Most Popular
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Medical profs at top hospitals suspend surgeries, clinics
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Exports to US reach all-time high, widen gap with China
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Trump rekindles criticism: US forces defending 'wealthy' S. Korea 'free of charge'
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Samsung chip business back on track, logs W1.9tr operating profit in Q1
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Shinsegae faces showdown with investors over SSG.com's delayed IPO
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Hopes rise for possible Gaza truce deal
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Ex-pro baseball player who killed debtor appeals sentence
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S. Korea discussed possible participation in AUKUS Pillar 2 with Australia: defense minister
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[New faces of Assembly] Architect behind ‘audacious initiative’ believes in denuclearized North Korea
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[Music in drama] Rekindle a love that slipped through your fingers
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China’s first publicly glamorous first lady
Peng Liyuan, celebrity folksinger and wife of President Xi Jinping has a chic, elegant and decidedly local look. Since March 22, when she appeared at a Moscow airport, arm in arm with her smiling husband on the opening leg of his first international trip as China’s new head of state, talk of her has spread across newspapers, blogs and microblogs. “Peng Liyuan’s debut trip is remarkable. For a very long time, party leaders, and especially their wives, left dowdy impressions,” tweeted a retired ac
March 27, 2013
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Clinton is strongest-ever frontrunner... if she runs
Last week, when Hillary Clinton released a video announcing her support for gay marriage, Twitter went wild. It was totally expected ― her husband and daughter took the same position months earlier ― and didn’t have as much political import as Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman’s announcement this month that he now favors same-sex marriage. The rules are different for Hillary Clinton. No non-incumbent in the history of contemporary U.S. presidential politics ever looked so formidable three year
March 27, 2013
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[Sanjaya Baru] India’s five principles for relations with China
NEW DELHI ― There is something about the number five in Sino-Indian relations. Asia’s two giants have long defined their relationship in terms of the famous Pancha Sheela: mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful co-existence.Now China’s new leaders have enunciated a new Pancha Sheela, with President Xi Jinping offering a “five-point proposal” f
March 27, 2013
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Pope Francis should look east to end poverty
Philippine President Benigno Aquino faces a huge roadblock in his push to end the poverty weighing on his 106 million people: the Catholic Church. I was in the predominantly Catholic nation earlier this month when the Vatican named the first non-European as pope in more than 1,200 years. Filipinos rejoiced in the choice of a Latin American pontiff with a passion for helping the poor. One- fifth of Filipinos live in slum conditions even as the economy grows 6.8 percent. News of Pope Francis’s ele
March 26, 2013
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[Daniel Fiedler] First broadcast court case
The Supreme Court of South Korea opened up its courtroom to live television for the first time Thursday. Considering the murky image that many South Koreans have of their judiciary and the positive effect live courtroom television has for transparency and fairness, this is an encouraging development for democracy and for judicial legitimacy in South Korea.Unfortunately rather than airing one of the many cases of corruption between politicians and the chaebol or any one of hundreds of cases invol
March 26, 2013
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Food giants engineering the recipe for obesity
I’m certain Sarah Palin spoke for many when she tweeted upon hearing the news that a New York judge had prevented implementation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to regulate sugary drinks:“Victory in NYC for liberty-loving soda drinkers. To politicians with too much time on their hands we say: Govt, stay out of my refrigerator!”No doubt those “liberty lovers” view dietary habits as a matter of free will and personal responsibility. If only things were so simple. There’s no question that most
March 26, 2013
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Fine speech by Obama, but was it successful?
President Obama gave a great speech in Jerusalem last week.He promised again to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, and pledged undying moral and military support for the Jewish state. Only then did he urge Israelis not to forsake efforts to negotiate peace with the Palestinians. His rhetoric was so powerful that it elicited repeated cheers from about 1,000 Israeli students in the audience.So, now what?One can’t help but recall that Obama also gave a great speech to students in Cairo in 2009, aimed at
March 26, 2013
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[Kim Seong-kon] A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips
English speakers have a humorous warning for those who love donuts, candy, and various other sweets: “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”The maxim serves as a reminder to all those with a sweet tooth that the pleasure of a donut is evanescent, but its effect on one’s waistline will be long lasting. In Korea, we have a similar proverb that says, “It may be sweet on the mouth, but bitter in your stomach.” Another maxim claims, “All good medicines are bitter on the mouth.” These maxims w
March 26, 2013
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Israelis need to know U.S. can guarantee security
I hope President Obama won’t take it personally, but during his visit in my country I had important business in New York and Los Angeles. Had I known that his visit would finally bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians, I would have canceled my trip and stayed in Israel to be witness to history in the making.The fact that I decided to go anyway doesn’t mean that I wasn’t watching the visit closely. After all, the future of my children and my grandchildren is at stake here. I followed the v
March 25, 2013
