South Korea News Blog @newzblogz.com

SHANGHAI, China - Chinese automaker FAW Group Corp. refused comment Tuesday on a report it is considering bidding for a stake in DaimlerChrysler AG's ailing Chrysler Group.

Meanwhile, the Detroit News reported that Chrysler was seeking permission from its parent company to begin building small cars with China's Chery Automobile Co. for export to overseas markets.

The Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post said FAW had sent representatives to the United States to negotiate a deal for a unspecified stake in Chrysler, citing an unnamed person familiar with the situation.

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SHANGHAI, China - Wal-Mart is buying a 35 percent stake in a company that operates Trust-Mart, a major Chinese discount chain, as international competitors jostle for position in China's rapidly growing retail market.

Wal-Mart may eventually take managerial control of Taiwan-based Bounteous Co., which operates 101 Trust-Mart stores in 34 major cities in China, the U.S. retail giant said in a statement Tuesday.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Newspapers last year speculated a takeover of Trust-Mart would cost Wal-Mart about $1 billion.

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WASHINGTON - Gov. Jennifer Granholm pressed the Bush administration Monday to take a more active approach on trade enforcement and pending trade deals, arguing that the current terms hamstring automakers trying to compete in the global marketplace.

The Michigan Democrat and other governors met with U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab during a session at the National Governors Association meeting. Michigan has been "slammed" by high unemployment rates and the affects of globalization, Granholm told Schwab, and needed more equitable trade deals.

"Doesn't it make sense for us to be really aggressive not just about negotiating the terms but enforcing those terms?" Granholm asked.

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SEOUL, South Korea - North and South Korea resumed high-level meetings Tuesday for the first time since the North tested a nuclear bomb in October, paving the way for a resumption of aid to impoverished Pyongyang after it pledged to start dismantling its atomic weapons program.

As South Korean officials arrived Tuesday afternoon in the North Korean capital, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said in Seoul that it was important to show North Korea that it would get more for abandoning its nuclear weapons than keeping them.

"We have to keep sending signals (to the North) that their security will be guaranteed and they could get profits through reform and openness," Roh told a news conference.

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BAGRAM, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber killed and wounded some two dozen people outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target.

The blast happened outside the base at Bagram, north of the capital, Kabul. Cheney's spokeswoman said he was fine, and the U.S. Embassy said the vice president later met with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

There were conflicting reports on the death toll. Provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said 20 people were killed, but NATO said initial reports indicated only three were killed, including a U.S. soldier, a South Korean coalition soldier and a U.S. government contractor whose nationality wasn't immediately known. NATO said 27 people were also wounded.

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SHANGHAI, China - Wal-Mart is buying a 35 percent stake in a company that operates Trust-Mart, a major Chinese discount chain, as international competitors jostle for position in China's rapidly growing retail market.

Wal-Mart may eventually take managerial control of Taiwan-based Bounteous Co., which operates 101 Trust-Mart stores in 34 major cities in China, the U.S. retail giant said in a statement Tuesday.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Newspapers last year speculated a takeover of Trust-Mart would cost Wal-Mart about $1 billion.

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WASHINGTON - The State Department has been lacking a diplomatic heavyweight to handle China issues since last summer, and President Bush's choice to fill that role plans to travel to Beijing this week as part of a three-nation East Asia tour.

John Negroponte, newly installed as the State Department's No. 2 official, is scheduled to visit South Korea and Japan, in addition to China.

Negroponte, 67, began his career as an Asia hand more than 40 years ago and has worked on regional issues periodically since then, including a stint as ambassador to the Philippines. He was director of national intelligence for the past two years, and issues relating to China crossed his desk frequently, including the country's military buildup.

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SEOUL, South Korea - The government will provide free bodyguards for students fearful of violence from peers on their way to school, the Education Ministry said Tuesday.

Police officers, government-commissioned private bodyguards or volunteers will provide the services upon request from students or parents starting in the upcoming semester in March, the ministry said in a statement.

The measure is one of 15 projects that the ministry drew up to tackle school violence.

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WASHINGTON (AP) The State Department has been lacking a diplomatic heavyweight to handle China issues since last summer, and President Bush's choice to fill that role plans to travel to Beijing this week as part of a three-nation East Asia tour.

John Negroponte, newly installed as the State Department's No. 2 official, is scheduled to visit South Korea and Japan, in addition to China.

