Most Popular
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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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Marine Corps commander summoned by CIO for questioning on alleged influence-peddling case
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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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Ador CEO's request for exclusive right to terminate NewJeans' contract with Hybe refused in February
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Debate rages over ‘overly fatty’ samgyeopsal
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Naver will consider company benefits in deciding on selling Line shares: CEO
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Woman dangling from power lines rescued by residents holding blanket
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[Weekender] Korean psyche untangled: Musok
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Libya looks like Iraq in 2003
GENEVA ― As post-revolution Libya looks ahead, Iraq looms as a perilous example. After 42 years of dictatorship, Libya, like Iraq in 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussein, needs more than wishful thinking to become a vibrant democracy. It needs organized state-building in Tripoli ― and realistic policymaking in Western capitals.Successful transitions depend from the start on factors that are still crucially missing in Libya ― a relatively cohesive leadership, an active civil society, and nationa
March 25, 2012
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Green is not enough
Clean water is increasingly scarce. About a third of the world’s fisheries have collapsed and desertification now threatens the livelihoods of a third of the world’s people. Parts of our planet are in peril. For a comprehensive solution, green is not enough.To protect our home, we must empower people. The Arab Spring and the Occupy movement are clear calls for equality. We must heed them. Only by working to ensure the next generation has jobs, basic services and opportunity, as well as a protect
March 25, 2012
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Verizon to the cable industry: Let’s be friends
Three months ago, Verizon Communications Inc. and three major cable companies announced a $3.6 billion joint marketing deal. Today, Congress is getting around to the question of whether it’s a good idea. The Subcommittee for Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing titled, “The Verizon/Cable Deals: Harmless Collaboration or a Threat to Competition and Consumers?” A better question might be: Why isn’t the American public paying closer
March 25, 2012
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Lessons for Tokyo
Within 10 minutes of landing in Tokyo Narita International Airport, I encountered my very first earthquake, and it was a brutal one. More than 15,000 people were confirmed dead and more than 3,000 are still missing. While Japan marks its first year since the quake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, I contemplate the incident. There’s one lesson for Tokyo: Do not hide a problem under the rug and pray that it will simply go away.Tokyo was quick to silence dissent when a spokesman for the Nuclear and I
March 25, 2012
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[Brigitte Granville] The French establishment going down a cul de sac
PARIS ― As France’s presidential election looms, the country is approaching a breaking point. For three decades, under both the right and the left, the country has pursued the same incompatible, if not contradictory, goals. With the sovereign-debt crisis pushing French banks ― and thus the French economy ― to the wall, something will have to give, and soon.When the crunch comes ― almost certainly in the year or two following the election ― it will cause radical, wrenching change, perhaps even mo
March 25, 2012
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Israelis grow confident strike on Iran can work
In 2005, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then Israel’s finance minister, made an official visit to Uganda. For Netanyahu, visits to Uganda are weighted with sadness. It was at the airport in Entebbe that his older brother, Yonatan Netanyahu, was shot dead by a Ugandan soldier. Yonatan was the leader of an Israeli commando team dispatched by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in July 1976 to rescue Jewish hostages held by pro-Palestinian terrorists. The terrorists had diverted an Air France flight to Ugand
March 23, 2012
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[Robert Reich] The U.S. crisis in public morality
Republicans have morality upside down. They’re condemning gay marriage, abortion, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state.But the moral crisis in America isn’t a breakdown in private morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality. What Americans do in their bedrooms is their own business. What corporate executives and Wall Street financiers do in boardrooms and executive suites affects all of us.We’re living through a new Gilded Age of financial fraud and conflicts of in
March 23, 2012
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International buyers come calling for Brunei’s gas
Witn a well-stocked energy sector, international buyers are lining up to access Brunei Darussalam’s liquefied natural gas. It will be up to officials to ensure that a balance is struck between fueling overseas demand and supplying the local economy, and in particular, the country’s growing petrochemicals industry, the Oxford Business Group said in its latest report.Estimates put Brunei Darussalam’s natural gas reserves at around 390 billion cu meters, though this is likely to be extended due to
March 23, 2012
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Japan needs to change electric power policy
The catastrophe at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has demonstrated that the long-standing assertion by the power industry and the government that nuclear power is safe and cheap is sheer propaganda and a gigantic myth.It proves that utilization of nuclear power involves great risks and that an electricity supply system based on large-scale power plants concentrated in certain areas is vulnerable to disasters. Regrettably, the administration of Prime Minister Yoshi
March 23, 2012
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Vicious circle of low pay, business slump must end
