Kia Motors Corp., South Korea’s second-largest automaker, said Friday that its sales in June rose21.8 percent from a year earlier as a jump in overseas sales offset decreased domestic demand.The company sold 217,315 vehicles overall last month, compared with 178,391 vehicles sold a year earlier. Domestic sales dropped 5 percent on-year to 42,200 units in June, but exports spiked 30.7 percent to 17

International Data Corporation raised its 2011 forecast for global sales of tablet computers by 6.2 percent to 53.5 million units on the strength of Apple Inc.’s iPad and Google Inc.’s Android operating system. Though sales in the first calendar quarter fell 28 percent from the prior quarter, Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC raised its forecast for the year citing increased competition between

The signature line of President Obama’s June 22 Afghanistan address was “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.” This no doubt resonates among an electorate sick of foreign wars and eager to focus on domestic problems, but it is a wrongheaded statement.Whenever America has eschewed commitments abroad and turned inward, the results have been disastrous. The most isolationist

A family comprising parents and two children has long been the Korean household prototype. But households are changing like everything else. A recent census has proven that model to be outdated. The new findings demand a change in housing, welfare and other government policies that are focused on the outdated prototype.In 2000, households of four people ― mostly parents and children ― accounted fo

Acts of physical abuse committed out of personal malice and those of harsh discipline administered without being sanctioned are prevalent in the barracks. One report comes after another about enlisted men being humiliated, beaten up, sexually abused or ill treated in other ways. But the military authorities have taken few effective measures to prevent them.A report from the Ministry of National De

The idea that the Supreme Court is too pro-business is rapidly becoming the central liberal critique of the institution. During last year’s confirmation hearings for Justice Elena Kagan, Democrats made their theme the need to counter pro-business activism by the conservatives on the court. After the court ended its latest term last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, a Vermont Dem

For the last few weeks, I’ve been unable to get a startling statistic out of my head: Since the recession officially ended, Texas has created more than four of every 10 new jobs in America.That’s right, Texas: the reddest of red states, home to gun lovers and school textbooks that openly question whether the Founding Fathers intended for the separation of church and state. I am no ideologue. Still

James Madison would have smiled had he heard about President Obama’s maneuver, seemingly in defiance of the War Powers Act, to avoid asking Congress to authorize military action in Libya.The act, passed in 1973, came at a time when the Vietnam War had been under way for years without any president asking for congressional approval. Members of Congress wanted future presidents to be obliged to come