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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The United States on Monday stressed national “solidarity with our South Korean and Japanese allies and noted that these consultations demonstrate the strength of our shared commitment to advancing regional security and stability.”

In a post-meeting statement National Security Council Deputy Spokesman Ben Chang noted the interaction “as part of the historic Trilateral meetings between our three countries,” represented by U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan Seiji Maehara, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea Kim Sung-hwan.

Citing the North Korean provocations, Chang said, Donilon emphasized the “timeliness” of the meetings, expressing “the President’s support and personal interest in this Trilateral process.”

The explosive situation in the region was created with Pyongyang’s fatal artillery strike on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island near the disputed western maritime border, killing two South Korean soldiers and two civilians.

“Consistent with our efforts to strengthen these core alliances over the course of the last two years, Mr. Donilon underscored U.S. solidarity with our South Korean and Japanese allies and noted that these consultations demonstrate the strength of our shared commitment to advancing regional security and stability,” the statement said.

Chang summed up the meeting with a stern warning to North Korea: “The three officials pledged to remain fully coordinated in sending a clear message to North Korea – that if it chooses the path of denuclearization, the road to reintegration into the international community will be open, but if it chooses further provocations and threats, it will further isolate itself.”

Earlier, Japanese Minister Maehara and Korean Minister Sung-hwan met with the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for a ministerial trilateral.

Clinton noted that the role of China in the region cannot be denied but the trio rejected Chinese call to return to the six-party talks with North Korea.

In a joint statement, the three leaders “reaffirmed that resumption of the Six-Party Talks will require the DPRK to make sincere efforts to improve relations with the ROK as well as taking concrete steps to demonstrate a genuine commitment to complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.”

Moreover, President Barack Obama on Sunday night had called China’s President Hu Jintao to discuss global hot spots giving a headache to Americans including North Korea.

During the call, the two presidents discussed the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island on Nov. 23 and the pursuit of a uranium enrichment program by the North.

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Beijing, China (AHN) – China announced its intent to tighten its monetary policy in 2011 in a shift from relatively loose to a prudent stance, a sign that it might hike interest rates.

In 2008, China responded to the global economic policy by loosening its then tight monetary policy. Now, with China’s economy humming, China has a growing problem with inflation while liquidity from abroad grows.

Annualized inflation is running at around 4.4 percent, which is above the target 3 percent and also a 25-year high.

Food price increases have fueled most of the inflation. However, China’s communist government leadership is increasingly worried over the prospect of price bubbles appearing in various market segments.

In the meantime, China’s experienced annual growth in its gross domestic product of 9.6 percent for the third quarter of the year, far outpacing economic growth of most nations.

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Mumbai, India (AHN) – India is set to gate-crash into the exclusive three-member club of nuclear triads by 2012 with its first nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, which is to be commissioned in either late 2011 or early 2012. Arihant means “destroyer of enemies” in the Hindi language.

Only three countries in the world currently have a complete nuclear weapon triad, which means the capability to fire nuclear-tipped missiles from land, air and sea. These countries are the US, Russia and China.

Indian Navy chief Adm. Nirmal Verma announced Thursday that the country’s crucial underwater leg of nuclear capability would be the third arm of the country’s nuclear defense, which is presently made up of road and rail-mobile ballistic missiles as well as fighter jets such as Mirage 2000s and Sukhoi-30 MKIs, all of which are able to deliver nuclear weapons.

Speaking ahead of the forthcoming Navy Day on Saturday, Verma said, “When INS Arihant goes to sea, it will be on a deterrent patrol. The triad will then be in place… the aim is to make it as effective as possible.”

The INS Arihant was launched in Vizag in July 2009. After it is commissioned, it will possess potent SLBM capabilities, which would complete India’s nuclear triad and bolster its position among the nuclear power club.

Speaking on this development, sources within the Navy said that Arihant remained a top secret project until its launch last year. It is first of three nuclear-powered submarines that India is currently building with help from Russia.

Clarifying India’s stand on nuclear deterrence, Verma also said, “We have a declared policy of no-first-use, but we have Arihant. We have a triad in place now, but we have to use it as effectively as possible. We have Arihant going within two years and there is progress in the project, despite some hiccups. We will be within time and commission the vessel by 2012.”

