• The Inter Press Service suggests climate change is contributing to a severe drought in Nicaragua.
• Reuters notes China's plan to implement sanctions against North Korea.
• Atlas Obscura explores the now-defunct medium of vinyl movies.
• Science goes into detail about the findings that many pre-contact American populations did not survive conquest at all.
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Heejin Kim of Bloomberg notes that Chinese upset at the South Korean deployment of an anti-missile defense system might derail the two countries' close relationship.

South Korean consumer shares, 2015’s stock-market darlings as tourists from China flocked to Seoul department stores, are now among the nation’s worst performers this year as a ( Read more... )

Blooomberg features an extended examination of how Chinese interests have been helping North Korea beat international sanctions.

A trail of money stretching from a Panamanian shipping agent to an octogenarian Singaporean to a Chinese bank provides a window on why U.S. efforts to tighten sanctions on North Korea may be harder to achieve than in the ( Read more... )

Bloomberg's Sam Kim notes the continued breakdown of inter-Korean relations, as South Korea pulls out of the Kaesong industrial park in the north. A more recent news report suggested the North nationalized the holdings of the South there.

South Korea is pulling out of an industrial complex jointly run with North Korea, taking aim at their last ( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams looks at the latest findings from repurposed Kepler.
• The Dragon's Gaze examines the stars of the apparently most habitable exoplanets found by Kepler and speculates as to the impact of stellar cosmic rays on the habitability of worlds in red dwarf systems.
• The Dragon's Tales examines the differences between carbon emissions from ( Read more... )

MacLean's carries an Associated Press article noting China's displeasure with North Korea's newest nuclear test. Angering North Korea's only ally cannot possibly be a good strategy, I'd think.

China sees North Korea’s claim to have conducted its first hydrogen bomb test as yet another act of defiance, and will likely retaliate by joining tougher ( Read more... )

At the New York Review of Books website, Pico Iyer has a provocative essay comparing the North Korean capital of Pyongyang with the American city of Las Vegas.

Any of us could, of course, list the differences between the two cities of mirages. The one is a shameless efflorescence of capitalism that is, for its enemies, a glittering symbol of the ( Read more... )

Choe Sang-Hun's article in The New York Times describes, through the experiences of a defector, what it is like to be non-heterosexual in North Korea. Homophobia there is apparently so intense that homosexuality is not even considered an option. That Jang suffered this is terrible enough, but what's worse is that other people are still suffering ( Read more... )

The Associated Press' Hyung-Jin Kim describes, here at the Waterloo Record, a growing divergence in language between South and North Korea. One country is becoming increasingly globalized, while the other is not. The longer-run consequences of this for a shared Korean identity is obvious, although so far the differences as described seem to be ( Read more... )

Events like this surely can't augur well for relations between China and North Korea.

A spate of murders by North Koreans inside China’s border is prompting some residents to abandon their homes, testing China’s ability to manage both the 880-mile (1,400-kilometer) shared frontier and its relationship with the reclusive nation ( Read more... )