LONDON (AFP) ― Global banking giant HSBC will announce this week plans to axe between 10,000 and 15,000 jobs in the coming year as part of a drastic cost-cutting drive, a report said Saturday. The bank, headquartered in London but with a major focus on Asia, will unveil the job cuts on Monday as it posts its half-year results, Britain’s Sky News television reported, without citing its sources. ...

JERUSALEM (AP) ― Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets nationwide on Saturday to protest rising housing prices in the largest turnout in a grass-roots movement that began two weeks ago and is demanding steps from the government to ease the burden. The protests over housing costs have tapped into wider discontent among Israelis over the high cost of living and the growing gaps between...

Automakers agreed to double the fuel economy of the vehicles they sell in the U.S. to a fleetwide average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, President Barack Obama said. The White House negotiated the proposal, which will take effect in 2017, with automakers including General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. The administration proposed a 56.2 mpg requirement last month, up from a...

Samsung Electronics, the world top television and memory chip maker, posted its operating profit for the second quarter of 3.75 trillion won ($3.55 billion), down 25.2 percent from the same period last year. The company also announced it recorded 39.44 trillion won in revenue ― a 4-percent increase year-on-year ― and 3.51 trillion won in net income from April-June, down 18 percent compared to la...

Korea’s business community is coming forward to help those affected by the heavy rains that wreaked havoc across the country this week. On Friday, some of the country’s largest conglomerates said they would provide money, goods and repair services for those affected by the rains. Among them, Hyundai Motor Group put forward 5 billion won ($4.7 million) for the nationwide relief efforts. The auto...

Thousands are voicing their anger with SK Communications online after it was found that personal information of 35 million online users had been hacked this week, an event that marked the country’s worst security breach. More than 3,200 people registered to voice their opinions in an online community (http://cafe.naver.com/hacknate) designed to take collective action against the company which op...

Legislation to raise ceiling and cut $1tr on hold as votes fail to materialize WASHINGTON (AP) ― An intensive endgame at hand, Republican leaders abruptly postponed a vote Thursday night on legislation to avert a threatened government default and slice federal spending by nearly $1 trillion. “The votes obviously were not there,” conceded Rep. David Dreier, R-California, after Speaker John Boehn...

An Asiana Airlines cargo flight bound for Shanghai Pudong International Airport crashed off the coast of Jeju early Thursday while diverting to the island due to a fire in the cargo hold. “The cargo plane said in its last communication with the control center in Shanghai that there was a fire in the cargo hold,” Kim Han-young, Director General of Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs’...