Negroponte, 67, began his career as an Asia hand more than 40 years ago and has worked on regional issues periodically since then, including a stint as ambassador to the Philippines. He was director of national intelligence for the past two years, and issues relating to China crossed his desk frequently, including the country's military buildup.

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NISEKO, Japan (AP) American skiers have the Rockies, Europeans the Alps. But for increasingly affluent Asia, Japan's powdery slopes are emerging as the top international draw from Shanghai to Sydney.

Even as skiing wanes in popularity at home, Japanese mountain villages like Niseko are trading on their fabulous snow, high-tech infrastructure and reasonable prices to thrive as snowbound boom towns.

International investors are also taking a keen interest in Japanese resorts as the region's skiers increasingly eschew the likes of Aspen and Davos for the pure powder next door.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. Olympic freestyle skiing medallist Toby Dawson said on Tuesday he had found his biological father and would be meeting him 25 years after going missing as a toddler in a busy market street in South Korea.

Dawson became an overnight sensation in South Korea when he won the bronze in men's freestyle skiing moguls at the Turin Winter Olympics last year.

After his Olympic glory, pictures of him beaming in Turin graced the front pages of local papers along with a shot of him as a sad small boy wearing a tattered shirt at an orphanage waiting for his someone to claim him.

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HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, will pay about $1 billion to take over a Chinese chain, challenging Carrefour as the largest operator of super-centers in booming China.

The acquisition of Bounteous Co. Ltd. by Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, will be done in phases by 2010 and could trigger much-needed consolidation in China's ferociously competitive $1 trillion retail market.

Under terms of the deal, Wal-Mart is buying 35 percent of Taiwan-based Bounteous, which operates 101 hypermarkets in 34 Chinese cities under the Trust-Mart brand, and will acquire ownership control of the chain by 2010 if conditions are met.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. Olympic freestyle skiing medallist Toby Dawson said on Tuesday he had found his biological father and would be meeting him 25 years after going missing as a toddler in a busy market street in South Korea.

Dawson became an overnight sensation in South Korea when he won the bronze in men's freestyle skiing moguls at the Turin Winter Olympics last year.

After his Olympic glory, pictures of him beaming in Turin graced the front pages of local papers along with a shot of him as a sad small boy wearing a tattered shirt at an orphanage waiting for his someone to claim him.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's chief nuclear envoy looked set on Tuesday to make a rare trip to the United States while South Korea sent a top official to Pyongyang to persuade the North to quickly start scrapping its nuclear arms program.

North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, accompanied by a senior official in charge of relations with the United States, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.

Kyodo said Kim could leave for the United States as early as Wednesday. North Korea has few air links with the outside world and its officials often travel via China.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North and South Korea are restoring ties during talks this week following the communist country's pledge to shut down its nuclear reactor, paving the way for restoration of aid to the North and reunions for families split by the divided peninsula. The talks, scheduled to start Tuesday in Pyongyang, will be the first Cabinet-level meetings between the two nations since the North conducted a series of missile tests in July. Relations deteriorated further in October a...

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WASHINGTON The House ethics committee has determined that a trip to South Korea that two Republican congressmen cut short did not violate House travel rules.Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner -- a Republican from Wisconsin and Phil English -- a Republican from Pennsylvania -- returned home early from the trip last year after learning that the Korea Foundation was a sponsor. Five House Democrats on the trip stayed another day.Democrats on the trip included Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson of T...

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WASHINGTON - The House ethics committee has determined that a trip to South Korea that two Republican congressmen cut short did not violate House travel rules.

Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Phil English, R-Pa., returned home early from the trip last year after learning that the Korea Foundation was a sponsor. Five House Democrats on the trip stayed another day.

Upon their return, Sensenbrenner and English notified the committee "of a possible violation of the rules," saying that the panel had previously declared that the Korea Foundation was not a suitable source of funding because its budget is approved by the South Korean government.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - The House ethics committee has determined that a trip to South Korea that two Republican congressmen cut short did not violate House travel rules.

Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Phil English, R-Pa., returned home early from the trip last year after learning that the Korea Foundation was a sponsor. Five House Democrats on the trip stayed another day.

Upon their return, Sensenbrenner and English notified the committee "of a possible violation of the rules," saying that the panel had previously declared that the Korea Foundation was not a suitable source of funding because its budget is approved by the South Korean government.

