Most Popular
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Korean labor force to shrink by 10 million by 2044: report
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[AtoZ Korean Mind] Does your job define who you are? Should it?
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Allegations surrounding BTS resurface, enraged fans demand apology
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Students with history of violence will be barred from becoming teachers
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Medical feud leaves hospitals in financial crisis
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Top prosecutor pledges 'speedy, strict' probe into first lady's luxury bag allegations
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Samsung mocks Apple over iPhone alarm glitch
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Chip up cycle won’t stay long: SK chief
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'Queen of Tears' riding high on Netflix chart
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Speaker floats dual citizenship as solution to falling births
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Debunking nine myths of the gun-control debate
So many myths and misunderstandings about gun control, from all sides of the debate, and so little time! Here goes: Myth No. 1: The extremism of the National Rifle Association and its chief executive officer, Wayne LaPierre, is hurting its cause. LaPierre’s seemingly unhinged recent performances, first at his no-questions news conference and then on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” have convinced gun-control advocates and members of the news media that he is out of his mind. He isn’t. His appearances wer
Jan. 6, 2013
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The perils of political punditry
Back in 2011, at the dawn of a long presidential campaign, I established a fine baseline for my credentials as a political prognosticator: I told readers that Mitt Romney’s strongest challengers for the Republican nomination would be Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.Neither one has been heard from since.Could I top that record in 2012?Pretty close. Last spring, I announced in a column that Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio would be Romney’s running mate. Sure, I hedged a littl
Jan. 6, 2013
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[Howard Davies] New rules may stop banks hiding behind borders
LONDON ― When Mark Carney replaces Mervyn King as governor of the Bank of England in July 2013, the world will be deprived of King’s witty public utterances. My personal favorite came when, commenting on strong retail-sales figures during one Christmas period, he cast doubt on their significance for assessing the state of the economy. “The true meaning of the story of Christmas,” he solemnly intoned, “will not be revealed until Easter, or possibly much later.” A new career on the stage, or in th
Jan. 6, 2013
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Proven reforms help beat homelessness in U.S.
Remarkable developments are embedded within an otherwise humdrum announcement last month by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which said that the number of homeless people in the U.S. declined slightly in 2012, according to a count on a single night last January. The slight dip, a drop of 0.4 percent to 633,782, continues a trend of improvement now lasting five years. In that time, the U.S. has reduced homelessness by 5.7 percent even as the poverty rate grew by 20 percent. The de
Jan. 4, 2013
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[Dominique Moisi] The European oasis of peace
PARIS ― Are non-Europeans much less pessimistic about Europe than Europeans themselves? Could distance be a prerequisite for a more balanced view of the continent’s predicament?In an interview a few months ago, Wang Hongzhang, the chairman of China Construction Bank, indirectly expressed his subdued enthusiasm for Europe. Quoting the Chinese proverb, “A starved camel is still bigger than a horse,” he went on to say that Europe’s economies are much stronger than many people believe. And, without
Jan. 4, 2013
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[Hans-Werner Sinn] A second chance for reform
MUNICH ― The European Central Bank has managed to calm the markets with its promise of unlimited purchases of eurozone government bonds, because it effectively assured bondholders that the taxpayers and pensioners of the eurozone’s still-sound economies would, if necessary, shoulder the repayment burden. Although the ECB left open how this would be carried out, its commitment whetted investors’ appetite, reduced interest-rate spreads in the eurozone, and made it possible to reduce the funding of
Jan. 3, 2013
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China’s princelings build wrong kind of capitalism
Over the last three decades, Communist China’s leaders have lifted more than 600 million of their citizens out of poverty ― and built one of the world’s most unequal societies. Those two outcomes didn’t have to go hand in hand. They are the result of a conscious decision by the former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and some of his closest associates ― the so-called Eight Immortals ― to safeguard the primacy of the Communist Party by putting their families in charge of opening up China’s economy.
