RUSSIA: The Next Treaties

December 31, 2010

Even after the herculean effort required to win Senate ratification of the New Start treaty, President Obama has no time to rest. The treaty, which mandates modest cuts in long-range nuclear weapons, is on its way to approval by the Duma, the lower house of Parliament in Russia. Once that happens, Washington and Moscow should quickly begin discussing other, more far-reaching agreements.

Two decades after the end of the cold war, the United States and Russia still have many thousands of nuclear weapons. The two countries cannot credibly argue for restraining the nuclear ambitions of Iran, North Korea and other wannabes unless they keep working to bring their own numbers down...

View The New York Times Editorial...

SEOUL, S. KOREA: Kim Yun-jin to Strike Bell on New Year's Eve

Actress Kim Yun-jin will take part in the New Year's Eve bell ringing ceremony at Bosingak Bell Pavilion in Jongno, Seoul at midnight on Friday.

Kim was the first Korean star to make a career in Hollywood, and became a worldwide celebrity with the success of the popular TV series "Lost."

View The Chosun Ilbo Article...

N. KOREA: North Korea bends a little to air British movie

From left, Shaznay Lewis, Keira Knightley, and Parminder Nagra arrive at the 2002 premiere of the film, "Bend it Like Beckham," in London. The three actresses played soccer players. (Max Nash, Associated Press / April 11, 2002)

Researchers try to parse the meaning of the secretive regime's decision to air a heavily edited version of 'Bend It Like Beckham,' about a young soccer player pulled between the sport and her South Asian family's expectations.

5:15 PM PST, December 31, 2010

By John M. Glionna and Ethan Kim, Los Angeles Times - Reporting from Seoul

The curtain that shrouds North Korean culture and daily life opened briefly this week with reports that state television in Pyongyang had broadcast the British soccer film "Bend It Like Beckham."

In one of the world's most reclusive nations, Western movies and TV fare are largely verboten, especially a film that deals with such racy subject matters as intercultural relationships, homosexuality and religion.

But censors took care of that: The 2002 movie starring Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley as young soccer players and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as their coach was edited down to one hour, leaving little more than scenes of a sport that is beloved to most North Koreans. Then it was back to the wooden fare of crop-yield documentaries and paeans to the regime's strongman, Kim Jong Il...


View Los Angles Times Article...

JAPAN: For Japan, 2010 was a year to forget

By Malcolm Foster

TOKYO —
Japan has been overtaken by China as the world’s No. 2 economy. Its flagship company, Toyota, recalled more than 10 million vehicles in an embarrassing safety crisis. Its fourth prime minister resigned in three years, and the government remains unable to jolt an economy entering its third decade of stagnation.

For once-confident Japan, 2010 may well mark a symbolic milestone in its slide from economic giant to what experts see as its likely destiny: a second-tier power with some standout companies but limited global influence.

As Japanese drink up at year-end parties known as “bonen-kai,” or “forget-the-year gatherings,” this is one many will be happy to forget...

View Japan Today Article...

FROM HEATHER: Apology for Unplanned Hiatus and New Year's Resolution

My apologies for taking an unanticipated hiatus from blogging the latter half of 2010 due to some medical issues.  However, I am now as healthy as ever and looking forward to resuming my regular postings in the New Year.

I hope you will find the articles I share of interest and will post your own comments as well.

Happy New Year!

明けましておめでとうございます

新年快乐    

С новым годом

새해 복 많이

S. KOREA: Happy New Year from Seoul

Crowds gather in Seoul to watch the traditional striking of the bell at Bosingak as the official start of 2011.


View CNN Video...

SHANGHAI, CHINA: Shanghai Schools’ Approach Pushes Students to Top of Tests

Ryan Pyle for The New York Times

Discipline issues are rare at the middle school linked to the Jing’An Teachers’ College in Shanghai. The city is thought to have China’s best schools.

By DAVID BARBOZA

December 29, 2010

SHANGHAI — In Li Zhen’s ninth-grade mathematics class here last week, the morning drill was geometry. Students at the middle school affiliated with Jing’An Teachers’ College were asked to explain the relative size of geometric shapes by using Euclid’s theorem of parallelograms.

“Who in this class can tell me how to demonstrate two lines are parallel without using a proportional segment?” Ms. Li called out to about 40 students seated in a cramped classroom.

One by one, a series of students at this medium-size public school raised their hands. When Ms. Li called on them, they each stood politely by their desks and usually answered correctly. They returned to their seats only when she told them to sit down.

Educators say this disciplined approach helps explain the announcement this month that 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai outperformed students from about 65 countries on an international standardized test that measured math, science and reading competency.

View New York Times Article...

SHANGHAI, CHINA: China Detains Officials Over Shanghai Fire

December 24, 2010

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — Prosecutors in Shanghai said on Friday that they had detained three government officials for their role in a high-rise apartment fire here last month that killed 58 people and injured about 70 others.

The government said the three officials were placed under criminal detention for abuse of power in allowing illegal construction activities to spark a huge fire at a 28-story apartment complex in the central part of Shanghai. It was one of the deadliest fires in Shanghai in decades.

View New York Times Article...

SHANGHAI, CHINA: As China's obsession with plastic surgery grows, so too do the pitfalls

A patient is seen as she goes through the so-called "double eyelid surgery", which adds a crease to the eyelids to make the eyes appear larger, in a plastic surgery clinic in Shanghai. Double eyelid surgery is the most popular cosmetic procedure in China. Picture taken November 4, 2007. (Nir Elias) (© Nir Elias/reuters - Reuters)

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service

Wednesday, December 22, 2010; 10:05 AM 



SHANGHAI - Wang Baobao got her first taste of plastic surgery when she was just 16.


A nip and a tuck led to another nip and another tuck, another after that, and another, and another. There were the follow-up surgeries, and the repairs for the procedures that were botched the first time, and the second time, and then the third time.


Wang, now 28, estimates she has had between 170 to 180 different operations, usually six or seven at a time, and on "nearly every part of my body." She had her eyes widened. She had her nose and jaw made narrower, and her chin shaped smaller. Her breasts were enhanced, but "I had to keep having operations to repair them."


She had the fat taken out of her hips, thighs, stomach and backside. She even had implants put into her heels to try to make her taller; it didn't work.


Wang, while extreme, is in many ways emblematic of China's new and growing obsession with plastic surgery. Many now feel the craze has gone badly awry, as more and more unlicensed, unskilled and unscrupulous practitioners jump into an increasingly lucrative, yet largely unregulated, industry.


The problems were highlighted last month when a promising 24-year-old singer, Wang Bei, died in the operating room in China's central Hubei province while undergoing a facelift with her mother.


About 3 million people in China underwent plastic surgery last year, according to an official estimate. China ranks third in the world behind the United States and Brazil for the number of plastic surgeries performed, according to industry officials...


View The Washington Post Article...

SHANGHAI, CHINA: Shanghai test scores have everyone asking: How did students do it?

By Ariel Zirulnick, Correspondent
posted December 9, 2010 at 5:14 pm EST

When the results of an international education assessment put Shanghai and several other Asian participants ahead of the US and much of Western Europe, many Americans were shocked. “Top test scores from Shanghai stun educators” read the headline in The New York Times.

Meanwhile, many education and Asia experts felt vindicated. After years of saying that China was rapidly catching up or surpassing the US and the rest of the West in education, here was hard proof...

View Christian Science Monitor Article...