Toronto mayor's lawyer chides police

TORONTO (AP) -- A lawyer for Toronto's embattled mayor accused the city's top cop of acting as "judge, jury and executioner" a day after police said they had obtained a copy of a long-rumored video that appears to show Rob Ford puffing on a crack pipe.Ford's lawyer Dennis Morris attacked Police Chief Bill Blair on Friday for saying he was ``disappointed'' in the mayor at a news conference announcing the video had been recovered from a computer hard drive during an investigation of an associate o

Nov. 2, 2013

Chinese minister vows deeper ties with N. Korea

BEIJING -- China's propaganda minister pledged to deepen relations with North Korea during a meeting here with theNorth's media delegation, according to state media Saturday.Liu Qibao, chief of the publicity department of China's Communist Party, made the remarks on Friday when he met with the North Korean delegation led by Kim Won-sok, deputy editor of the North's ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun, Xinhua news agency reported."It's an unswerving principle of the Chinese Party and government

Nov. 2, 2013

S. Korea's chief nuclear envoy to visit U.S. next week

South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator will visit the United States next week to discuss recent developments in efforts to restart the stalled six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Seoul's foreign ministry said Saturday.Cho Tae-yong, Seoul's chief envoy to the six-party talks, plans to meet with his U.S. counterpart, Glyn Davies, and other National Security Council officials during the five-day trip that kicks off on Sunday, the ministry said.Cho's trip comes after Dav

Nov. 2, 2013

S. Korea partners with U.S. under Hague Child Abduction Convention

South Korea has become a formal partner with the United States under a multilateral treaty aimed at the prompt return of wrongfully removed or retained children, the U.S. government said Friday.The 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction entered into force that day between the two nations, according to the State Department.The U.S. now has 72 partners under the treaty, also known as Hague Child Abduction Convention.It is the primary civil law mechanism for par

Nov. 2, 2013

Korean War Memorial in D.C. reborn digitally

The most iconic place to commemorate the Korean War in the U.S. capital has gone electronic, enabling people anywhere to experience it anytime.A Pentagon team dedicated to honoring all veterans of the 1950-53 war on Friday unveiled the Korean War Veterans Memorial Virtual Walking Tour at a website, http://koreanwar60.com/kwm"Korean War veterans and individuals who want to learn more about the Korean War can now access a wealth of information, including videos, electronically regardless if they a

Nov. 2, 2013

India to showcase indigenous missiles in Korean defense fair

India will showcase its domestically developed guided missiles at a defense exhibition in South Korea next week in an effort to reach out to the global arms market, its state defense institute said Friday.A delegation from India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) visited South Korea ahead of the Aerospace and Defense Exhibition (ADEX) set to kick off Tuesday for a six-day run at the Korea International Exhibition Center (Kintex) in Ilsan, just north of Seoul.The Indian weapon

Oct. 25, 2013

Three S. Koreans killed in plane crash in Laos

A Lao airplane crashed Wednesday in the Southeast Asian nation, reportedly killing all 49 passengers and crewmembers aboard, including three South Koreans.The plane crashed into the Mekong River while attempting to land in bad weather at Pakse Airport in Champassak Province in southern Laos, officials said.Lao authorities said there was no report of survivors.State-owned Lao Airlines confirmed the accident, saying its plane was carrying 44 passengers and five crewmembers."There were no news of s

Oct. 16, 2013

Iran nuclear talks to continue in 'a few weeks'

GENEVA(AFP)- Iran and world powers will meet in Geneva in "a few weeks" to continue negotiations over Tehran's controversial nuclear drive, Iran's foreign minister said Wednesday.   "The continuation of the negotiations will be in Geneva in a few weeks," Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his Facebook page.   Iran, the United States and five other world powers revived stalled nuclear talks in Geneva on Tuesday, with Tehran laying out a road map to end the showdown over its nuclear ambitions.   Negoti

Oct. 16, 2013

Myanmar says bomb caused Yangon hotel blast

YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar police said Tuesday a makeshift bomb caused a blast at a luxury Yangon hotel that wounded an American woman, as they questioned several suspects following a series of explosions.Officials voiced fears that the incidents could be aimed at derailing democratic reforms as the country prepares to host a major regional sporting event in December and chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) next year.The American woman was taken to hospital with wounds to her thi

Oct. 15, 2013

Bomb targeting worshippers kills 12 in Iraq

KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) - The Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday began in Iraq Tuesday with a bomb ripping through a crowd of worshippers as they left a Sunni mosque, killing 12 people.Three children, a policeman and an army officer were among the dead from the blast in the northern city of Kirkuk, which also wounded 26 people, police and a doctor said.Bodies, their clothes covered in blood, were placed in the back of a small police pickup truck to be taken away, an AFP journalist at the scene said.Angry and

Oct. 15, 2013

Six-way-talks members, except N. Korea, may meet in Seoul: official

Five of the six nations involved in the long-stalled talks to denuclearize North Korea may hold a meeting on the sidelines of an international cyberspace conference to be held in Seoul later this week, a foreign ministry official said Tuesday.The expected meeting will bring together government officials from South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, five of the six-party-talks members, except North Korea, on the sidelines of the Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013 to be held on Th

Oct. 15, 2013

Nobel academy member says physics decision 'wrong'

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A member of the Swedish institution that awards the Nobel prize for physics publicly contested this year's award, saying the honour for two physicists should have included the CERN laboratory which proved their theories."I think it's wrong," Anders Barany, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences told AFP, commenting after the decision Tuesday, which was delayed for an hour due to "a lot of discussion"."I think those experimental researchers have done incredibly fantas

Oct. 9, 2013

Korean tourists to Japan on sharp rise

The number of South Korean visitors to Japan sharply increased this year despite concerns over nuclear safety there, the state-run tourism agency said Tuesday.According to the Korea Tourism Organization, the number of South Koreans visiting the neighboring country reached 1.56 million in the first seven months of 2013, up 36.6 percent from a year earlier.The figure is the second-largest after China's 2.25 million, the organization said.The number of South Korean visitors to Japan has hovered abo

Oct. 1, 2013

US, Iran leaders talk for first time since 1979

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The United States and Iran took a historic step toward ending more than three decades of estrangement on Friday when President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke by phone and agreed to work on resolving global suspicions that Tehran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.   The 15-minute call capped a week of seismic shifts in the relationship that revolved around Rouhani's participation in the annual U.N. meeting of world leaders. The night before the two lea

Sept. 28, 2013

France says public debt to hit record in 2014

PARIS (AFP) - France said Wednesday its public debt would hit a record 95.1 percent of GDP in 2014, far higher than previous estimates, as it unveiled next year's draft budget for the embattled euro-zone economy.But the government said debt should fall back in 2015, and reiterated a pledge to meet its EU-mandated deadline to bring the public deficit below three percent that year.The draft budget was presented to the cabinet by Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici and Budget Minister Bernard Cazeneu

Sept. 25, 2013