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SEOUL, South Korea - North and South Korea are restoring ties during talks this week following the communist country's pledge to shut down its nuclear reactor, paving the way for restoration of aid to the North and reunions for families split by the divided peninsula.

The talks, scheduled to start Tuesday in Pyongyang, will be the first Cabinet-level meetings between the two nations since the North conducted a series of missile tests in July. Relations deteriorated further in October after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon.

After the North agreed to shut down its main nuclear reactor by April 14, the two nations almost immediately announced they would restart high-level talks.

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Call it greenmail for a post-Kyoto world. The private-equity firms that just agreed to buy Texas utility TXU have scored something of a PR coup by getting Environmental Defense and other climate-change activists to fall in line with their purchase plans before the deal was announced. The question is what price shareholders are paying for this act of political correctness.

In the old days, a greenmail artist like Carl Icahn would buy up a tranch of some company's stock and threaten to buy the rest unless the target paid him to go away. But 21st-century greenmail works a little differently. Judging by media accounts, the price of Environmental Defense's support was an announcement that the new owners would build only three of the 11 coal-fired power plants that TXU has had on the drawing board.

Last year, Environmental Defense had launched a "Stop TXU" campaign to oppose the new plants. But yesterday it declared "victory" and explained that its agreement had been sought by emissaries of the private-equity investors in return for mothballing the eight coal plants and an agreement to sign on to mandatory emissions caps and an overall reduction in TXU's CO2 emissions by 2020.

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NEW DELHI - Japan's Nissan Motor on Monday joined France's Renault SA's plan to build a car plant in southern India in collaboration with local automaker Mahindra & Mahindra amid strong demand for passenger cars from India's growing middle class.

The three companies will together invest about $900 million to build the plant near the southern Indian city of Chennai, said Pawan Goenka, president of the automotive division at Mahindra & Mahindra.

The plant, billed as one of India's largest with a capacity to manufacture 400,000 vehicles annually, is expected to roll out the first car in the second half of 2009, he said. It will manufacture both Renault and Nissan models.

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TOKYO - A group of South Koreans filed a lawsuit Monday against a Tokyo war shrine criticized for glorifying Japan's militaristic past, demanding it remove relatives' names from the list of war dead honored there.

The suit, filed at the Tokyo District Court, is the first ever filed by South Koreans against Yasukuni Shrine, their Japanese supporter Naoyoshi Yamamoto said Monday.

The 11 plaintiffs, including a former soldier and 10 others whose fathers were impressed into the Japanese military during World War II, said their names have been enshrined against their will.

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Two long years of waiting are over. California is now pouring more money into embryonic stem-cell research than the federal government or any other state in the nation.

After months of court delays, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine on Feb. 16 approved 72 grants totaling $45 million to 20 academic and non-profit research centers throughout the state.

Voters should take heart that their giant leap of faith is coming to fruition. It's now possible to envision that over the course of the next decade, California will fulfill its dream of becoming a world leader in what remains one of the most promising fields of medical study.

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LOS ANGELES -- A highly drug-resistant form of tuberculosis has killed about 85 percent of South African HIV patients who have become infected, presenting one of the most worrisome problems in HIV and tuberculosis control, researchers reported Sunday.

About 330 cases of extensively drug-resistant, or ?XDR,? tuberculosis have been verified in South Africa over the past year, said Karin Weyer of the South African Medical Research Council in Pretoria.

The outbreak began in KwaZulu-Natal province last year and is found throughout the country, she said.

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SoCal-based Phoenix is expected to sell fleets of battery-powered trucks to PG&E and others.

February 26, 2007

A Southern California company that showed off a prototype of its battery-powered pickup truck to President Bush at the White House last week aims to be a big player in the clean-car movement far from Pennsylvania Avenue.

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PHILADELPHIA — After a dozen years of trial and error, a New Jersey company has emerged as a leading developer of technology that could improve cellphones, laptop computers and television sets.

Later, this technology could be used to illuminate homes and offices, using less energy.

Universal Display also has developed methods to display text and moving pictures on a durable flexible material that in the future could be rolled up in a pocketsize tube with a tiny radio receiver. This could change the way people read newspapers or give soldiers in battle up-to-the-minute maps and intelligence photographs.