The outcome of this year’s spring labor offensive, known as “shunto,” has been bleak, with major companies in such key industrial sectors as automobiles and electronics not offering any pay increases. Offers regarding biannual bonuses have also been harsh, falling below last year’s levels at most companies.Because of the historic appreciation of the yen and the deterioration of economic conditions overseas, the business performance of the nation’s companies has been stagnant.Under the circumstan
March 23, 2012
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[Andrew Sheng] The future of Asian banking models
Last week I made my first visit to Bangkok since the floods in December. The city seemed to have recovered and the economy was on the mend. After an estimated 0.1 percent growth in real GDP in 2011, the International Institute of Finance is forecasting a robust 7 percent growth recovery in 2012, helped by a multi-year fiscal stimulus that would bring the fiscal deficit to an estimated 5.5 percent of GDP for the fiscal year 2011-2012. The package of fiscal stimulus included a 40 percent hike in m
March 23, 2012
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Wealth taxes make great politics, poor economics
In this age of austerity, many governments are looking for ways to fill gaps in their budgets by taxing the rich more. These proposals make for great politics, but terrible economics. This week, the U.K.’s coalition government will produce its budget for the next year. Among proposals being discussed between the coalition partners is a so-called mansion tax ― an annual 1 percent levy on homes worth more than 2 million pounds ($3.2 million). In Russia, meanwhile, President-elect Vladimir Putin ha
March 22, 2012
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[Robert Shiller] The euro’s imagined community
NEW HAVEN ― Great significance ― probably too much ― has been attached to a possible breakup of the eurozone. Many believe that such a breakup ― if, say, Greece abandoned the euro and reintroduced the drachma ― would constitute a political failure that would ultimately threaten Europe’s stability. Speaking before the Bundestag last October, German Chancellor Angela Merkel put the matter starkly:“Nobody should believe that another half-century of peace and prosperity in Europe is guaranteed. It i
March 22, 2012
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Who’s watching Obama’s life-or-death decisions?
Bear with me while I quote from “The Godfather” ― hey, doesn’t everyone? ― because this is really about how Barack Obama has been playing fast and loose with the Constitution.Michael Corleone tells Kay that his dad, Vito, is really no different than “a senator or a president.” Kay tells Michael that he’s being naive, because “senators and presidents don’t have men killed.”To which Michael says, “Oh. Who’s being naive, Kay?”You tell her, Michael! Because, as the U.S. attorney general made clear t
March 22, 2012
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Renewables can meet all future energy needs
BRUSSELS ― It has been evident for years that Europe needs an energy system that can cut dependence on fossil fuels, bring down future energy costs, and fight climate change. But the Fukushima accident in Japan one year ago underscored the need for an energy source that will fill the gap left by declining nuclear power. Many ask: is renewable energy up to the task?In the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdown, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that now is the time for the renew
March 22, 2012
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[Jeffrey Robertson] Time to start debate on Korea’s role as middle-power
During March 26-27, Seoul will host global leaders for the Nuclear Security Summit, just two years after it hosted the G20 Leaders Summit. It is today obvious that South Korea is a middle-power. Yet, it is rare to hear South Korean politicians talk about being a middle-power. Why?The first condition of being a middle-power is to be positioned between great powers and smaller powers in the measurement of political, economic and military power. South Korea comfortably satisfies this condition. Ind
March 22, 2012
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Ghost of Kim Jong-il haunts the region
North Korea’s declaration on Friday that it would conduct a satellite test next month proves one thing: Kim Jong-il might be dead, but his ghost still haunts the Korean peninsula.The announcement was a shock, coming just three weeks after a deal was reached between the United States and North Korea, where Washington agreed to provide 240,000 tons of food aid in return for Pyongyang’s suspension of nuclear and missile testing.The deal had led to cautious hopes that new leader Kim Jong-un might ad
March 21, 2012
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[David Ignatius] Bin Laden papers show his mindset
WASHINGTON ― What’s riveting about the documents taken from Osama bin Laden’s compound, beyond the headline items about plots to kill American leaders, is the way they allow the reader to get inside the terrorist mastermind’s head. I’ve only seen a small sample of the thousands of items that were carried away the night of May 2, 2011. But even those few documents shown to me by a senior Obama administration official give a sense of how bin Laden looked at the world in the years before his death.
March 21, 2012
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Korea makes its presence felt in the Middle East
When talking about a “going-abroad” policy, China immediately and justifiably comes to mind. From a Middle Eastern perspective, however, a smaller country has been taking an increasingly confident posture and deserves attention. In 2009, it took nearly everyone by surprise when a consortium of its leading companies won a $20.4 billion contract to construct four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates, beating traditional nuclear suppliers from France and the United States. This developm
March 21, 2012
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[Meghan Daum] The line Limbaugh crossed
Last week, in a column about Rush Limbaugh’s verbal attacks on Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, I mentioned that there were those on the left who are also guilty of using crude language against women. For example, I wrote, Bill Maher has said things about Sarah Palin that are “wholly unacceptable.” A number of readers, some Limbaugh fans and some not, found that assessment wholly unacceptable too.They were right. I didn’t say enough. So even as the Fluke flap gets absorbed into la
March 21, 2012