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Shanghai, China (AHN) – Some Chinese factories and other service establishments are experiencing a serious shortage of labor due to the high cost of living and an unchanged salary base.

Manufacturing hubs in the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas that surround the city of Shanghai and Guangzhou province are experiencing an acute shortage of migrant workers in their respective home and customer service sectors.

The labor shortage, which has already affected several companies’ expansion plans, occurred in the busiest season of the year–Christmas and New Year. Manufacturing firms were forced to decline orders because of the worker shortfall that is estimated to be more than 900,000 in Guagdong province.

On average, 40 percent of job vacancies in the Yangtze and Peal River Delta areas remain unfilled.

Stagnant salaries and the steadily increasing high cost of living have been blamed for the crisis. This has caused workers to remain in their hometowns where, although they earn little, they do not have to spend as much on living costs.

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Jerusalem, Israel (TML) – Beautiful women may get first dibs for a place on the cheerleading squad or for a partner on the dance floor, but when it comes to the job market they would do better to hide their looks, a new study by Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has found.

Conventional wisdom has it that beautiful people are the most likely to be hired, even though laboratory tests and studies using hypothetical situations have found exactly the opposite to be the case. Two Ben-Gurion economists, however, broke new ground in their study “Are Good-Looking People More Employable?” by sending resumes — some with photographs of attractive women, some with pictures of Plain Janes and some with no picture at all — to real advertised job listings.

It was a bad day for the beautiful. Pictureless resumes were the most likely to get a call-back for an interview — 22% more than the resumes of Plain Janes and 30% more than for attractive women.

“I assumed the beauty premium for women was higher, but it was not,” Dr. Bradley Ruffle, one of the two economists who conducted the study, told The Media Line. “I suspected the order would go attractive, no picture and then plain. This was the exact result with the male applicants, but female candidates were treated differently.”

Attractive males elicited a callback on their resumes 19.9% of the time, while among ordinary ones the rate was 13.9%, the study found. Pictureless resumes got the lowest response rate of all, with just 9.2% getting a call-back. The difference is quite significant for job seekers: An attractive male need only send five resumes to perspective employer to get an interview, while his ordinary-looking rival has to send out 11, said Ze’ev Shtudiner, a PhD candidate and Ruffle’s colleague.

“This really goes against what I would assume about the hiring process,” Ayelet Hazie, the public relations manager at Manpower Israel told, The Media Line. “The results are very interesting and not at all expected.”

Israel was the ideal testing site for the study because, unlike most other countries, there is no set standard on whether or not to include a photo in a job application.

“In Anglo-Saxon countries, it’s taboo to send a picture, whereas in continental Europe it is the norm and in China the process of attaching a picture is regulated. In Israel, it’s an in-between case, and people are free to choose and the results shed light on when or when not to use a picture,” Ruffle said.

If female beauty is a handicap to employment, blame other women. A follow-up call to the companies posting jobs revealed that 96% of the time the first-line decision maker on whether to pursue an application was in the hands of a woman. Not only that, she was likely to be young (the average age was 29) and single (67%), two characteristics associated with a “jealous response” when confronted with a young, attractive rival in the workplace, the study said.

“Companies don’t discriminate against men, they treat all males alike. And the companies treat the women without pictures the same as the plain,” Ruffle said. “But the attractive women are discriminated against.”

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Seoul, South Korea (AHN) – The cyber crime division of South Korea’s National Police Agency arrested 22 people for falsely spreading text messages and online messages that South Korea had attacked North Korea and for misrepresenting that they are from Soth Korea’s military reserve force and have been called in to respond.

Recently, police are investigating an online community called “Cyber headquarters for People’s Defense” who posted on the country’s number one portal site, Naver, for praising the surprise North Korean artillery attack on the border island of Yeonpyeong last November 24.

South Korea’s National Security Law punishes anyone who praises or sympathizes with the North Korean Communist State.

Previous news reports have shown that skirmishes between the two Koreas are usually accompanied by tsimilar text and online misinformation. The more recent being after the North Korean downing of a South Korean warship last March where South Korea’s main government website was attacked by hackers traced to China who used 120 China-based Internet servers to deny the government website distributed service.

At the time, South Korea’s Major General Bae Deuk-Shik, chief of the Defence Security Command, said the North has an army unit of elite hackers who are able to steal the identities of South Korean Internet users.

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