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KAPOLEI, Hawaii — Ai Miyazato is everywhere in Japan: on billboards at the airport, magazine covers, TV commercials and daily sports pages. But Miyazato isn't satisfied with just being a superstar in Japan — she wants to be a winner in the U.S.

In the first two LPGA Tour events of the year, the pint-sized shotmaker commanded the largest galleries and media attention. There were more than 50 Japanese reporters and photographers in Ai's Army following her every move in the Fields Open, which ended Saturday with Miyazato closing with a 66 to tie for third.

"I get so much exposure in the Japanese media that (American) people see me not for my golf but as this person who is famous in Japan," she said. "But if I win here and move up, I think they'll respect my golf. I'd like people to start to see my game."

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NEW DELHI (AP) -- Japan's Nissan Motor on Monday joined France's Renault SA's plan to build a car plant in southern India in collaboration with local automaker Mahindra & Mahindra amid strong demand for passenger cars from India's growing middle class. The three companies will together invest about $900 million to build the plant near the southern Indian city of Chennai, said Pawan Goenka, president of the automotive division at Mahindra & Mahindra. The plant, billed as one of India's larges...

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TOKYO - A group of South Koreans filed a lawsuit Monday against a Tokyo war shrine criticized for glorifying Japan's militaristic past, demanding it remove relatives' names from the list of war dead honored there.

The suit, filed at the Tokyo District Court, is the first ever filed by South Koreans against Yasukuni Shrine, their Japanese supporter Naoyoshi Yamamoto said Monday.

The 11 plaintiffs, including a former soldier and 10 others whose fathers were impressed into the Japanese military during World War II, said their names have been enshrined against their will.

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NEW DELHI ? Japan's Nissan Motor on Monday joined France's Renault SA's plan to build a car plant in southern India in collaboration with local automaker Mahindra & Mahindra amid strong demand for passenger cars from India's growing middle class.

The three companies will together invest about $900 million to build the plant near the southern Indian city of Chennai, said Pawan Goenka, president of the automotive division at Mahindra & Mahindra.

The plant, billed as one of India's largest with a capacity to manufacture 400,000 vehicles annually, is expected to roll out the first car in the second half of 2009, he said. It will manufacture both Renault and Nissan models.

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My first reaction upon hearing that North Korea had agreed to take steps toward nuclear disarmament was: not again! Hadn't Pyongyang promised Jimmy Carter, during his ill-advised 1994 "peace" mission, that it would freeze its nuclear weapons program and dismantle existing nuclear facilities? Didn't North Korea break that promise? In 2000, hadn't Secretary of State Madeleine Albright toasted the "dear leader" Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang only to be disappointed later when his duplicity was again revealed? When will these people realize that communists lie?

Now comes the Bush administration's announcement of what appears - appears - to be a breakthrough. This time things might - might - be different, especially because the initial agreement does not rely solely on Kim's word or on U.S. pressure.

As outlined to me in a telephone conversation with Deputy National Security Adviser J.D. Crouch, this agreement is the result of pressure exerted by five countries -- the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea -- something critics said would never happen. Critics said that Kim would never agree to six-party talks and that the Bush administration was making a big mistake in not accepting Kim's demand for bilateral negotiations. President Bush held out and, so far, his strategy seems to be working.

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Since the government will not look out for our best interests, then we must. What did people think buying all those foreign cars would do to our United States?

I have always driven an American-made car, new and used, and have always had a great vehicle. I cannot believe people say American-made vehicles are not dependable. If we keep the status quo, our grandchildren will be growing up in a Third World country, and we'll only have ourselves to blame.

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Prime Minister Tony Blair said last week that he would withdraw 1,600 British troops from Iraq in the coming months.

Sweep aside the spin, and that announcement underscores a basic point: Iraq is and always has been President Bush's war. Not the Brits'. Not the Coalition of the Bought... er, the Wilting... er, the Willing.

This is Bush's war.

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Despite economic liberalization, it's likely the communist regime will endure well into the future.

By James Mann, JAMES MANN is author in residence at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of "The China Fantasy," published this month.

February 25, 2007

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Washington Calling: Saving daylight; invasive species

Lisa Hoffman - Scripps Howard News Service

Sunday, February 25, 2007

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KAPOLEI, Hawaii - Stacy Prammanasudh took formal golf lessons for the first time in her life during the offseason. The five sessions have already paid off. With a new instructor and a tighter swing, Prammanasudh shot a 4-under 68 on Saturday to hold off Jee Young Lee by a stroke for a wire-to-wire victory in the Fields Open.

