Opinion: Can Israel and Hezbollah be pulled back from the brink of war?

SEOUL, July 29 (AJU PRESS) - The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in intense diplomacy to persuade the protagonists to pull back from the brink. But U.S. efforts have not paid off so far, given its lack of sufficient leverage with both sides. A grand bargain involving Israel, Hezbollah and their outside supporters is now urgently needed to av

July 29, 2024

Opinion: Paris opening ceremony was tribute to witnessing superhuman feats of the extraordinary

SEOUL, July 27 (AJU PRESS) - There has never been an opening ceremony quite like it. For the first time in Olympic Games history, the ceremony took place outside a stadium arena. Despite a rainy and miserable Paris evening, enormous crowds – most who paid no fee to attend – lined the banks of the Seine to witness this outdoor promenade of history, art and sport as 100 boats carrying 10,500 athletes sailed down the river. Designed to showcase the depth of French culture a

July 27, 2024

Opinion: 83 bottles of wine per person: how experts are calculating Paris Olympics' carbon footprint

SEOUL, July 26 (AJU PRESS) - The 2024 Paris Olympics aim to be the greenest edition on record, and the first compatible with the Paris climate agreement. Talk of "green games" goes back to April 2021. At the time, the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (OCOG) had even aspired to carbon neutrality by removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than those generated by the games. However, the reference to net zero was quietly dropped in subsequent communications.

July 26, 2024

Opinion: Paris Olympics promote sustainability for good reason: Climate change is putting athletes and their sports at risk

SEOUL, July 25 (AJU PRESS) - Europe is in the midst of a heat wave, and while Olympic athletes in Paris for the 2024 Summer Games might be spared the worst of it, the weather will still be hot. As global temperatures have risen, major sporting events like the Olympics and FIFA World Cup have had to adapt to high heat and extreme storms to keep athletes and fans safe and allow the games to go on. Olympic organizers have moved events such as marathons to early mornings and even to coo

July 25, 2024

Opinion: President Biden's withdrawal a gracious step

SEOUL, July 24 (AJU PRESS) - President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential contest is becoming, in the sense of complimentary to him, reflecting well on him. That is a term rarely, if ever, used in today’s extraordinarily cruel and ugly political rhetoric. True to form, former President Donald Trump reacted with a series of crude personal insults, including the statement that Biden never should have run. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), now the Republic

July 24, 2024

Opinion: One small update brought down millions of IT systems around the world

SEOUL, July 24 (AJU PRESS) - This weekend's global IT outage caused by a software update gone wrong highlights the interconnected and often fragile nature of modern IT infrastructure. It demonstrates how a single point of failure can have far-reaching consequences. The outage was linked to a single update automatically rolled out to CrowdStrike Falcon, a ubiquitous cyber security tool used primarily by large organizations. This caused Microsoft Windows computers around the world

July 24, 2024

Opinion: Kamala Harris is likely to become Democratic nominee for president

SEOUL, July 23 (AJU PRESS) - After three weeks of pained debates in the media and within the Biden administration itself, the 61 percent of Americans who wanted Joe Biden to step aside have had their wish granted. Only a few minutes after announcing he would no longer be seeking re-election, Biden made clear he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him, while major Democratic Party stalwarts – including the Congressional Black Caucus as well as Bill and Hillary Clin

July 23, 2024

Opinion: China's economic resilience amid turbulent first half of 2024

KARACHI, July 22 (AJU PRESS) - Amidst a turbulent internal and external landscape, the Chinese economy has managed to produce a noteworthy "midterm paper," demonstrating resilience with a relatively mixed performance in the first half of 2024. On July 15, the National Bureau of Statistics released its 2024 China Economic Semi-annual Report, revealing a 5% year-on-year GDP growth. However, in the second quarter, China's economy grew by 4.7 percent year-on-year, follow

July 22, 2024

Biden withdraws from presidential race

SEOUL, July 22 (AJU PRESS) - Now that Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the nominee, it will ultimately be up to Democratic National Convention delegates to formally select a new nominee for their party. This will mark the first time in over 50 years that a major party nominee was selected outside of the democratic process of primaries and caucuses. Many Democrats had already begun discussing how to replace Biden.

July 22, 2024

Opinion: What is CrowdStrike Falcon and what does it do? Is my computer safe?

SEOUL, July 19 (AJU PRESS) - A massive IT outage is currently affecting computer systems worldwide. In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, reports indicate computers at banks, media organisations, hospitals, transport services, shop checkouts, airports and more have all been impacted. Friday's outage is unprecedented in its scale and severity. The technical term for what has happened to the affected computers is that they have been "bricked." This word refers to those

July 19, 2024