Asia

By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

The empty ballot boxes have not been stored, and already people fret about a change in US-Japan relations. I believe our relations will strengthen not fade.

By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Following Sunday’s elections in Japan, America’s relationship with one of its key longtime allies is about to become much more complicated.

Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the victorious Democratic Party of Japan, wants a reassessment of ties with Washington and fewer U.S. troops on Japanese soil.

By Matthew Schofield, Kansas City Star editorial board columnist

Pakistan's Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was given complete freedom Friday.

Now, this hardly puts anyone at immediate risk. Khan, after all, is a scientist, a nuclear scientist. By all accounts, he's brilliant.

By Matt Schofield, Star Editorial Page Columnist

Lost in the news that Burmese human rights activist (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to 18 months of house arrest was this tidbit:

Fifty three year old Missourian John Yettaw was sentenced to seven years, including four years of hard labor.

Kansas City Star Thursday editorial

North Korea’s “court” system has sentenced two American journalists to a dozen years of hard labor — a senselessly harsh verdict for reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who were only doing their jobs.

By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

China has agreed to allow Taiwan to attend this week’s meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, a major concession by Beijing.

It was the latest news in the rapidly warming relationship between Taiwan and China, a trend that has significantly eased tensions in what was once one of the world’s more ominous flashpoints.

By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist

Hillary Clinton's China trip again raises concerns about democracy and freedom in China. To figure out whether the Obama administration's position on this makes sense, we need to revisit history.

World history has displayed two different freedoms: external freedom (freedom from foreign domination) and internal freedom (democracy).

Asif Ali Zardari may have been seen by Washington as the least-bad choice as president of Pakistan, but he assumed office this week amid severe doubts about his competence and the country’s future.

The scale of grief in China’s Sichuan Province is almost unimaginable as the region struggles to come to terms with the catastrophic earthquake.

In many cases, that grief is now leading to tough and embarrassing questions for Communist Party officials.

By Steven O'Hern, Reader Advisory Panel 2008

The sad news of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in China should be a warning to business leaders seeking to invest in China. Low quality manufacturing and lack of regulation in China resulted in toys contaminated with lead that had to be recalled. Since the toy recall, more dangerous products from China were uncovered including tainted heparin that resulted in 81 deaths in the United States. The same business practices that disregard safety are likely to be present in building construction in China.

International aid has begun arriving in Myanmar, but the country’s military junta has inexcusably stalled the entry of aid workers and needed supplies. The United Nations and neighboring countries should press hard for greater access and faster visa processing.

China’s typical response to criticism at home is to douse the message and rough up the messenger.

Those methods don’t work in Democratic nations. Chinese leaders have no way of quelling the dissent that has accompanied the Olympic torch’s raucous warm-up lap around the world.

With its recent presidential election, Taiwan has once again shown that its democracy is firmly established.

Voters approved a peaceful shift of power from one party to another — a process routine on Taiwan, but unheard-of in China.

It's not every day I feel inspired at 7 a.m., but I loved this morning's news coverage of the New York Philharmonic's performance in North Korea. (And thanks to my local YMCA for putting TV screens on the exercise equipment--it makes that half hour on the eliptical trainer go by so much faster.)

Bravo to the orchestra for playing the U.S. national anthem in one of the world's most isolated and worrisome nations. The musicians found the perfect way to give North Koreans a sense of America's greatness. Listeners were obviously moved.

Bravo, too, to ABC's Bob Woodruff, who reported on the news from North Korea. He's the former anchorman injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq two years ago. Woodruff suffered a traumatic brain injury which sometimes impairs his ability to come up with the right words. But he did a fine job describing the symphonic performance.

I'm seeing a lot of commentary by writers who knew Benazir Bhutto as a classmate at Harvard and/or Oxford. Needless to say, these pieces are largely complimentary of her personality and progressive views.

But here's another view. Ralph Peters of the New York Post points out that Bhutto, though known in intellectual and diplomatic circles as a well-educated feminist, did nothing to better the lot of women or schoolchildren during her two stints in power in Pakistan. He calls her "a splendid con."