Quick notes: Nizam nostalgia, Korean slavery...

• Telaban chief: "Nizam was great, secular ruler"



• Secular Rape: Japanese student gang-raped for 12 days -- Sahid, Sabir and Wasim Khan, posing as tour guides, took the woman to Digha, a beach town in Bengal.



• Yesu and Slavery in S Korea: Slavery has been so pervasive that regional judges have shown leniency toward several perpetrators. A pastor who lived on Sinui for 19 years sympathized with farmers (slave lords) forced to deal with disabled, incompetent workers whom he described as dirty and lazy.



• The Brilliance of Angkor Engineers: worth watching..
  




• Immune response to red meat could be cancer key: The human body views red meat as a foreign invader, prompting a toxic immune response.
  - New diet guidelines might pull back from meat



• Hormonal dysfunction:Researchers Say Puberty Starting Early in Many Girls

So far plastic, antibiotics in animal food sources & soy have come up in our discussion of early puberty in girls: http://t.co/luzI6BHdHj
— KQED Forum (@KQEDForum) January 2, 2015

Quick notes: Putin on Syria, K-Pop...

• Was Putin right about Syria? "Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria?", Putin wrote last September in NYT.



• Kicking serious butt: The Kurdish women are intimidating and fierce. They have already proven successful in helping to retake a crucial strategic site, the Mosul dam, in “the biggest blow to the radical Sunni group yet."



• The Rice Bucket Challenge: Charity that is relevant to India.. Did you know that 93% of ALS patients are Caucasian?



• You can now be arrested for sharing “objectionable” content in Karnataka



• South Korea, exporting padres and pop-culture:

China Behaves Arrogantly with South Korea

The last few paragraphs of this Washington Post article are the most telling:

China's attitude to the problems on the Korean Peninsula was on display Nov. 27 when its top diplomat, State Councilor Dai Bingguo, visited South Korea for talks. China, according to South Korean officials, notified South Korea 15 minutes before Dai's departure that he was headed for Seoul and that he wanted to land at a South Korean air force base that is normally reserved for heads of state. China also informed South Korea that it wanted President Lee Myung-bak's schedule cleared for an immediate meeting with Dai. The South did not agree and Dai met Lee the next day.

During that meeting, Dai essentially gave Lee "a history lesson on the relations between Beijing and Seoul" and did not mention the North Korean attack on Yeonpyeong, said a South Korean official. "He just told us to calm down," the official said. Then at the end of the meeting, as the two were readying to shake hands, Dai, off the cuff, told Lee that China wanted to call an emergency meeting of the six-party talks, grouping the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia, China and North Korea, to help lower the heat on the peninsula. Lee told Dai that - given North Korea's actions, a meeting would be tantamount to rewarding North Korean bad behavior. But Dai ignored Lee's rejection and when Dai returned to Beijing, China's chief North Korean negotiator, Wu Dawei, announced what it framed as a bold Chinese initiative: more talks.

"The South Koreans were really ticked off," said Daniel Sneider, an expert on Asian security at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University who was in Seoul last week. "The whole way it was handled smacked of a certain kind of arrogance . . . and signaled that the Chinese weren't serious about reining in the North Koreans."

Christian-Buddhist Tensions in S.Korea

Here's a timely article on religious tensions in S.Korea. I wonder how Somini Sengupta would have written about this issue?

India's Economy: The Korean View

Here's a piece by Korea's Chosun Ilbo, which gives the Korean view on India's economy.

S.Korea & US Clinch Free-Trade Deal

The just-clinched US-SKorea Free Trade Agreement may help South Korea preserve its increasingly tenuous place between Japan and China, in the international trade arena. Not quite as high-end as Japan, but not quite as cheap as China, S.Korea has been feeling encroachment on its trading space from both its neighbors. Hence, their escape maneuver in the form of this free trade deal with the US. What kind of pressure will that now put on Japan and China? What will it mean for N.Korea? Or India for that matter?