BUSAN, South Korea — The Korea Earthquake Research Center recorded a tremor in North Korea at 10:36 a.m. on Monday. It measured 3.6 on the Richter scale and was not a natural event. Shortly after the seismic activity, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announced they had successfully completed a nuclear test, calling it a “historic event,” and a “great leap forward.” North Korea became the ninth member of the elite club of nations that possess the nuclear bomb. The test was conducted in a tunnel dug into a small mountainside near the village of Hwadae on the northeastern coast [...]
TEL AVIV, Israel — You don’t have to understand Hebrew to read the worried faces of Israelis glancing at this week’s newspapers. The picture under yesterday’s bold headlines shows the familiar round face of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il. Looking at him from a Tel Aviv sidewalk near the beach, Israeli readers show a familiar expression: one of profound worry. “Now Iran will feel it can do whatever it wants,” said Nili Orvin, a local businesswoman. North Korea, on Asia’s Pacific rim, lies thousands of miles from the Mediterranean Sea that laps gently upon Tel Aviv’s shore. Still, Israelis know [...]
BUDAPEST, Hungary — In parts, the May 26 speech Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany gave to his Socialist party was something of a grand mea culpa. “I almost died when I had to pretend for one and a half years as if we were governing,” he said on tape. “I am through with this. We either do it and then you’ve got your man, or you pick someone else.” At other times, the speech seemed a sweeping political treatise delivered in the belligerent incoherence of a taxi driver stuck in traffic. “Since they know my mother’s name . . . [...]
