GERMANY

GERMANY
Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, Dec. 10: United Airlines' bankruptcy is not a catastrophe, because American law gives companies in trouble a second chance -- and many seize it.
A bankruptcy filing there often means access to fresh money, as well as the possibility to erase debts and re-negotiate contracts which have become a liability for the company.
The world's second-largest airline ... desperately needs this second chance.
It is sitting on fixed costs that are far too high. Years of mismanagement and the greed of the unions have led to a situation in which nearly half of the turnover is spent on wages. In addition, it has an oversized fleet.
Under the protection of the bankruptcy law United will be better able to gain the concessions it needs from employees and from the banks, from which it leases its planes.
Still, restructuring a company under the dictate of bankruptcy judges also has its dark side.
Hands tied
It is not just that the management in many ways has its hands tied -- that could even be an advantage in view of its performance to date.
Businesses can suffer severely from constraints on spending. United likely will have to dismiss more staff and cancel flights.
That does not make the service more attractive. If passengers turn to competitors, the airline is finished.
ISRAEL
Haaretz, Tel Aviv, Dec. 11: The result is glaringly evident in the Knesset list proposed by the Likud: Of the 40 top candidates, 19 are new faces, and many of them are men and women without an appropriate record of public service and without the necessary qualifications to be counted as members of the Israeli parliament.
There's a lot of pretension and a considerable amount of cynicism in the claims of a young man whose only known qualification for the Knesset is that he is the son of the prime minister, and in the claims of a former secretary in the Prime Minister's Office, a former chauffeur for a minister, a waitress who studied law, and personal aides to ministers, that they are all worthy of being part of the national leadership that shapes the laws of the state and its image.
Right to vote
The fact the Likud is a major party, and apparently will be the largest in the next Knesset, requires its leaders to urgently make changes in the methods by which it conducts its internal elections. The most critical of those changes is handing over the internal election process to the general membership of the party, with the requirement that only those who have been in the party at least one year have the right to vote.
JAPAN
Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, Dec. 8: If North Korea were to be thrown into chaos, the effects would be felt all over the whole Korean Peninsula and in Japan as well. The military might feel compelled to launch its missiles. Tidal waves of refugees could be expected.
With these possibilities, our options are necessarily limited to one: to encourage reform and opening North Korea to promote a regime change led by both moderate and hard-line policies that seek to prevent North Korean military adventure. We must, in short, diminish the prospect of danger from a dangerous nation and accelerate change in a less dangerous nation.
Change in regime
There were signs that North Korea, faced with difficulties, was gradually moving toward its own reforms and opening to the rest of the world. Such reforms must be encouraged to bring about change in the regime, even if that takes a long time.
We believe that the process of negotiation toward normal diplomatic relations, which would involve Japan providing economic assistance to North Korea, should be used to encourage reforms. That negotiation should also be used as leverage to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.