LA’s New Landlords Is Los Angeles the Next Shanghai? By David DeVoss There are more than 225,000 Koreans living in and around Los Angeles and this week they have a new symbol of accomplishment, a glass-sheathed hotel, office and retail tower topped by an enormous, sail-shaped LED screen that nightly beams the Korean Airlines logo…
Secrets of the Solomon Islands By Julie L. Kessler For World War II history buffs, the far away and often forgotten Solomon Islands are awe-inspiring. They are the place where U.S. marines fought and died on Guadalcanal. It is where young Navy Lieutenant John F. Kennedy saved his crew after their PT boat was cut…
Trans Pacific Partnership Under Fire From Both Right & Left in America by David DeVoss Foreign Ministers spend most of their time persuading other countries to do their bidding. But last month U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Los Angeles to convince a decidedly American audience to support the Trans Pacific Partnership, the…
Dawn of the Aerotropolis By David DeVoss By David DeVoss Just outside Korea’s Incheon airport there are two roads leading to downtown. One heads east to the Korean capital of Seoul more than an hour’s drive away. The other angles south over a short causeway to New Songdo, a decade-old airport city that is known…
The Japanese, stuck in a deadly epidemic of Covid-19, confronted by an unpopular Olympics end experiencing waning geopolitical influence, are pushing past these frustrations with a new government-led campaign to sell the world—and their own children—on their country’s distinctive traditional cuisine. They’re not talking about shrimp tempura, California rolls, or spicy tuna sashimi. No, the traditional washoku cooking that is becoming Japan’s new new thing consists of umami-flavored fish, soya, mushrooms, and seaweed steeped in dashi, a liquid made by boiling desiccated kelp with dried tuna shavings. It is, for some, an acquired taste.