The 27-year-old Oklahoman had five birdies and sealed her second LPGA Tour title by two-putting for par from 20 feet on No. 18 to finish at 14-under 202.

Lee, who had to finish four of her second-round holes in the morning because of a rain delay Friday, closed with a bogey-free 68.

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SEOUL, South Korea North Korea's chief nuclear envoy may be coming to the U-S.South Korean media say Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan is to arrive in San Francisco Thursday before heading to New York for talks with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill.That meeting would be the first working group meeting on establishing diplomatic relations between the U-S and North Korea and is part of an agreement reached at six-party talks in Beijing less than two weeks ago. In those talks, the Nor...

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Watching George W. Bush struggle with foreign policy is like watching a rerun of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." You never know which personality, the good guy or the bad guy, is going to prevail.

The problem is, neither does he. Like the protagonist in Robert Louis Stevenson's classic clash of dual personalities, George Bush is capable of doing both good and evil, often at the same time. Look at the contrast between Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

From the beginning, Bush's policy in Iraq was pure Mr. Hyde: Bomb first, ask questions later. No time for diplomacy. No time for U.N. inspectors to finish their job. No time to discover the truth about WMD or Saddam Hussein's connection to Osama bin Laden and Sept. 11 (none). Bush insisted we had to hurry up and invade Iraq in order to teach other unfriendly regimes in the Arab world a lesson.

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L.A. Jews and Korean Americans condemn a racist comic book published in Seoul.

February 24, 2007

Korean American community leaders who met with a top official at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles on Friday said they were disgusted by anti-Semitic depictions in a comic book by a popular South Korean author and vowed to mobilize community resources to launch a protest against the publisher.

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GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA: Sinkhole swallows homes, killing 2 teens and forcing evacuations

A 330-foot-deep sinkhole killed two teenage siblings when it swallowed about a dozen homes Friday and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a Guatemala City neighborhood.

Officials blamed the sinkhole on recent rains and underground sewage flow from a ruptured main. The bodies were found near the fissure. Rescue operations were on hold until a firefighter, suspended from a cable, could take video and photos above the hole and officials could use the documentation to decide how to proceed.

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The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index rose 0.2 percent. The Stoxx 50 gained 0.3 percent, and the Euro Stoxx 50, a measure for the nations sharing the euro, added 0.1 percent. National benchmarks rose in 13 of 18 Western European markets.

In Asia, the Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia-Pacific index rose 0.4 percent, reaching a record high for a second day. Japan's Nikkei 225 index added 0.4 percent. The Hang Seng index retreated 0.5 percent.

"There's still room for the price of oil to move higher," said Tomokatsu Mori at Fukoku Capital Management Inc. in Tokyo. "There's no need to worry about any negative factors causing a slump in commodity markets."

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WASHINGTON - The United States and South Korea agreed Friday that by 2012 the South Koreans will be responsible for commanding their military in wartime.

Under the half-century-old alliance that began with the U.S.-led military response to North Korean invaders in 1950, South Korea would put its forces under U.S. command if war should break out again.

After a meeting Friday between Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Korean Defense Minister Kim Jang-soo, the countries announced that South Korea, starting April 17, 2012, would keep wartime command of its own forces, with the U.S. military acting in support.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) - Korean-American community leaders said they plan to launch a protest against the publisher of a popular South Korean comic book that contains anti-Semitic images.

"I don't have words to describe the outrage I feel," said Yohngsohk Choe, co-chairman of the Korean American Patriotic Action Movement in the USA.

The group met Friday with Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Cooper said he would travel to Seoul on March 15 to raise concerns about the book.

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SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator plans to visit the United States within days for follow-up talks on a recent disarmament deal, South Korean news reports said Saturday.

The North's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan is expected to arrive in San Francisco on Thursday en route to New York for meetings with his U.S. counterpart, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing multiple unidentified individuals in the U.S.

If Kim's trip takes place, it would be the first U.S. visit by North Korea's main nuclear envoy since the international standoff over the North's nuclear ambitions flared in late 2002.

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SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator plans to visit the United States within days for follow-up talks on a recent disarmament deal, South Korean news reports said Saturday.