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[Ayad Allawi] Iraq hopes for a new beginning
BAGHDAD ― Ten years have passed since Saddam Hussein was removed from power, following more than three decades of tyrannical rule. The dream of Iraqis after Saddam’s fall was to build a new, prosperous, and democratic Iraq. A country at peace with itself and its neighbors, with a constitution upholding basic human rights and the rule of law, was the desire of almost everyone.But the United States and its allies, lacking a coherent vision of Iraq’s future, much less a sound policy for the post-Sa
March 25, 2013
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Radical measures needed to prevent food fraud
The horse-meat storm that broke over Europe two months ago has been in one respect a tempest in a horseshoe, because it posed no threat to human health. That’s not a minor caveat in an industry where, in the U.S. alone, tainted food kills 3,000 people each year and sickens 48 million. The horse-meat substitution has struck a nerve, however, as people wonder what else they’re eating that isn’t what they think it is. It could be almost anything. The list of counterfeit foods Interpol found in worl
March 25, 2013
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Nuclear-war deterrence begins with nuke locks
Start thinking the unthinkable. We as a nation have to start talking about the prospects for nuclear war. President Barack Obama says Iran might have a bomb in a year. To hold back the day, the U.S. and Israel have conducted cyberwar, and Israel has apparently assassinated Iranian scientists. But even if Israel attacks to stop Iran’s bomb making now, the day will dawn. What will we do if Israel threatens Tehran with nuclear obliteration? What if North Korea aims a warhead at Seoul? And what if t
March 25, 2013
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[Mohamed A. El-Erian] Anxiety rises as buoyant markets near crossroads
BARCELONA ― In recent months, the dichotomy between booming financial markets, on the one hand, and sluggish economies and dysfunctional politics, on the other, has loomed large. Yet insufficient attention is being devoted to a critical factor ― time, and who controls it ― that could well mean the difference between an orderly global resolution of today’s growing inconsistencies and a return to a more troubled phase.Markets have been understandably buoyant in the first quarter of 2013. Most econ
March 25, 2013
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Cyprus’s three-way game of economic chicken
Europe’s handling of a bailout for Cyprus is looking more chaotic by the minute. Negotiations have descended into a three-way game of chicken among the island nation, Russia and the euro area’s leaders. The initial plan to make insured depositors pay for part of the bailout was terrible. The Cypriot parliament rejected it, and now the European Central Bank has set a deadline of March 25, warning that unless a new deal is reached it will pull the plug on the funding that’s keeping Cyprus’s bankin
March 24, 2013
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[David Ignatius] McCain turns maverick again
WASHINGTON ― Sen. John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” has been in the repair shop for a while, but it sure was rolling last week during an interview. The main theme was that Republicans should end their self-isolation and “start working for the American people.” Journalists have always had a soft spot for McCain when he’s in the mode of bipartisan conciliator. And I don’t want to overstate the evidence of an hour-long conversation the other day in McCain’s Senate office. He remains a complex a
March 24, 2013
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Republicans’ self-defeating war on eyeshades
What’s with the green eyeshades? “I can’t tell you how tired I am of Republicans who are green-eyeshade accountants,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Newsmax TV last weekend. Representative Paul Ryan’s “new budget road map is more vision than green-eyeshade exercise,” Larry Kudlow wrote March 15 at National Review Online, using Kudlow code to suggest that the House Budget Committee chairman has a political future. “If Paul Ryan wanted to dispel his image as a green-eyeshade guy obsessed
March 24, 2013
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China’s poison air is becoming its top export
Sitting on a Tokyo runway last week, the captain announced that our flight would be delayed for reasons few of us could believe: sandstorms. Chuckles filled the aircraft. The woman next to me quipped: “What, are we in Egypt?” As we all craned our necks to look out the windows, it really did feel as if we were taxiing in Cairo or Marrakesh, not the capital of a Group of Seven nation. The sand is compliments of China’s boom. Thanks to deforestation and overgrazing, more and more of the Gobi Desert
March 24, 2013
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[Robert J. Shiller] Can debt-friendly stimulus gain political acceptance?
NEW HAVEN ― With much of the global economy apparently trapped in a long and painful austerity-induced slump, it is time to admit that the trap is entirely of our own making. We have constructed it from unfortunate habits of thought about how to handle spiraling public debt.People developed these habits on the basis of the experiences of their families and friends: when in debt trouble, one must cut spending and pass through a period of austerity until the burden (debt relative to income) is red
March 24, 2013
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A European bailout unlike any other
PARIS ― The European Union’s $13 billion bailout plan for Cyprus has nothing to do with socialism but rather with much greater stakes. This is the EU attempting to outmaneuver an uncharacteristically flat-footed Vladimir Putin and Russia in a key battleground, over long-festering issues: transparency, corruption, and support of Syria and Iran. This is also a case of the EU calling out a Trojan-horse country embedded inside the eurozone.In exchange for the $13 billion from the EU, Cyprus would ha
March 22, 2013
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[Robert Reich] Our biggest economic problem
“Our biggest problems over the next 10 years are not deficits,” President Obama told House Republicans last week, according to those who attended the meeting.The president needs to deliver the same message to the public, loudly and clearly. The biggest problems we face are unemployment, stagnant wages, slow growth and widening inequality ― not deficits. The major goal must be to get jobs and wages back, not balance the budget.Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan is designed to lure the White House and D
March 22, 2013