good news. But all of us need to act with greater urgency in translating good intentions into concrete action.The risk of nuclear or other radioactive material falling into the wrong hands is all too real. There have been embarrassing security lapses at nuclear facilities, and sensitive material is often inadequately secured. Indeed, the I
July 1, 2013