The North's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan is expected to arrive in San Francisco on Thursday en route to New York for meetings with his U.S. counterpart, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

If Kim's trip takes place, it would be the first U.S. visit by North Korea's main nuclear envoy since the international standoff over the North's nuclear ambitions flared in late 2002.

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The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Friday that North Korea has invited him to visit to discuss dismantling its nuclear facilities -- a sign of the country's new willingness to subject its atomic program to outside scrutiny.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he and North Korean authorities would discuss how to "implement the freeze of (nuclear) facilities" and "eventual dismantlement of these facilities."

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said ElBaradei would probably visit in the second week of March, after the agency board meets on North Korea and Iran, the other country of international nuclear concern.

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VIENNA, Austria - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon met Friday with a scandal-stung predecessor, Kurt Waldheim, and his spokeswoman described the visit as "private and personal" while sidestepping questions about the appropriateness of the meeting.

Waldheim's 1972-82 tenure as U.N. chief was darkened by allegations that he belonged to a German army unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans during World War II. He has always denied it.

Waldheim, 88, was elected president of Austria in 1986 despite an international scandal triggered by revelations about his secretive military service during the war.

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SYDNEY, Australia (AP) Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday that China's recent anti-satellite weapons test and a rapid military buildup were "not consistent" with its stated aim of a peaceful rise as a global power.

In a speech during a visit to Australia, Cheney praised China for playing an "especially important" role in six-nation negotiations that recently resulted in a deal with North Korea to eventually end its nuclear weapons programs.

"Other actions by the Chinese government send a different message," Cheney told the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue.

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VIENNA, Austria — The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Friday that North Korea has invited him to visit to discuss dismantling its nuclear facilities — a sign of the country's new willingness to subject its atomic program to outside scrutiny.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he and North Korean authorities would discuss how to "implement the freeze of (nuclear) facilities" and "eventual dismantlement of these facilities."

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said ElBaradei would probably visit in the second week of March, after the agency board meets on North Korea and Iran, the other country of international nuclear concern.

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President George W. Bush should read between the lines of Britain's decision to withdraw nearly half its troops in Iraq: End the war or go it alone.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's planned withdrawal of 1,600 British troops within months and a total of 3,000 by year's end shatters any contrivance of unity around U.S. Iraq war policy. Consider the contrast between Britain sending its troops home and the U.S., which, thanks to President Bush, has committed another 21,500 soldiers to Iraq as part of a planned buildup.

The White House is scrambling to put a good face on Britain's decision, calling it a sign that efforts to vanquish the Iraq insurgency have succeeded, at least in areas of the country under British control.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and South Korea on Friday said they would dissolve by 2012 an arrangement dating from the Korean War under which Seoul's military forces were put under the control of U.S.-led U.N. forces.

South Korea remains technically at war with North Korea because the 1950-1953 war ended in a truce instead of a peace treaty.

At that time, Seoul ceded wartime command to U.S.-led U.N. forces that helped fight off a North Korean invasion. Seoul assumed peacetime command over its troops in 1994.

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STUTTGART, Germany - Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker, has no interest in acquiring DaimlerChrysler's loss-making U.S. arm Chrysler or expanding cooperation accords, a VW spokeswoman said on Friday.

"There is no such consideration here," she said.

DaimlerChrysler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche said last week all options were open for Chrysler, which swung to a 2006 operating loss of 1.12 billion euros ($1.47 billion) as consumers shunned its lineup that relied heavily on pickup trucks and sport utilities.

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MUMBAI, India ? Until recently, it looked like the depleted ozone layer protecting the earth from harmful solar rays was on its way to being healed.

But thanks in part to an explosion of demand for air-conditioners in hot places like India and southern China ? mostly relying on refrigerants already banned in Europe and in the process of being phased out in the United States ? the ozone layer is proving very hard to repair.

Four months ago, scientists discovered that the ?hole? created by the world?s use of ozone-depleting gases ? in aerosol spray cans, aging refrigerators and old air-conditioners ? had expanded again, stretching once more to the record size of 2001.

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PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico -- For about an hour this week, Fred Funk was entered in both the Champions Tour event in Florida and the Mayakoba Golf Classic.

He ended up south of the border -- and is glad he did.

Funk birdied five of his first seven holes and finished with an 8-under 62, giving him the lead Thursday after the first round of the first PGA Tour event in Mexico.

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