The rumors ricocheting through Istanbul reached us on March 16, when a close Turkish friend urged us to leave the city for the weekend. The next day, my Turkish teacher, as well as the lifeguard at my gym, offered similar warnings. Three days later, at 9:30 a.m., the easygoing young man who delivers hefty plastic jugs of fresh water walked into my kitchen with a week‘s supply. “Will there be trouble in the city today?” I asked him. “Yes,” he instantly replied. “There will be bombs. Stay home.”Tw

Viewpoints April 20, 2016

“It’s China’s fault,” I hear every time smog and yellow dust envelop the Korean Peninsula, which happens all too frequently in spring. So I read Matthew Shapiro’s “Dust in the Wind, Solution in the Lab” (Opinion, April 19) with hopes that a new voice would counter this myopic chorus.Unfortunately, Shapiro fails to mention anything about Korea’s own direct contribution to this combined pollution even though numerous reports in 2015 illustrated the fact that Korea contributes to its own harmful ai

Viewpoints April 20, 2016

“There’s classified, and then there’s classified,” President Barack Obama said in a recent interview. Unfortunately, he’s right: The U.S. government classifies vast amounts of material as secret, top secret and the like, much of it with no relevance to national security.This isn’t just a bureaucratic waste of money and a blow to the democratic ideal of government transparency. Overclassification makes the U.S. less secure, in that it distracts intelligence agencies from protecting actual life-an

Viewpoints April 20, 2016

As President Obama travels this week to Saudi Arabia, here’s a surprising snapshot of what young Arabs think: They’re scared about the Islamic State and terrorism; they yearn for more freedom and gender equality; they fear that the Arab Spring has made life worse; and they’re increasingly skeptical about the role of traditional religious values. If these Arab reactions seem similar to what people would say in the West, maybe that’s the real takeaway. Despite all the violence and extremism that p

Viewpoints April 20, 2016

Every major election poses a challenge to law enforcement authorities: punishing candidates who violated laws in the fastest and fairest manner. The general election held last week is no exception. In this sense, the state prosecution and police appear to be doing a good job. Prosecutors have already arrested a close associate of a lawmaker-elect on suspicion of attempting to buy a parliamentary seat under the proportional representation system. Investigators armed with court-issued warrants hav

Editorial April 19, 2016

It is highly likely that the world will see a new nuclear test by North Korea. This calls on the international community to get ready to punish the rogue regime swiftly and forcefully.There have been so many signs from the North that South Korean authorities seem convinced that a fifth nuclear test by the North is all but a fait accompli. A Defense Ministry spokesman said he believed the North could conduct nuclear test at any time. Seoul officials note that recent satellite monitoring of the Pu

Editorial April 19, 2016

Across Europe, law enforcement authorities scramble to unravel Islamic State terror networks poised to strike against innocent civilians. Progress is fitful, and fear of another attack is high.But on the Iraqi and Syrian battlefields of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate, better news:-- A loose coalition of forces, backed to varying degrees by the U.S., have reclaimed a huge chunk of Islamic State real estate. The Pentagon now estimates Islamic State has lost at least 40 percent of its te

Viewpoints April 19, 2016

As part of its annual trade and aid package, Beijing purchases 90 percent of North Korea’s commercial exports and provides the Kim regime with 80 percent of its consumer goods, 90 percent of its energy, over $100 million in U.N. banned luxury goods and enough food to feed over a million people. The $1.2 billion trade deficit with China is considered foreign aid since it is inconceivable it will ever be paid back. However, most money is derived from trade itself.China’s exports to North Korea wer

Viewpoints April 19, 2016

SAO PAULO -- Brazil’s political crisis appears to be coming to a head. Now that the lower house of the National Congress has voted in favor of President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment for violating fiscal rules, the Senate’s 81 members will vote in the coming days on whether to try her. If 42 agree, she will be suspended for up to 180 days, during which time Vice President Michel Temer will assume the presidency. If the Senate does not produce a two-thirds vote for conviction during that period, R

Viewpoints April 19, 2016

The communique issued by the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers at the conclusion of talks in Washington this weekend had a somewhat unreal, and worryingly ironic, tone. Noting that global growth “remains modest and uneven,” the G20 warned the large advanced economies against continuing their prolonged, excessive reliance on unconventional monetary policy to power growth. Yet the communique, which was issued in the names of the specialized policy makers most closely involved in pe

Viewpoints April 19, 2016

Economic policymakers are poised to unveil a stimulus package after the weeks-long campaign for the 20th general election ended last Wednesday. Simultaneously, doubts in the market over the efficacy of the coming policy are also mounting, as the ruling Saenuri Party suffered a surprise rout in the election.As a result, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance is assumed to have become more prudent in fine-tuning its policy direction before unveiling it. An ineffective package or a stopgap measure to

Editorial April 18, 2016