BERLIN (AFP) ― Chinese dissident author Liao Yiwu on Sunday tore into the leadership in Beijing, describing his homeland as an “inhuman empire with bloody hands” as he scooped a prestigious German book prize.The author, also known as Lao Wei, added that the Chinese state was a “massive scrap heap that must break apart” and accused the West of “colluding with the executioners under the cover of free trade.”Liao was speaking as he collected the German Book Trade Peace Prize, the country’s second h

South Korea has lifted a ban on the erotic novel “The 120 Days of Sodom” by the 18th-century French nobleman and writer the Marquis de Sade, just weeks after barring it for “extreme obscenity.”The Korea Publication Ethics Commission, a state review board, accepted an appeal by publishing house Dongsuh Press that the book had significant literary value, senior board official Jang Tag-hwan told AFP on Monday.“The commission auditors, after reviewing related documents submitted by the publisher, co

JERUSALEM (AP) ― After a long, tangled journey that Franz Kafka could have written about himself, an unseen treasure of writings by the surrealist author will be put on display and later online, an Israeli court ruled in documents released Sunday.Ownership of the papers had been in dispute after the Israeli National Library claimed them, over the wishes of two sisters who had inherited the vast collection of rare documents from their mother and insisted on keeping them.Friday’s ruling by the Tel

A study by a Japanese research team showed that people work better after looking at images of cute animals.The study, “The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus” was published on the online edition of U.S. journal “Plos One” on Sept. 26. “Kawaii” is a Japanese word meaning “cute.” The research conducted a test to see the performance of university students doing work such as a fine motor dexterity task. It observed the efficiency of the wor

Diabetic married women in South Korea say the stress of caring for their families was a factor in their contracting the disease, researchers say.Postdoctoral fellow Hyunjeong Park and Jennifer Wenzel of the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in Baltimore said in a Korean household, it is commonplace for women to focus on their family when overwhelmed with multiple roles, while men tend to focus on work when faced with the same situation.One of the study‘s findings was that in married Kor

Literary forums featuring modern Korean literature will be held in Spain and France, according to the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea). The upcoming events in Europe follow LTI Korea’s two-day session forum held in the U.S. last week.The state-run organization kicked off its literary tour on Friday, holding its first sessions in Washington, D.C. Poet Oh Se-young and novelists Oh Jung-hee and Lee Hye-kyung attended the event, which was held at the Korean Cultural Center in Wa

NEW YORK -- Vitamin C may protect against osteoporosis -- a disease in which the bones of the elderly become brittle and can fracture, U.S. researchers say.  Dr. Mone Zaidi, director of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bone Program, and colleagues removed the ovaries of mice, a procedure -- ovariectomies -- known to reduce bone density, and compared them with control mice that had “sham” operati