WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Billionaire investor Warren Buffett announced Saturday that a successor has been chosen to lead his Berkshire Hathaway holding company, although he did not identify the person. Buffett, 81, wrote in a letter to investors that Berkshire Hathaway’s board of directors chose his successor and two back-up candidates. “When a transfer of responsibility is required, it will be seaml...

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― A judge who presided over the trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor refused Friday to release him on bail, saying he would be a danger to any community where he might try to practice medicine. Conrad Murray’s lawyer asked for his release pending appeal of his involuntary manslaughter conviction, but Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor said he saw little chance that Murray would pr...

Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering has decided to promote senior executive vice president Ko Jae-ho to its new chief executive. The decision was made when the firm’s CEO candidate recommendation committee on Friday picked Ko out of five candidates. The committee consists of three outside directors of DSME, two people from DSME’s major shareholder Korea Development Bank and one from Kore...

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ― Former South African President Nelson Mandela was hospitalized for a test to determine what is behind an undisclosed stomach ailment, and the country’s current leader said the much beloved 93-year-old icon was in no danger. Mandela, a Nobel peace laureate who spent 27 years in prison for fighting racist white rule, has officially retired and last appeared in public in July 20...

Korean veteran mountaineer Um Hong-gil’s foundation has built its third school for children in Nepal. The Um Hong Gil Human Foundation announced Thursday that it had completed building a new school in Lumbini, some 170 kilometers southeast of Kathmandu. The construction of the school started in April 2011 and it was recently finished with the support of outdoor brand Millet, the Industrial Bank...

WASHINGTON ― At the end of a week when more brave reporters died chronicling President Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter of more than 6,000 of his countrymen, you hear more calls for sending weapons to the embattled opposition militia known as the “Free Syrian Army.” More weapons undoubtedly will flow to the opposition, one way or another, but they’re not going to bring about a democratic Syria. The m...

Suddenly, manufacturing is back ― at least on the campaign trail. But don’t be fooled. The real issue isn’t how to get manufacturing back. It’s how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren’t at all the same thing. Republicans have become born-again champions of American manufacturing, especially given crucial primaries occurring next week in Michigan and the following week in Ohio. Mitt ...

KABUL (AFP) ― NATO on Saturday pulled all its staff out of Afghan government ministries after two U.S. military advisors were shot dead in the interior ministry, as anti-U.S. protests raged for a fifth day. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying it was in revenge for the burning of Korans at a U.S.-run military base ― an incident that forced U.S. President Barack Obam...

U.S. secretary of state warns against return to autocracy; Tunisia was cradle of the Arab Spring revolutions TUNIS (AP) ― U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday warned of backsliding in the democratic transformations under way in the Mideast and North Africa, and appealed for countries in the region to fulfill the promise of reform offered by the Arab Spring. In Tunisia, the...