Latest News Clips 2012.12.20

1.      Park holds lead in South Korea presidential vote count

CNN    December 19, 2012

 

     

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- With more than two-thirds of the votes counted in South Korea's election, candidate Park Geun-hye has a slight edge over her rival -- giving hope to her supporters that she may become the country's first woman president.

The South Korean National Election Commission reported that with 70% of the votes counted, Park leads by 51.57% to 47.98% for contender Moon Jae-in.

The three major broadcasters in South Korea all project a win for Park, who heads the governing conservative Saenuri party.

Voters who headed to the polls amid frigid temperatures faced a choice between a conservative and a liberal candidate to lead the strategic Western ally and fourth largest economy in Asia.

Opinion polls suggested Park, 60, had an edge going into the vote, held at a time of rising economic anxiety.

But she faces a stiff challenge from Moon, the 59-year-old, left-leaning candidate of the Democratic United Party, who steadily gained support in the run-up to the election.

The winner of Wednesday's race will assume office in February 2013, in a country grappling with income inequality, angst over education and employment prospects for its youth and strained relations with Pyongyang.

"I hope the next president can put what the people want and how the country can develop before the interests of their own party," said Yong Sung-hwa, who voted in the morning.

Like many other elections around the world, the economy is the No. 1 issue for South Korean voters. Though the Asian country has fared far better than other countries, including the United States, during the economic crisis, its export-led economy has still felt the pinch.

"This country depends on the world's economy," said Jong Kun Choi, associate professor in the department of political science and international studies at Yonsei University in Seoul. "Eighty-nine percent of our GDP comes from the international trade."

The election could shape into a showdown of generations. Park enjoys broad support from the older Koreans in their 50s and 60s, while Moon has strong support from younger Koreans.

2.      Police: 20 children among 26 victims of Connecticut school shooting

CNN    December 15, 2012’’

Newtown, Connecticut (CNN) -- Dressed in black fatigues and a military vest, a heavily armed man walked into a Connecticut elementary school Friday and opened fire, shattering the quiet of this southern New England town and leaving the nation reeling at the number of young lives lost.

Within minutes, 26 people were dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School -- 20 of them children. Among the six adults killed were Dawn Hochsprung, the school's beloved principal, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach.

The shooter, identified by three law enforcement officials as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, also was killed, apparently by his own hand. Separately, his mother's body was found at a Newtown residence.

"Stuff like this does not happen in Newtown," a tight-knit community of about 27,000 just outside Danbury, said Renee Burn, a local teacher at another school in town. In the past 10 years, only one homicide had previously been reported.

With the death toll at 26, the Newtown shooting is the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, behind only the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech that left 32 people dead.

"Evil visited this community today," Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy said of Friday's massacre.

Young students described being ushered into bathrooms and closets by teachers as the first shots rang out. Janet Vollmer, a kindergarten teacher, locked her classroom doors, covered the windows and read a story to her 19 students to keep them calm.

Third-grader Alexis Wasik said police and teachers barged into her classroom and told students to hide in the corner.

"Everybody was crying," she said. "And I just heard the police officers yelling."

One parent who was in the school at the time of the shooting said she heard a "pop, pop, pop," sound around 9:30 a.m. In the room with her were Hochsprung, the vice principal and Sherlach. All three left the room and went into the hall to see what was happening. The parent ducked under the table and called 911.

"I cowered," she told CNN's Meredith Artley. The shooter "must have shot a hundred rounds."

Responding police officers helped evacuate the children, telling them to hold hands and keep their eyes closed to the carnage as they exited the building.

3.      Japan's New Old Hawk

The Wall Street Journal     December 16, 2012

The LDP regains power by promising a stronger foreign policy.

Japanese voters swept the ruling Democratic Party of Japan out of power on Sunday, but the question is what difference it will make. The answer is probably not much on the economy as the election was fought more than anything over foreign policy.

Shinzo Abe will return as Japanese Prime Minister as his Liberal Democratic Party was expected to win about 300 out of 480 seats. Yet the LDP's share of the popular vote was only around 30%, and the overall turnout was 60%, according to the Kyodo news service, down from 69% in 2009 and equaling the postwar low in 1996.

Mr. Abe's economic platform consisted of more fiscal stimulus spending, to be financed by the Bank of Japan directly buying government bonds. In other words, printing money to bring inflation up to a new target of 2%-3%, compared to the BoJ's current target of 1%.

But the central bank has expanded the money supply enormously, and demand for credit is so weak that it has been unable to stop deflation. Deregulation and trade liberalization have a much better chance of reviving the economy than Keynesian or monetarist remedies, but the LDP is still tied to vested interests in business and agriculture.

One upside is that the current government's proposed consumption tax increase may never happen. The first increase, to 8% from 5%, is due to take effect in April 2014, but only if there is an "upturn in economic conditions." Mr. Abe could use this wiggle room to prevent this trainwreck.

In many ways, Mr. Abe has China's Hu Jintao and South Korea's Lee Myung-bak to thank for his victory. Both have stepped up territorial disputes with Japan, and Beijing escalated tensions in the last week by sending a patrol plane to the disputed Senkaku Islands. A recent Cabinet Office poll found that 93% of Japanese believe China-Japanese relations are "unfriendly."

Mr. Abe's victory and the rise of the nationalist Japan Restoration Party have already triggered hand-wringing in academic towers about Japan's rightward turn. And the new Prime Minister has said he intends to revoke a 1993 admission about the Imperial Army's wartime sex slaves, change the procedures for approving history textbooks and revise the pacifist provisions in the constitution.