The Korea Herald

Italy's Berlusconi to resign after reforms pass

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, right, leaves after attending the the Group of 20 (G20) Cannes Summit, in Cannes, France, on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. (Bloomberg)ROME (AP) _ Premier Silvio Berlusconi promised Tuesday to resign after Parliament passes economic reforms demanded by the Europea

Nov. 9, 2011

Italy's Berlusconi to resign after reforms pass

Europe crisis spreads to Italy

ROME (AP) ― Italy became the latest target in Europe’s financial crisis Monday, as soaring borrowing rates intensified pressure on Premier Silvio Berlusconi to resign and let a new government reform the country’s spendthrift ways.Berlusconi batted away reports that he was considering stepping down in favor of early elections, saying they were “without foundation.”But the prospect of financial disaster was real because of Italy’s huge debts and slow growth. Unlike Greece, Ireland and Portugal ― t

Nov. 8, 2011

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Norman Ramsey dies

BOSTON (AP) ― Norman Ramsey, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in physics for his research into atomic energy levels that led to the creation of the atomic clock and MRI machines, has died, his wife said.Ramsey died in his sleep at a Wayland nursing home on Friday, Ellie Ramsey said Monday. He was 96.Ramsey, an emeritus professor of physics at Harvard University and longtime Brookline resident, wrote in his autobiography for the Nobel Prize he shared with Hans Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul that he was

Nov. 8, 2011

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Norman Ramsey dies

Deadly riot breaks out in Liberia day before vote

MONROVIA (AP) ― Violence broke out at opposition headquarters, killing at least one person hours before Liberia’s presidential runoff on Tuesday, a vote that tests the West African nation’s fragile peace after a devastating civil war.Despite sharp criticism from the United States, the U.N. and election monitors, opposition leader Winston Tubman kept urging supporters to boycott Tuesday’s runoff.Demonstrators clashed with police in one rally backing the boycott, leaving one young man dead inside

Nov. 8, 2011

Deadly riot breaks out in Liberia day before vote

Syrian troops storm Homs district

BEIRUT (AP) ― Syrian troops stormed a restive neighborhood in Homs on Monday, kicking in doors and making house-to-house arrests in an area that has spiraled out of government control after nearly a week of deadly assaults, activists said.The regime is scrambling to clear out Baba Amr, a major center of resistance and reprisal, as Damascus faces potential fallout from the Arab League for defying a peace plan brokered by the 22-nation body with persistent violence. According to activists, more th

Nov. 8, 2011

U.S.: Iran nuke report a case for new sanction

WASHINGTON (AP) ― The United States is increasingly worried by indications that Iran may be on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon, but the latest report on its atomic program from a U.N. watchdog is unlikely to sway the Obama administration from its plan to rely on sanctions and diplomatic pressure, not military threats, to deter Iranian ambitions.Ahead of the release this week of a new report on the Iranian program from the International Atomic Energy Agency, U.S. officials said Monday th

Nov. 8, 2011

U.S.: Iran nuke report a case for new sanction

4th accuser details Cain sexual advance

WASHINGTON (AP) ― A woman who said she sought help finding a job from Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain went before television cameras Monday to add her voice to anonymous sexual harassment allegations by three others, accusing the novice politician of reaching under her skirt and pulling her head toward his crotch.Sharon Bialek said she had come forward about the incident in 1997 to provide “a face and a voice” to support other accusers who have so far remained anonymous in their ch

Nov. 8, 2011

Russian man dug up corpses and kept them

MOSCOW (AP) ― The Russian historian had always been open about his interest in the dead and eagerly described how he loved to rummage through cemeteries, studying grave stones to uncover the life stories behind them.What he failed to mention, according to police, was that he had dug up 29 bodies and taken them back to his apartment, where he dressed them in women’s clothes scavenged from graves and then put them on display.A police video of the man’s apartment in the Volga River city of Nizhny N

Nov. 8, 2011

U.S. poverty at new high: 16 percent or 49.1m

WASHINGTON (AP) ― A record number of Americans ― 49.1 million ― are poor, based on a new census measure that for the first time takes into account rising medical costs and other expenses.The numbers released Monday are part of a first-ever supplemental poverty measure aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty. Although considered experimental, they promise to stir fresh debate over social programs to help the poor as a congressional supercommittee nears a Nov. 23 deadline to make more than

