Former Congolese rebel commander Thomas Lubanga (Center), sits in a court room the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the Netherlands, 14 March 2012. (Yonhap)International judges on Friday awarded $10 million in damages to child soldiers recruited into the ranks of a brutal Congolese militia by former warlord Thomas Lubanga.The judges at the International Criminal Court set "the sum of reparations for which Mr Lubanga is liable as the total sum of $10 million," presiding judge Marc Perr

World Dec. 15, 2017

Walt Disney Co. said Thursday it had reached a deal to buy 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion (44.3 billion euros) in stock, solidifying its position as a producer of entertainment content as it faces new rivals from Silicon Valley.The deal will see Disney acquire film and television studios, cable entertainment networks and international TV businesses, bringing popular entertainment properties including X-Men, Avatar, The Simpsons, FX Networks and National Geographic into Disney's portfolio.21s

World Business Dec. 14, 2017

A North Korean defector interrupted a United Nations human rights press conference in Seoul on Thursday to plead tearfully to be allowed to go back to her relatives in Pyongyang.More than 30,000 North Koreans have fled poverty and repression in their isolated homeland to move to the South. But they often struggle to make a living in the capitalist South and sometimes fail to adjust to their new lives.Dressmaker Kim Ryon-Hui arrived seven years ago but has since has made several desperate attempt

North Korea Dec. 14, 2017

NEW YORK (AFP) - Facebook, in a bow to transparency, has announced it plans to declare certain ad revenues in the country where they are made and not in Ireland, where it has a greater tax advantage.　The social networking giant said the move was in response to pressure from governments and policy makers for greater visibility into sales made in their countries.　“In simple terms, this means that advertising revenue supported by our local teams will no longer be recorded by our international headq

World Business Dec. 13, 2017

Former basketball star Dennis Rodman is perhaps the only person in the world to call both US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un "friend". The ex-Chicago Bulls power forward -- who has swigged vodka with Kim and been fired by Trump on "Celebrity Apprentice" -- believes the two unpredictable leaders "are pretty much the same people". "They love control," Rodman told AFP Tuesday in Beijing, adding that warnings of nuclear peril are harmless "entertainment"."Ain't nobody got

North Korea Dec. 12, 2017

The US military is reportedly in talks with South Korea on the timing of large-scale annual military exercises that always infuriate nuclear-armed Pyongyang and could coincide with next year's Winter Olympics.The Foal Eagle and Key Resolve drills usually start in late February or early March and involve tens of thousands of troops from the two allies, which say they are purely defensive.(Yonhap)The North, though, sees them as rehearsals for invasion, and they always ratchet up the already high t

Defense Dec. 12, 2017

A new high-quality counterfeit $100 bill has been found in South Korea, bank officials said Tuesday, prompting suggestions the sanctions-hit North might have resumed forging "supernotes".A team of forgery specialists at KEB Hana Bank have confirmed that a $100 note found at a Seoul branch in November was a fake which was almost impossible to distinguish from real banknotes, they said."It was the first of a new kind of supernote ever found in the world," Yi Ho-Joong, head of t

Market Dec. 12, 2017

Pregnant women struggling to bag a seat on the famously packed Tokyo subway could find their salvation in a new app connecting them with nearby passengers willing to give up their coveted perch.The digital match-making app being trialled this week on the metro aims to overcome two problems especially prevalent in Japan: passengers generally have their nose buried in their phones and talking is strictly frowned upon.The service allows a pregnant woman to send a message when she wants a seat. (Yon

World News Dec. 12, 2017

Charles Jenkins, a US Army deserter who spent four decades in communist North Korea and married a Japanese woman abducted by Pyongyang, has died at the age of 77, officials said on Tuesday.According to the Asahi Shimbun daily, his daughter found him collapsed outside their house on Monday and called the emergency services.He later died of heart problems at a hospital in the northern city of Sado, according to the local government. In this July 18, 2004 file photo, former U.S. Army deserter to No

North Korea Dec. 12, 2017

NEW DELHI (AFP) -- India's opposition Congress party named Rahul Gandhi as its new leader on Monday after years of speculation, calling it a "historic occasion". Rahul Gandhi. AFP-YonhapSenior Congress leader Mullappally Ramachandran said the 47-year-old had stood unopposed for election as the president of the party his family had led for generations."I hereby declare Shri Rahul Gandhi elected as the President of the Indian National Congress," he told reporters outside the Congress headquarters

World Dec. 11, 2017

Demoralized and divided, France’s traditional center-right party is expected to move closer to the far-right on Sunday when it picks a new leader to take on centrist President Emmanuel Macron.The Republicans party, which represents the dominant conservative force in post-war French politics, will almost certainly turn to 42-year-old Laurent Wauquiez as it looks to recover from a disastrous 2017. This combination of file pictures created on Oct. 26 shows the three official candidates for the pres

World News Dec. 11, 2017

Setsuko Thurlow, 85, was 13 years old when she was rescued from the ruins of the world’s first atomic bombing in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.On Sunday she receives the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, along with its head Beatrice Fihn.Here is how Thurlow recalled the horrors of that day 72 years ago, in her speech during the ceremony in Oslo: Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize 2017, Japanese Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the atomic bombings o

World News Dec. 11, 2017

Japanese police on Saturday arrested three North Korean crew members for suspected theft, a spokesman said, amid a fresh wave of North Korean "ghost ship" fishing vessels washing up in Japanese waters.The three were among the 10 North Korean "fishermen" spotted aboard a tiny wooden boat struggling in bad weather off the northern island of Hokkaido late last month.The 45-year-old captain and two other crew members, who all identified themselves as North Korean nationals, were arrested on suspicio

North Korea Dec. 9, 2017

North Korea blamed US "nuclear blackmail" for soaring tensions over its weapons programme in rare meetings with a senior UN official, but agreed to regular communication with the organisation, state media said Saturday.Jeffrey Feltman arrived in Beijing Saturday after wrapping up a five-day visit to Pyongyang aimed at defusing the crisis, just a week after North Korea said it test-fired a new ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.His trip -- the first by a UN diplomat of his ra

North Korea Dec. 9, 2017

Japan plans to purchase offensive air-to-surface missiles to counter North Korea's rising military threat, its defence minister said Friday, a move likely to stir debate over its decades-long pacifist policy.Itsunori Onodera said the ministry intends to request a special budget for the fiscal year starting April 2018 to purchase long-range cruise missiles deployed on fighter jets. (Yonhap)According to local media, the ministry plans to buy JASSM and LRASM long-range, air-to-ground missiles with

World News Dec. 8, 2017