Young designers find new opportunities, visitors discover unique designsAn annual design fair brought together young independent designers and customers under one roof in Seoul last week, serving as an open market for innovative designs. In its second year, The Handmade Korea Fair 2012, held from July 26-29 at COEX, Samseong-dong in Seoul, featured 180 small design companies that offered unique products ranging from clothes, accessories and jewelry, to stationary, furniture, home-ware and childr

With global population and food prices rising rapidly, humankind may have to depend on some unconventional food supplies like insects in the future, according to a report on BBC magazine.“Rising prices mean we are now starting to see the return of meat as a luxury. As a result we are looking for new ways to fill the meat gap,” said food futurologist Morgaine Gaye during an interview with the magazine. “Things like crickets and grasshoppers will be ground down and used as an ingredient in things

Singer John Park has been appointed a goodwill ambassador to help promote the Foreign Ministry’s campaign for poverty reduction by raising funds from airline taxes. Since 2007, airline passengers have been levied a 1,000 won tax on each international flight ticket purchase, which is used to help fund the government’s contribution to global poverty eradication.The 15 billion won collected annually goes to non-profit organizations and the Korea International Cooperation Agency, a state-run aid org

The Korea Tourism Organization suggests budget-friendly, eco-friendly vacation ideasHave you planned a summer vacation in advance, or are you looking for just any travel package at the last minute? As summer vacation season approaches, the dilemma of choosing between going abroad or staying in the country inevitably arises. Furthermore, many Koreans cannot afford to take off more than a week, even though summer vacation may be their longest break of the year.Overloaded with work and out of trave

SALINAS, California (AP) ― They were the stuff of another America: Tom Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath.”George and Lenny in “Of Mice and Men.” Lee Chong, Doc and the delightfully larcenous Mack and the bums in “Cannery Row.” Danny and Pilon in “Tortilla Flat.” Adam and Cal Trask in “East of Eden.”Whether you met these classic characters while reading the novels of John Steinbeck or you’re encountering them for the first time, they come to life at the National Steinbeck Center, a sprawling and moder

LONDON ― The exterior of Westminster Abbey is imposing and grandiose.Our plan was simple: Pay the admission, stick our heads inside to see what it looked like, and then quickly duck out and move on to a museum.The museum never happened.That because expatriate Geoff Auerbach, my wife, Pat, and I were all dazzled by the thousand-year-old church where England’s kings and queens have been crowned since 1066. That is a lot of history.Iconic Westminster Abbey is, quite frankly, a lot of church with it

The Next Best ThingBy Jennifer Weiner (Atria)Ruth Saunders’ dreams are about to come true, and she’s due for good luck: “I was a woman who’d lost her parents, who’d survived a dozen surgeries and emerged with metal implants in my jaw, the right side of my face sunken and scarred, and an eye that drooped.”Ruth’s dream involves a sitcom based loosely on the story of herself and the grandmother who raised her from age 3, and in Jennifer Weiner’s capable hands, the novel is a knockout. Perfect comic

The Fate of the Species: Why the Human Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and How We Can Stop It, By Fred Guterl (Bloomsbury)Consider if you dare the case of bioengineers who’ve implanted a microchip into the brains of certain research beetles, a chip which connects to the beetle’s nervous system and sends tiny pulses of energy that make the beetle “behave,” to turn left or right, zig and zag, do loop-de-loops and otherwise respond to various commands. What’s the point? Imagine a million of these

It can take years to bring a single film to screen. It took over eight years to bring the massively popular Batman trilogy into theaters.“The Art and Making of The Dark Knight Trilogy,” takes you through those eight ― and more ― years as you learn about the whole process, from concept to conclusion.A beautifully artistic photo book, it’s a worthy addition to any film student or Batman reader’s collection of “making of” books. Coming from a background in smaller films, director Christopher Nolan