London is one of the most watched cities in the world: Its inhabitants are caught on camera about 300 times a day on average and the British capital has become a test bed for police use of live facial recognition. But the technology, which powers a multibillion-dollar market for security firms and building management, has troubling limitations. To show it up even more, a special team of human off...

“An instrument called Cheugugi was made in Seoul from iron for measuring rainfall. It measured one cheok and five chon (about 32 cm) deep and seven chon (about 15 cm) in diameter.” - May 8, 1441, 23rd year of King Sejong’s reign This is the first record of humanity’s first step in the scientific measurement of rainfall, as written in the Veritable Records of King Sejong on May 8, 1441. The cheu...

These days, the Korean people have invented a few new English words, such as “untact” or “with corona,” which means, respectively “no contact” and “living with the coronavirus.” When Koreans say a “notebook,” they refer to a “laptop.” When they say, a “hand phone,” they mean a “cellphone.” Other examples include “po-doc” for “post-doc,” and “oil” for “gasoline.” Such a phenomenon reflects the Ko...

When he stunned the Glasgow climate conference by committing India to achieving net-zero emissions by 2070, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a crucial caveat. Without the “transfer of climate finance and low-cost climate technologies,” he said, developing nations such as India would never be able to achieve their ambitious targets. That’s not an idle worry. If we have learned anything ...

A compass helps one find one’s way, and the “Strategic Compass” that I have drafted at the behest of the European Council will serve as an operational guide for the European Union’s development and decision-making on security and defense. It is now heading to EU foreign affairs and defense ministers for discussions next week. The compass is designed to answer three questions: Which challenges an...

The marriage between big business and the Republican Party has long been one of the strongest in American politics. But that relationship is on the rocks, and the rift is growing wider and wider. The conflict puts business leaders in the agonizing position of being caught between newly hostile Republicans and traditionally antagonistic Democrats. The correct response is not to commit to either p...

Time to pop some bubbles. Sorry progressives, there are some pins coming your way. Recently I wrote a column with the headline “Just tell them no, Joe,” in which I suggested that progressive Democrats were pushing President Joe Biden too far to the left with his domestic agenda and that Americans elected Biden to restore a sense of normalcy to the presidency, not to launch a spending spree. I re...

Nearly three years after his failed bromance with Donald Trump, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is once again angling for US attention. North Korea has tested a new, high-tech missile and hinted that it may agree to restart talks with South Korea, where President Moon Jae-in desperately wants to resuscitate his moribund outreach to the North. But if Kim is expecting a positive reaction from US ...

I finished “Squid Game” in one sitting. The binge-watch was borne out of necessity. Anxious to see why the Korean series was soaring to No. 1 on Netflix’s global list, my overloaded schedule was unrelenting. But then an eight-hour gap cobbled into place. Honestly, I got trapped, willingly. Past the noisy opening scenes of betting on horse racing, it was easy to remain glued to all nine episodes....

As the automobile industry evolves toward an electric future, incentives will be a big driver of the transition -- not just potential tax credits to accelerate demand, but investor behavior that helps shift automakers’ priorities. Manufacturers are going to try to ramp up spending on future electric models while maintaining profit at a level acceptable to their shareholders. That will inevitably...

Experts have been issuing dire warnings that we may not be able to overcome the coronavirus pandemic completely and may thus have to live with it forever. An article from the European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences, titled “Living with coronavirus (COVID-19): A brief report,” begins with the following proclamation: “The world will never be the same after the current COVID-19 pand...

The Greens and the Free Democratic Party, the kingmakers of Germany’s prospective three-party coalition government, favor confronting China over its human rights abuses in Xinjiang and its crackdown in Hong Kong. Despite this, Germany’s authoritarian-friendly China policies are unlikely to change when Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic Party leader who is expected to succeed outgoing Chancellor A...

The world is changing faster than our sluggish political leaders -- let alone the public -- can manage. The COVID-19 virus and climate change move far more quickly than the international community, as we saw last week at the G-20 in Rome and the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Back home, rapid social shifts push many Americans to embrace fraudsters who promise to save them. The urgent...

For decades, IT administrators have waged an endless war to protect their systems from hackers. That struggle started half a century ago with audio tapes and floppy discs the primary weapon, before faster wired and mobile communications allowed an adversary to breach a target’s network to steal credit card information or shut down oil pipelines. Take that battle 20,000 kilometers into space wher...