The Boston Marathon bombers were headed for New York's Times Square to blow up the rest of their explosives, authorities said Thursday, in what they portrayed as a chilling, spur-of-the-moment scheme that fell apart when the brothers realized the car they had hijacked was low on gas.New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told interrogators from his hospital bed that he and his older brother had decided spontaneously last Thursday night to drive to New York and lau

World News April 26, 2013

A Boeing engineer said Thursday that the cause of the battery problems that have grounded the company's 787 Dreamliners may never be known.The engineering leader for the 787, Richard J. Horigan, said the root cause of smoldering batteries experienced by the two different 787s may never be known because the evidence was destroyed by heat. “When we say a root-cause we want to know exactly what happened, what size particles caused the cell to vent ... and we may never get there because the evidence

World Business April 26, 2013

Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached the country's northern coast, the military said. Suspicion immediately fell on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.The incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he was in a helicopter in northern Israel at the time of the incident, said he viewed the infiltration attempt wit

World News April 26, 2013

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited the mausoleum for his late grandfather and father on the 81st anniversary of the founding of the country's armed forces, Pyongyang's official media said Friday.Accompanied by members of the ruling Worker's Party of Korea, the Cabinet, the National Defense Commission (NDC) and top military brass, Kim paid tribute at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang on Thursday, which is the birthday of the Korean People's Army (KPA), the Korean Central News Agenc

North Korea April 26, 2013

South Korean stocks opened lower Friday, as investors' sentiment was dented by the rising concerns over the listed firms' first-quarter earnings, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) fell 3.61 points, or 0.18 percent, to 1,947.99 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Carmakers traded bearish, with No. 1 industry player Hyundai Motor falling 0.77 percent and its smaller affiliate Kia Motors losing 0.76 percent. Top auto parts maker Hyundai Mobis shed 1.12 percent.Tec

April 26, 2013

Samsung Electronics Co., the world's top maker of computer memory chips and smartphones, said Friday its first-quarter profit spiked 42 percent from a year earlier, buoyed by robust shipments of its flagship Galaxy S3 handsets.Net profit came to 7.15 trillion won ($6.44 billion) in the January-March period, compared with 5.05 trillion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.Revenue soared 16.8 percent on-year to 52.87 trillion won in the first quarter and operating profit cli

Industry April 26, 2013

Lee Kun-hee, chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., remains South Korea's richest man for the nine straight year while his only son Lee Jae-yong joined the top three spots, Forbes Korea said Thursday.The senior Lee's net worth jumped to US$12.6 billion from $10.8 billion in 2012, according to the Korean language edition of Forbes, as Samsung Electronics' smartphones overtook the iPhone as the world's most popular smartphones last year. He held on to the top post since 2005 when the list was first

Industry April 25, 2013

Boeing reported a better-than-expected first-quarter profit even as it scrambled to fix its grounded 787.The company said on Wednesday that deliveries of the 787 should resume in early May. Most of the 50 planes that have been delivered to airlines will be fixed by the middle of the month, Chairman and CEO Jim McNerney said on the company's quarterly earnings conference call.Resuming deliveries and passenger flights would cap a notable turnaround for Boeing. The three-month grounding over batter

World Business April 25, 2013

With deep cracks visible in the walls, police had ordered a Bangladesh garment building evacuated the day before its deadly collapse, but the factories flouted the order and kept more than 2,000 people working, officials said Thursday. At least 175 people died when a huge section of the eight-story building splintered into a pile of concrete slabs.The disaster in the Dhaka suburb of Savar came less than five months after a blaze killed 112 people in a garment factory and underscored the unsafe c

World News April 25, 2013

With Sunni gunmen beginning to confront the Shiite-led government's security forces head-on in northern and western Iraq, fears are growing fast of a return to full-scale sectarian fighting that could plunge the country into a broader battle merged with the Syrian civil war across the border. With more than 100 people killed over the past two days, it's shaping up to be the most pivotal moment for Iraq since U.S. combat troops withdrew in December 2011.“Everybody has the feeling that Iraq is bec

World News April 25, 2013

The head of an Italian publishing group and a French photographer were charged this month over the publication of intimate photos of Prince William's wife Catherine sunbathing topless in France that sparked a furore.The photos were printed in two publications in September, one of which displayed shots of the former Kate Middleton half-naked having suncream rubbed into her buttocks by William at a private chateau in the south of France.The grainy snaps triggered an immediate furore in Britain, an

People April 25, 2013

Diplomatic tensions between South Korea and Japan escalated Wednesday when Seoul summoned Tokyo's ambassador and expressed "strong regrets" over nationalistic remarks made by Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and visits to a controversial war shrine. South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kyou-hyun summoned Japanese Ambassador Koro Bessho and urged Japan to "correct its distorted understanding of history and anachronistic remarks." The fragile ties between South Korea and Japan came under

Foreign Affairs April 25, 2013