Nov. 8, 2011

Prostitutes, drugs, cock fights in Mexico prison

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico, Nov 7, 2011 (AFP) - Mexican police discovered 19 prostitutes, two sacks of marijuana and 100 roosters for cock fighting in a surprise inspection of a jail in the resort city of Acapulco, authorities said Monday.The discovery came as 500 federal officers prepared to transfer som

Nov. 8, 2011

Prostitutes, drugs, cock fights in Mexico prison

White House says no evidence of extraterrestrials

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sorry, E.T. lovers — the White House says it has no evidence that extraterrestrials exist.The White House made the unusual declaration in response to a feature on its website that allows people to submit petitions that administration officials must respond to if enough

Nov. 8, 2011

White House says no evidence of extraterrestrials

Saddam cell now unlit, dusty and missing a commode

The small cell concealed in a bombed-out villa is dusty now, has no electricity, and its door and toilet are gone, bound for a US museum. But it once held Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.There is no graffiti on the cell's white walls, no remnants of the once-feared dictator's presence.The narrow conc

Nov. 8, 2011

Berlusconi rejects pressure to quit, crisis grows

ROME (AP) -- Premier Silvio Berlusconi rejected reports that he would resign so a new government could more forcefully push through economic reforms, even as Italy's borrowing rates spiked Monday to a euro-era high. In the last few weeks, Italy has become the new focus of the eurozone deb

Nov. 7, 2011

Greece seals coalition deal under EU pressure

Nov. 7, 2011

Dome screen puts Canadian viewers at center of the action

MONTREAL (AFP) ― The audience finds itself inside a giant uterus. Or it flies around cathedral ruins. Or it is transported to a dark, lonely forest.Such are the experiences offered by Satosphere, a new cinema with a massive dome screen in Montreal designed by the Society for Arts and Technology to provide spectators with a 360-degree view of art projections.Eight video projectors splash images over the entire surface of the steel-framed shell, which juts from the roof of the building, while 157

Nov. 7, 2011

U.N. envoy warns of missing Libya arms

TRIPOLI (AP) ― Some weapons depots in Libya have still not been secured properly, and “much has already gone missing” from unguarded sites, the top U.N. envoy in Libya said in an interview Sunday.Preventing more weapons from being smuggled out of country will be difficult, considering the nature of the vast desert nation’s borders, the envoy, Ian Martin, told the Associated Press.“That has to be a priority now, to secure what still remains in Libya,” he said. “Over time, the international commun

Nov. 7, 2011

Arabs to meet on Syria’s failed peace plan

DAMASCUS (AFP) ― The Arab League on Sunday called an emergency meeting on Syria’s failure to implement its peace plan, as forces reportedly killed at least 19 demonstrators after prayers on one of Islam’s holiest days.The announcement that Arab foreign ministers would hold the gathering came on the fourth straight day of deadly violence since Syria agreed to the League’s peace blueprint aimed at ending eight months of bloodshed.The Arab League said a meeting was called for next Saturday because

Nov. 7, 2011

‘Sect bomb attacks possible in Nigeria capital’

LAGOS (AP) ― U.S. officials warned after a weekend of violence and fear that luxury hotels frequented by foreigners and Nigeria’s elite may be bombed by a radical Muslim sect as the death toll from attacks in the country’s northeast rose to more than 100.The warning by the U.S. Embassy shows how seriously diplomats take the threat posed by the outlawed Islamist group known locally as Boko Haram, which previously bombed the United Nations headquarters in the capital, Abuja, killing 24.The unusual

Nov. 7, 2011

Racial politics return with Cain allegations

WASHINGTON (AP) ― Herman Cain’s rise as a presidential contender was supposed to prove that race didn’t matter in the Republican Party. Cain is fast making it the only thing that does.The black conservative is trying to navigate around allegations that he sexually harassed at least three women, implying that the accusations surfaced because he is black. Hours after the claims were reported, Cain’s supporters branded his trouble a “high-tech lynching.” That’s the term coined 20 years ago by anoth

Nov. 7, 2011

Former general wins Guatemalan presidential election

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) ― A former general promising to get tough on rampant crime and drug violence easily won Guatemala’s presidential election on Sunday, marking a shift to the right in the poor Central American nation.Otto Perez Molina of the conservative Patriotic Party won 55 percent of the vote, topping tycoon-turned-political populist Manuel Baldizon of the Democratic Freedom Revival party, who had 45 percent, according to Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal.Perez, 61, is the first former

Nov. 7, 2011