Top U.S. officials expressed concern Tuesday at reports that Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is set to build a new broadband network in South Korea that Washington sees as a possible spying risk.Huawei, barred from projects in the United States and Australia over national security concerns, was reportedly selected as a subcontractor for LGU+, a subsidiary of South Korea's LG Corp, to build a Long Term LGU+Evolution (LTE) network.But U.S. defense and intelligence officials and key lawmakers on Capi

Dec. 4, 2013

South Korea plans to hold strategic talks with the United States, China and Japan within the next month to cope with rising security challenges facing Northeast Asia, government sources said Sunday.The plan comes as China unilaterally drew a new air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea that overlaps similar lines draw by South Korea and Japan, as well as a move by Tokyo to seek an aggressive policy on its right to collective self-defense that could allow the country to projec

Dec. 1, 2013

China on Thursday rejected South Korea’s demand to adjust its recent demarcation of an air defense zone in the East China Sea, which has raised tension by covering an area over Korea’s southwestern submerged rock of Ieodo.Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo made the demand during his talks in Seoul with Wang Guanzhong, the deputy chief of general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.Wang came here to attend the regular bilateral strategic defense dialogue, where China’s unilateral draw

Nov. 28, 2013

The annual tally of tourists to South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju is expected to top 10 million this week.As of Tuesday, the number of visitors to Jeju had reached 9.97 million, up 11.4 percent from 8.95 million during the same period last year, the Jeju provincial government said. The figure is divided into 7.71 million locals and 2.2 million foreigners.The cumulative number of tourists is sure to top 10 million this week, considering that the daily average of visitors is 20,000. The

Nov. 27, 2013

South Korea on Tuesday expressed its displeasure with the European Union's preliminary designation of the country as an illegal fishing nation, noting it has already revised law to intensify fishing regulation set to go into effect early next year, according to a ministry official."South Korea has consistently sought to react to various issues raised by the European Union since last year, and the result of such efforts was the revision to the law on deep-sea fishing, which was legislated in late

Nov. 26, 2013

Japan's air defense zone extends into South Korea's airspace over its territorial waters near the southernmost island of Marado, the defense ministry spokesman said Tuesday.The violation happened because Japan set its air defense identification zone in 1969 when territorial waters of a country were considered to be within three nautical miles from its territorial sea baseline, ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said.The concept of territorial waters was later extended to 12 nautical miles from the

Nov. 26, 2013

STRASBOURG, France (AFP) - Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai was handed the EU's prestigious Sakharov human rights prize Wednesday in recognition of her crusade for the right of all children, girls and boys, to an education.To thunderous applause announcing the European Parliament prize, the assembly's president Martin Schulz praised the 16-year-old activist as "a survivor, a heroine and an extraordinary young woman" and said: "You have given hope to millions of people."Malala, dressed in oran

Nov. 20, 2013

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia suspended on Wednesday the operations of a popular Moscow bank whose board includes a cousin of President Vladimir Putin on suspicion of laundering more than half a billion dollars.Investigators accused managers at Master Bank -- Russia's 75th-biggest by total assets - of stealing more than $600 million (444 million euros) in clients' money and other illegal transactions.The unexpected announcements prompted an unscheduled parliament hearing and left long lines of anxious c

Nov. 20, 2013

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - An Afghan district police chief was killed in an ambush by militants in the volatile southern province of Helmand on Wednesday, officials said.Tooryalai Khan, police chief of Helmand's Marjah district, was leading an operation against Taliban insurgents in the area when he was ambushed early in the morning, said provincial spokesman Omar Zewak.His bodyguard was wounded in the attack.Ismael Hotak, a senior provincial police officer, confirmed the incident and said Kh

Nov. 20, 2013

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A wave of attacks, most of them car bombs targeting Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, killed 33 people on Wednesday in the latest bout of deadly violence to hit Iraq.The bombings and shootings, which left more than 70 people wounded in all, come amid a protracted surge in bloodletting just months ahead of general elections that has forced Iraqi officials to appeal for international help in combating the country's worst unrest since 2008.At least eight explosions, including seven c

Nov. 20, 2013

The ruling Saenuri Party lashed out at a senior Japanese government official Wednesday for calling a revered Korean independence fighter a "criminal" in defiance of Seoul's repeated calls on Tokyo to repent for its colonial past.On Tuesday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga expressed dismay over plans by South Korea and China to set up a monument honoring Ahn Jung-geun, a Korean independence fighter who assassinated Korea's first Japanese governor-general, Hirobumi Ito, in Harbin,

Nov. 20, 2013

South Korea will fly two planes of relief goods to the typhoon-ravaged Philippines this week as part of assistance efforts, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.Two military planes carrying relief goods including food, blankets and hygiene products will head out Thursday morning and arrive in Tacloban -- the area hardest hit by the recent super typhoon -- around 3 p.m., local time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.Seoul earlier this week had pledged to send a 40-man team of res

Nov. 13, 2013

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday accused the Palestinians of creating "artificial crises" as he met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is striving to rescue the fragile peace process.The premier's remarks were made at the start of a meeting with Kerry at a Jerusalem hotel that lasted nearly three hours and came shortly after the Palestinians threatened to bolt the talks over a fresh row about settlements. Kerry arrived in Israel late on Tuesday as rumors swirl

Nov. 6, 2013

BRUSSELS (AP) – The European Union's executive Commission is backing plans to cultivate a genetically modified maize despite the objections of environmental groups which considers it dangerous. Wednesday's approval now sends the plans to approve Maize 1507 to the EU's 28 member nations for consideration and could lead to a decision on the issue as soon as next month. EU member states have sharply diverging views on the cultivation of Genetically Modified Organisms, commonly known as GMOs. The EU

Nov. 6, 2013

BEIJING (AP) – A series of small explosions killed one person and injured eight others Wednesday outside the provincial headquarters of the ruling Communist Party in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan, officials said.Officials gave no word on the target or perpetrators of the blasts, which state media said were caused by homemade bombs. The explosions came during heightened security following a suicide car crash at Tiananmen Gate in Beijing that killed the car's three occupants and two bystand

Nov. 6, 2013

They came as a stark reminder of the seriousness of China’s pollution problem: grim reports of an 8-year-old girl with lung cancer, her disease attributed to the appalling state of the air she breathed.It was perhaps the most bleak in a flurry of recent reports that began when a network of coal-fired power stations was switched on in Harbin, a major city in China’s northeast, as temperatures dropped in the city.Smog days have led schools, roads and airports to close. Satellite pictures showed an

Nov. 6, 2013

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan and Russia held their first high-level defense and diplomatic talks Saturday and agreed to step up cooperation between their militaries amid regional security concerns such as North Korea and China.Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, and their Russian counterparts Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Shoigu also agreed to hold joint military and anti-piracy exercises and establish a defense consultation framework. Their countries' defense ties a

Nov. 2, 2013