Prosecutors on Friday sought an arrest warrant for an embattled former head of the national tax agency on charges of accepting massive bribes from food and entertainment conglomerate CJ Group.Jeon Goon-pyo, 59, is accused of taking US$300,000 in U.S. bills and high-end watches from CJ Group officials in exchange for favors during a tax audit into the conglomerate in July 2006, shortly after he was named the commissioner of the National Tax Service (NTS), prosecutors said.Prosecutors detained Jeo

Baseball Aug. 2, 2013

South Korean fishery products are nearly free of radiation and safe to eat, the government said Friday, amid renewed public scare over possible contamination from radioactive leakage in Japan over two years ago.So far, South Korea has tested 165 samples of 15 species, including mackerel, cuttlefish and various species of seaweed that are popular delicacies here, according to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.The results showed that 14 species tested were completely free of radiation with what

Industry Aug. 2, 2013

South Korean stocks opened higher Friday due mainly to investor sentiment being boosted by better-than-expected economic data from the United States, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) gained 15.09 points, or 0.79 percent, to 1,935.83 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Shares gathered ground across the board, with Samsung Electronics adding 1.02 percent and leading carmaker Hyundai Motor climbing 2.16 percent. Top steelmaker POSCO moved up 0.76 percent.The U.S.

Aug. 2, 2013

Stocks roared back to record highs on Thursday, driven by good news on the economy.The Standard & Poor's 500, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Russell 2000 index set all-time highs. The S&P broke through 1,700 points for the first time. The Nasdaq hit its highest level since September 2000.The gains were driven by a steady flow of encouraging reports on the global economy.Overnight, a positive read on China's manufacturing helped shore up Asian markets. An hour before U.S. trading starte

World Business Aug. 2, 2013

About two-thirds of smartphones shipped globally in the second quarter ran on Google Inc.'s Android platform, data showed Friday, further cementing its dominance over other operating systems (OS).Shipments of Android-powered smartphones totaled a record 183 million units in the April-June period, according to the data by Strategy Analytics.That translates into the Android platform powering 79.5 percent of smartphones shipped during the cited period, also a record high, the data showed.The surge

Industry Aug. 2, 2013

Defying the United States, Russia granted Edward Snowden temporary asylum on Thursday, allowing the National Security Agency leaker to slip out of the Moscow airport where he has been holed up for weeks in hopes of evading espionage charges back home. The 30-year-old former NSA contractor now has plenty of room to roam throughout the sprawling country and continue the bizarre journey that has already stretched across half the planet _ from Hawaii to Hong Kong to the Russian capital.The move infu

World News Aug. 2, 2013

A former Goldman Sachs trader who earned the nickname “Fabulous Fab” was found liable Thursday in a fraud case brought by federal regulators in response to the 2007 mortgage crisis that helped push the U.S. into recession.A jury reached the verdict at the civil trial in Manhattan federal court of Fabrice Tourre _ a French-born Stanford graduate described by Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers as the face of  “Wall Street greed.” Tourre's attorneys portrayed him as a scapegoat in a downtur

World Business Aug. 2, 2013

Allegations of vote-rigging flowed in Zimbabwe on Thursday, with reports of fake registration cards, voters turned away from the polls and people appearing on voters' lists four times with different IDs. Even before results were announced, the main opposition camp said longtime President Robert Mugabe stole the election, which his supporters denied.Either way, the country faces fresh political uncertainty. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the main challenger to Mugabe, said the elections on Wed

World News Aug. 2, 2013

For the first time in decades of criminal prosecution, a conviction against former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi finally stuck on Thursday, leaving the media mogul with a four-year prison sentence for tax fraud with all of his appeals exhausted. But it's highly unlikely the man who long was Italy's most powerful politician will actually serve out the sentence behind bars.  And while upholding his tax fraud conviction, Italy's supreme court ordered another court to recalculate the duration of

World News Aug. 2, 2013

KT Corp., South Korea's top fixed-line and No. 2 mobile operator, said Friday its second-quarter net profit plunged 44 percent from a year earlier due to increased marketing costs on long-term evolution (LTE) service and one-off costs.Net profit reached 133 billion won ($118 million) in the April-June period, compared with 237 billion won a year earlier, the Seoul-based company said in a regulatory filing.Sales edged up 0.4 percent on-year to reach 5.76 trillion won over the cited period, and op

Industry Aug. 2, 2013

Prosecutors sought an arrest warrant Friday for a former chief of the national tax agency on charges of accepting bribes from food and entertainment conglomerate CJ Group.Jeon Goon-pyo, 59, is accused of taking US$300,000 in U.S. bills and high-end watches from CJ Group officials in exchange for favors during a tax audit into the conglomerate in July 2006, shortly after he was named the commissioner of the National Tax Service (NTS), prosecutors said.Prosecutors detained Jeon shortly after midni

Social Affairs Aug. 2, 2013

A U.S. federal agency on Thursday postponed a final ruling on Apple's patent infringement complaint against Samsung until Aug. 9, apparently reflecting the sensitivity and complicity of the issue.The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) announced that it has decided to extend its deadline to determine whether some smartphones and tablet PCs made by Samsung Electronics Co. infringe on Apple Inc's patents.It gave no specific reason for the delay.In a preliminary ruling in October, the ITC fou

Aug. 2, 2013

Samsung Group said Thursday that it fired the chief of its engineering unit Samsung Engineering Co., holding him responsible for a water tank explosion that killed three workers Friday.A water tank burst during a stress test at a polysilicon plant construction site inside Samsung Fine Chemicals in Ulsan, about 410 kilometers southeast of Seoul. The accident also injured more than 10 workers.According to the police, the 1,300-ton water tank was being filled for the third day to detect any cracks

Industry Aug. 1, 2013