A homegrown documentary film about an elderly couple has surpassed the 3 million mark in attendance, setting a new record for a local documentary, an official box-office tracker said.   "My Love, Don't Cross That River" had attracted 3,039,536 moviegoers as of Thursday, breaking the previous record of 2.92 million viewers held by "Old Partner" (2009), according to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).   Released on Nov. 27, the film by director Ji Mo-young became the first local indie film to draw 10

Film Dec. 26, 2014

A roadside bomb struck an Egyptian army vehicle late Thursday killing an officer and a soldier in the insurgent flashpoint of the Sinai Peninsula, security officials said.   The attack occurred south of the town of El-Arish, scene of frequent attacks by Islamist militants on security forces.   One army officer and a soldier were killed in the blast, while another soldier was wounded.   Egypt's military has been battling an insurgency on the peninsula since it overthrew Islamist president Mohamed

World News Dec. 26, 2014

Europe will be "vulnerable" if it does not regard viruses as a "national security issue" like the United States, the microbiologist who discovered Ebola said in an interview published Friday.   "It's time the UK and Europe had a well-trained corps of people who are globally experienced and deployable," Peter Piot told the British daily The Independent.   "We don't have that and that makes us vulnerable," said the Belgian scientist, who is director of the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine i

World News Dec. 26, 2014

Online hackers have taken credit for an online service outage of Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox game consoles Thursday that occurred as people unwrapped their new toys Christmas morning.   PlayStation and Xbox acknowledged the outages of their networks on Twitter and said they were working to restore service.   A Twitter user going by the name "Lizard Squad" took credit for the outage, claiming they had the "nation on strings."   The account did not return request for comment and only b

World News Dec. 26, 2014

Former US president George H. W. Bush is spending Christmas night at a Texas hospital, his third overnight stay after experiencing breathing problems, his spokesman said Thursday.   The 41st president "had another terrific day and is in great spirits," his spokesman Jim McGrath said, without explaining why the president was being hospitalized an extra night.   His wife Barbara, his son Neil and daughter-in-law Maria Bush visited him at hospital.   Bush, 90, was admitted late Tuesday to Houston M

World News Dec. 26, 2014

Japan's factory production suffered a surprise drop and inflation continued to slow in November, official data showed Friday despite Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pro-spending policy blitz to stoke growth.   November industrial production fell 0.6 percent from the previous month, the industry ministry said, against a market forecast for a 0.8 percent rise.   "Industrial production fluctuates indecisively," the ministry said in a monthly report, leaving unchanged its overall assessment despite the

World News Dec. 26, 2014

Colombia's FARC guerrillas on Thursday announced that they would release a soldier they captured last week "in the coming days," calling the move a humanitarian gesture.   The decision came in the wake of a unilateral ceasefire the leftist rebels began Saturday during peace negotiations to end Latin America's longest-running insurgency after more than 50 years.   "Today we have launched a special humanitarian protocol for the release of Carlos Becerra Ojeda, a professional soldier captured in co

World News Dec. 26, 2014

Pope Francis on Thursday roundly condemned jihadist violence and the "brutal persecution" of religious minorities in a Christmas message to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics and millions of others.   Speaking to a packed crowd outside Saint Peter's Basilica, the popular Argentine pontiff also made a strong call to end violence wrought against children amid "indifference and tears."   His second traditional "urbi et orbi" message (to the city and to the world) comes at the close of a year plagued

World News Dec. 26, 2014

Sudan has ordered two senior United Nations officials to leave, a UN spokesman said Thursday, after a recent spike in tensions between Khartoum and the peacekeeping mission in Darfur.   The UN resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator Ali Zaatari and the UN Development Programme country director Yvonne Helle were asked by the government to leave, a UN staffer said.    Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UN has protested the expulsions.    "The UN has filed a protest with the government

World News Dec. 26, 2014

The South Korean men's national football team will begin its quest for the elusive AFC Asian Cup title on Saturday, with an eclectic mix of veterans and neophytes hoping to end the country's long drought at the top continental competition.   The 2015 Asian Cup will kick off Jan. 9 in Australia. According to the Korea Football Association (KFA), South Korea, coached by former German international Uli Stielike, will leave for Sydney on Saturday and set up its base camp there.   Stielike unveiled S

Soccer Dec. 26, 2014

"The Interview," a Sony Pictures comedy that has drawn huge attention at home and aboard due to North Korea's alleged cyber-attack and threats against its release, hit the screens at hundreds of theaters in the United States on Christmas Day, Thursday.   The movie, involving a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, has become a symbol of freedom of expression since Sony canceled its Christmas Day release last week after hackers disrupted its computer network and threatened attacks

Film Dec. 26, 2014

North Korea has increased the number of its air force troops by 10,000, while reducing that of army soldiers by the same amount, a South Korean government data showed Thursday.   The total number of the North's armed forces stood at 1.19 million as of the end of 2013, according to the defense ministry's update of its assessment of the communist nation's military power.   "There seems to be no change in the general size of the North Korean military. But it transferred some aviation units in the a

Defense Dec. 25, 2014

Ukraine took a historic step toward NATO on Tuesday in a parliamentary vote that stoked Russia's anger ahead of talks on ending the ex-Soviet state's separatist war.   Lawmakers in the government-controlled chamber overwhelmingly adopted a bill dropping Ukraine's non-aligned status -- a classification given to states such as Switzerland that refuse to join military alliances and thus play no part in wars.   President Petro Poroshenko had vowed to put Ukraine under Western military protection aft

World News Dec. 23, 2014

SK Gas Co., a unit of South Korea's third-largest conglomerate SK Group, said Tuesday that it will sell half of its 1.96 percent stake in Hong Kong-listed China Gas Holdings to its affiliate SK E&S Co., a local city gas provider, for 79 billion won ($71.7 million).    The stake sale aims to secure funds to acquire Dongbu Power Dangjin Corp., the operator of a coal-fired thermal power plant in South Chungcheong Province, and push for a project to build a propane dehydrogenation plant which produc

Industry Dec. 23, 2014

India's birth rate declined dramatically in the last two decades due in part to rising female literacy, a new study shows, but experts warned against complacency in the country of 1.2 billion.   The Total Fertility Rate -- the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime based on current trends -- fell to just 2.3 last year from 3.6 in 1991, according to official figures released on Monday.   Improvements in female literacy were having "a direct impact on fertility", said the r

World News Dec. 23, 2014