Jan. 3, 2013
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Three worst political ideas in 2012 and hopefully of all time
It is not an enviable task, picking the top three bad ideas from our government in a year when they have given us so many to choose from. But The China Post would like to bid the year farewell by remembering the worst while hoping for the best for 2013.While risking being unoriginal and repetitive, we give the top spot to the undisputed king of shoot-yourself-in-the-foot ideas. The decisions to hike power prices by as much as a third and oil prices by some NT$3 in one go around early 2012 are ba
Jan. 3, 2013
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Asia’s new leaders must work together
At this juncture, with the kind of leaders we see in place in China, Japan and South Korea, the outlook for Asia in 2013 does not look so good. For the first time, leadership changes in those three countries came almost simultaneously. Each of the new heads of state wants to establish a trademark leadership role in Asia. To do so, they cannot display any weakness or be considered soft. To promote themselves in their own countries and on the world stage, they might have to do things that normally
Jan. 3, 2013
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Rising above the fray
The only thing in sync as new leaders take office in Northeast Asia is the coincidental timing of the events. But with regard to the old and complex issues dogging the region, their arrival portends more uncertainty rather than a unified approach to problem-solving.Conservative Park Geun-hye’s election as South Korean president completes the set of transitions in this important zone that also places new faces at the helm in China and Japan.Xi Jinping, who takes over as president of an increasing
Jan. 3, 2013
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[Walden Bello] No easy struggle for women
Women’s rights have been in the forefront of international concern over the last few weeks.Making the biggest headlines were the massive demonstrations in New Delhi and other cities in India provoked by the brutal gang-rape by six men of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a moving bus in the Indian capital. The crime, which saw the victim suffer extremely serious wounds in her genitals and intestines, proved to be the trigger for the release of popular anger that had built up over the years
Jan. 3, 2013
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End of the world as we know it and I feel fine
Most of us acknowledge that some of our most cherished beliefs are based on faith, not facts. Even so, it takes a lot to dislodge those beliefs. When we are confronted by contrary evidence, we may dig in even more deeply. Consider a cautionary tale, exotic to be sure, but helping to explain why evidence-challenged thinking persists in a lot of areas, including politics and business. Harold Camping, a Christian radio talk-show host, predicted that the world was going to end on May 21, 2011, with
Jan. 2, 2013
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[David Ignatius] China’s new hatchet man
WASHINGTON ― Who will have the world’s hardest job in 2013? There are many candidates for that role, but my nominee would be Vice Premier Wang Qishan, who has just been given the near-impossible assignment of combating corruption in China. China-watchers see Wang as a crucial player in the new Chinese government headed by Xi Jinping. It will fall to Wang, as the new head of the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline, to crack the whip and stop the thievery before it devours China. W
Jan. 2, 2013
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Ten ways for Obama to remake the world
We could be nearing a golden hour in U.S. foreign policy, that rare moment when a newly reelected president theoretically has the experience and clout to make good things happen. As President Barack Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last March before an unanticipated open microphone, “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” We can think of many places more deserving of presidential flexibility than Russia, which is in such a state of pugnacious isolationi
Jan. 2, 2013
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The great bank debate
OXFORD ― Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, recently said of the unfinished agenda for global financial-sector reform: “To start, we need concrete progress with the too-important-to-fail conundrum. We need a global-level discussion of the pros and cons of direct restrictions on business models.” Five years on from the start of the crisis, with the publication of the Liikanen report on European Union banking reform, that debate has finally begun.The Liikanen p
Jan. 2, 2013
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[Naomi Wolf] Putting an end to India’s deep-rooted rape culture
NEW YORK ― The crime seems incomprehensible. A 23-year-old physiotherapy student is dead, 12 days after having been raped for more than an hour by six men in a bus traveling on main roads in the Indian capital. Her internal injuries from the iron rod that her attackers used were so severe that doctors had to remove her intestines in their effort to save her life.Indians, it seems, have had enough. Dozens of large and increasingly angry demonstrations have been held to demand that the government
Jan. 2, 2013
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[Daniel Fiedler] End inefficient court processes
As war is the final political solution between countries unable to settle their disputes, lawsuits are the final legal solution between parties otherwise unable to settle their disputes. As with the causes of war, the underlying disputes in a lawsuit may have arisen over years or may be the result of one cataclysmic event.At one end of the legal range are personal injury cases over car accidents and medical malpractice, at the other end are intense multi-year multinational patent battles, such a
Jan. 1, 2013
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Rising life spans ― despite some unhealthy choices
There’s good news in a new and certifiable global trend: More elderly people are dying of cancer and heart disease.That may not sound like good news, and in one obvious sense it isn’t. But before you can die in old age of so-called “rich-country” ailments like these, you have to survive many decades. That so many people are doing so represents a huge achievement.“It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that peopl
Jan. 1, 2013
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Benevolent billionaires should buy out Bushmaster
Business moguls who favor stricter gun-control laws ― among them Bloomberg LP founder and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, financier George Soros and entertainment honcho David Geffen ― are in the unique position of being able to put their money where their mouths are, and with a single bold move can change the raging gun debate in a way that intransigent politicians cannot. These well-intentioned billionaires (and others) should buy Freedom Group Inc., the world’s largest gun manufacturer
Jan. 1, 2013
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Twitter saps productivity, Facebook makes you fat
Ever since the invention of the wheel in Mesopotamia around 3500 B.C., technological innovation has been improving our lives. Because new devices and processes help us produce more (output) with less (labor input), prices fall, real wages rise and we are all better off. If there is a free lunch in this world, it’s productivity growth. There is even an economic school of thought, known as real business cycle theory, which views technology shocks as the main driver of the business cycle: not the c
Jan. 1, 2013