Word: korean
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Despite the news-channel talk of a fresh threat, people have been trying for almost 20 years to blow up planes with liquid explosives packed in carry-on baggage. Terrorists, like movie studios and toddlers, don't like to try new things. In 1987 two North Korean agents posing as father and daughter put a radio packed with plastic explosives and a whisky bottle full of liquid explosives in a bag in the overhead bin of a South Korean airliner. Then they got off on a layover. The subsequent explosion sent the plane spinning into the jungle near the Thailand...
...Even Pyongyang's friends have proved fickle. Last week, South Korean newspapers reported that China, the North's closest ally, largest trading partner and aid donor, had frozen North Korean assets held in the Macau branch of the Bank of China. Beijing's clampdown, which took place last year, followed a similar freeze on about $24 million of Pyongyang's cash in another Macau bank-Banco Delta Asia-which the U.S. claimed was funneling money the North earns from drug smuggling and counterfeiting...
...China's clampdown a sign that Beijing has tired of running interference for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and will back U.S. efforts to force Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear weapons? Unlikely, says Alexandre Mansourov, a North Korea expert at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. China and North Korea have been at odds lately-Beijing warned against the missile tests-and there are "hurt feelings," he says. But "fundamentally it is a very tight relationship...
...Since Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk fell from grace last year over his now-discredited work on human cloning, he has been stripped of his position at Seoul National University and currently faces trial on charges of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the donors who sponsored his work. At last week's hearing, Hwang explained that while some of the cash may have found its way into extracurricular projects, "all of the money was used for the purpose of research." Besides paying for one scientist's wedding and another's housing, that research agenda apparently included attempts...
...long-term promise is boundless, but the immediate barriers are high. The only people who claim to have succeeded in creating human-stem-cell lines through nuclear transfer were the South Korean researchers who turned out to be frauds. It will take much trial and error to master the process, but where do you get the human eggs needed for each attempt, particularly since researchers find it ethically inappropriate to reimburse donors for anything but expenses? And even if the technique for cloning embryos could be perfected, would Congress allow...