• Military pact with Japan

    Scrap ill-advised accord; sack relevant ministers To the relief of most Koreans, the foreign ministry postponed the signing of its first military pact with Japan, Friday. Now that the government has avoided the worst with the last-minute turnaround, it should bring the matter to the National Assembly for discussion from…

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  • Five million drug addicts in Bangladesh

    DHAKA– While Bangladesh has been facing a worst form of drug menace, a senior official of the government disclosed that the number of drug addicts in the country would be around five million at this moment.   Khandaker Mohammed Ali, Director General (DG) of Narcotics Control Directorate of the government…

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  • Column

    Rains wreak havoc on Bangladesh

    Torrential rains over the week have triggered flooding, landslide and river erosion leaving at least 110 persons killed in Bangladesh. A huge population in  the eastern and  northern  part  of the country  have  been marooned as flood situation continued  to worsen  due  to  the  rains  and  the  onrush  of  waters  from …

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  • Military ties with Japan

    President must persuade National Assembly first When an administration has what it thinks are necessary but unpopular things to do, it usually explains them to the people and seeks their consent. But the Lee Myung-bak administration pushes ahead with them stealthily and keeps them secret until someone else exposes what…

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  • Leaks of key technologies

    Int’l cooperation needed to uproot industrial spying Alarm bells are ringing again in our corporate security system after the prosecution announced that key technologies to manufacture advanced flat-panel displays were leaked overseas through a local unit of an Israeli company. We regard this latest leak as a grave matter and…

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  • Column

    Korean embassy visa official in Phnom Penh criticized for being too rigid

    View over the Korean Embassy in Phnom Penh Seoul — It was surprising last week when I went to the South Korean embassy in Phnom Penh to ask for a visa to Seoul for my participation in an international media conference co-organized by the Singapore-based Konrad Adenauer Stiftung/Foundation (KAS) of Germany…

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  • Column

    Spanish Police Evict Ecuadorian Family From Apartment

    People are grabbed by police officers during the eviction of an Ecuadorian family in Oviedo, Spain Wednesday June 27, 2012. Jorge Cordero, along with his wife Patricia and 5-month-old daughter Amanda were evicted because they could not keep up their mortgage payments to the Cajastur bank. Seventeen people locked themselves…

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  • Park Geun-hye’s way

    Arrogant, egotistical image is last thing she needs Unless something major comes up, the governing Saenuri Party will likely pick its presidential candidate at a national convention Aug. 20. And, unless some new sensation appears, Park Geun-hye will be the standard-bearer of the conservative majority party. Despite ― or because…

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  • Mental health checkup

    Changes needed in perception, infrastructure Korea has one of the world’s highest suicide rates, scores among the lowest on happiness indexes, a serious overdrinking problem, and ominous school violence. A word that best sums up such a society is “abnormal.” So it seems only natural, if long belated, that the…

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  • Column

    US-Burma ties: from isolation to engagement

    After years of diplomatic tension over isolation and sanctions, U.S.-Burma relations improved in recent months. What prospects does this rapprochement have? The relationship between the United States and Burma was mostly cordial in the years following Burma’s independence from the British in 1948. It was strained by the Burmese military…

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