California lawmakers have passed a bill that could make the state the second in the United States to approve self-driving cars on its roads.The bill, passed unanimously by the state senate, will go to Gov. Jerry Brown, who is expected to sign it into law, TG Daily reported Friday.Under the law, the California Department of Motor Vehicles would be required to create standards and licensing procedur

TechnologySept. 3, 2012

South Korean stocks opened higher on Monday but swung to negative territory due to losses in major blue chips, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) fell 9.28 points, or 0.49 percent, to 1,895.84 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Samsung Electronics slumped 2.11 percent following Apple Inc.'s move to add more products to its patent infringement list. Top steelmaker

Sept. 3, 2012

South Korea's consumer prices grew at the slowest click in over 12 years last month amid government efforts to keep inflationary pressure down, a report showed Monday.The country's consumer price index rose 1.2 percent from a year earlier in August, compared with a 1.5 percent on-year gain the previous month, according to the report by Statistics Korea.The so-called core inflation, which excludes

Sept. 3, 2012

Apple adds Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note to infringement list, Samsung seeks counteractionThe patent battle between Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. is intensifying as the U.S.-based tech giant took legal action against the Korean firm’s latest flagship smartphones.Apple added Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note to the list of the products that it claimed infringed its patents when it submitted a revised filing at a U.S. federal court last Friday.Galaxy 3 is the latest in Samsung’s smartphone series,

TechnologySept. 2, 2012

PRETORIA (AFP) ― South African and South Korean researchers are working on making a smartphone capable of doing AIDS tests in rural parts of Africa that are the worst hit by the disease, a researcher said Friday.The team have developed a microscope and an application that can photograph and analyze blood samples in areas far from laboratories to diagnose HIV and even measure the health of immune systems.“Our idea was to obtain images and analyze images on this smartphone using applications,” sai

TechnologySept. 2, 2012

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) ― Twin U.S. satellites rocketed into orbit Thursday on a quest to explore Earth’s treacherous radiation belts and protect the planet from solar outbursts.It’s the first time two spacecraft are flying in tandem amid the punishing radiation belts, brimming with highly charged particles capable of wrecking satellites and endangering astronauts.“We’re going to a place that other missions try to avoid, and we need to live there for two years. That’s one of our biggest cha

TechnologySept. 2, 2012

Scientists in Korea have developed a new way to produce nanosieves, thin layers with holes just millionths of a millimeter across, using an industrial process commonly used to make semiconductors.The discovery could be used to make selectively permeable membranes ― sieves that only allow specific types of particles to move across them. Synthetic membranes of this type have applications ranging from medical and environmental to energy.In a project supported by the Ministry of Education, Science a

TechnologySept. 2, 2012

Korean stocks will likely move sideways this week, with investors eyeing the result of the European Central Bank’s monetary policy meeting scheduled for later in the week, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index finished at 1,905.12 this week, down 0.8 percent from the previous week. It sank into negative territory earlier in the week after top-cap Samsung Electronics nosedived 7 percent on its patent lawsuit defeat to Apple Inc. The KOSPI rebounded after expectations of ec

Sept. 2, 2012

CJ Cheil Jedang Corp. said Sunday that its newly built Chinese plant in Shenyang that processes amino acid, an essential ingredient for animal feed, will start work this month.Costing about $400 million, the Korean company’s Chinese plant is capable of processing about 100,000 tons of lysine, 50,000 tons of threonine and 3,000 tons of nucleic acid per year, the company said.CJ Cheil Jedang claims that once the Shenyang plant is on track, it will obtain a production capacity of 600,000 tons of ly

IndustrySept. 2, 2012

The Korea Electric Power Corp, a state-run power distributor, said Sunday that the company is currently reconsidering its decision to file a suit against the Korea Power Exchange and the assessment committee of market price for electric power. While keeping the lawsuit as a possible but not probable option, the company is looking for different alternatives, a KEPCO official said.The power firm had announced on Aug. 29 that it would sue the two state organizations over an unreasonable power charg

IndustrySept. 2, 2012

BUSAN ― The Korea Communications Commission is getting ready to hold the plenipotentiary conference of the International Telecommunication Union in Busan in 2014, selecting BEXCO as its location.The event is planned to take place for three weeks from Oct. 20, bringing together about 3,000 people, including representatives from government, international organizations and businesses in 193 nations.“We’re planning to show Korea has changed its position from a country with strong information and com

Sept. 2, 2012

Korea’s trade surplus shrank in August from a month earlier as exports fell largely due to jittery external conditions and bad weather, the government said Saturday. The country’s trade balance came to $2.04 billion in the black last month, compared with a surplus of $2.75 billion in July, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. The August figures mark the seventh consecutive month the country has posted a trade surplus since January, when the country’s trade balance went into the red fo

Sept. 2, 2012

WP columnist says Apple should lose possible appeal from SamsungA survey in the U.S. showed that more than half of young American consumers have a skeptical view over a California federal jury’s recent verdict that Samsung violated Apple’s mobile patents.The Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal cited a poll conducted by CouponCodes4U on 2,125 consumers aged between 18 and 30 who said they owned neither an Apple nor Samsung smartphone product.“About 55 percent of the respondents said they d

IndustrySept. 2, 2012

Think tanks project 2%-range growth for this year on falling exports, consumptionThe government is weighing a number of plans including more investment and deregulation to jumpstart the economy as Korea’s growth is expected to slow to below 3 percent this year.Instead of a supplementary budget which it has been negative about, Seoul is set to announce deregulation measures on Monday and an additional state investment of several trillions of won around mid-September.The government is pulling toge

Sept. 2, 2012