Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans rallied Friday in the freezing cold to celebrate the country's rocket launch, staging a choreographed show of defiance under their youthful leader's "endless" wisdom.The enormous rally in central Pyongyang, shown on state television, came two days after the launch of the three-stage rocket and just ahead of the anniversary Monday of the death of new leader Kim Jong-un's father.The West fears the launch has taken the nuclear-armed state a step closer to firi

North Korea Dec. 14, 2012

Police may summon incumbent prosecutors on suspicions that they leaked a photo of a woman who allegedly had sex with one of their fellow prosecutors in a high-profile sex scandal, sources at Seoul police said Friday. Seocho Police Station is currently analyzing files handed over by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office’s internal inspection team. “The inspection team has reported to the police four officials who created the image file and their two accomplices,” said a lead prosecutor of the prosecuti

Social Affairs Dec. 14, 2012

Taxis run by companies caused fewer car accidents after most of them installed black boxes, while a bill that requires all vehicles to be equipped with black boxes awaits parliamentary approval.The number of accidents involving company-run cabs fell 17.7 percent from 2007 to 20,331 last year, when most cabs were equipped with black boxes, according to the General Insurance Association of Korea and the Korea Transportation Institute.Starting with Incheon in 2008, local governments had black boxes

Social Affairs Dec. 14, 2012

The government said Friday it will push to increase the number of public day care centers and expand support for female non-regular workers as part of efforts to relieve women's burden for childcare and strengthen their social status. Setting priorities on the eradication of gender inequality and balance between work and family roles, the government put forth the five-year policy blueprint for women set to be launched next year. Under the envisioned plan, more public day care centers will be est

Social Affairs Dec. 14, 2012

Little Miss Muffet could have been separating her curds and whey 7,500 years ago, according to a new study that finds the earliest solid evidence of cheese-making.Scientists performed a chemical analysis on fragments from 34 pottery sieves discovered in Poland to determine their purpose. Until now, experts weren't sure whether such sieves were used to make cheese, beer or honey. Though there is no definitive test for cheese, Richard Evershed at the University of Bristol and colleagues found larg

Food Dec. 14, 2012

Action hero Jackie Chan provoked a furious fight-back from Hong Kongers Thursday after reportedly suggesting in a Chinese magazine interview that protest in his native city should be restricted.The comments from the Hong Kong-born star unleashed a wave of criticism in the southern Chinese city, which prides itself on the upholding of civil liberties including the right to protest.“Hong Kong has become a city of protest. The whole world used to say it was South Korea. It is now Hong Kong,” the So

Culture Dec. 13, 2012

North Korea's satellite delivered by its long-range rocket was circling the Earth with an orbital period of 95.4 minutes, Seoul's defense ministry said Thursday, but it was not yet known whether it was functioning properly. A day after the communist state's successful, surprising multistage rocket launch, the defense ministry acknowledged that the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite was circling the Earth at a speed of7.6 kilometers per second, citing data by the North American Aerospace Defense Command,

North Korea Dec. 13, 2012

The U.N. Security Council will meet Wednesday to discuss North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket in defiance of threats of sanctions, a Western diplomat said."The Japanese and the Americans have requested a Security Council meeting, which will take place late Wednesday morning" around 11:00 am (1700 GMT), the diplomat said.Japan's chief government spokesman Osamu Fujimura told reporters in Tokyo that the Japanese envoy had already called for U.N. Security Council president Morocco to "swiftl

North Korea Dec. 12, 2012

A Florida entrepreneur says he is raising money for his business by auctioning off the rights to give him a new last name.Jason Sadler, 30, of Jacksonville said he is auctioning the rights to companies online and will adopt the winning company's moniker as his last name for all of 2013, CNN Money reported Monday.The auction began Nov. 1 and ends Wednesday. Sadler said he had 19 bids in the first 24 hours of the auction.The current high bidder, headphone company JLabAudio, is promising $34,500 fo

World News Dec. 12, 2012

Smartphones may soon have the capability of seeing through walls courtesy of a tiny, low-cost imaging chip, U.S. researchers say.Two electrical engineers at the California Institute of Technology have invented tiny inexpensive silicon microchips that generate and radiate high-frequency electromagnetic waves, called terahertz waves.These waves are in a largely unused region of the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and far-infrared radiation and can penetrate a host of materials without

Technology Dec. 12, 2012

South Korea "strongly" condemned North Korea's long-range rocket launch on Wednesday as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, saying the communist nation will have to bear "grave responsibility" and face deeper isolation."This launch is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions ... and a threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula and around the world," Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said, reading a government statement issued after an emergency meeting of the National Secur

North Korea Dec. 12, 2012

The head of a U.S. congressional panel strongly condemned North Korea's launch of a multi-stage rocket on Tuesday."North Korea has once again defied the United Nations, its Six-Party partners, and the world by launching a long-range rocket under the guise of a so-called 'satellite test,'" U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement."It is clear that Pyongyang is moving ever closer towards its ultimate goal of producing a nuclear ba

North Korea Dec. 12, 2012