SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Teachers and aspiring teachers will be permanently barred from working at schools, if they have a record of being convicted or fined for sex crimes, the government said Friday, announcing a set of new measures to crack down on sexual abuse of young students, especially disabled teens. The measures call for raising the maximum jail term for rapists of the disabled from the curre...

SEOUL, Oct. 7 (Yonhap) -- South Koreans begin to use mobile phones at the age of 10.4, with nine out of 10 elementary and secondary students in the nation possessing one, a recent survey showed Friday. According to the survey conducted by Dankook University's medical school between Aug. 22-26, 91 percent of 6,052 elementary, middle and high school students nationwide were using their own cell ph...

Rep. Park Geun-hye, former chairwoman of the ruling Grand National Party, at last declared that she will back the party’s campaign for the upcoming Oct. 26 by-elections. In doing so, she added momentum to Na Kyung-won, who registered herself as Seoul mayoral candidate on Thursday. “I shall discuss the detailed processes with corresponding party officials,” said Park on Thursday. She also said ...

MOSCOW (AP) _ The widely publicized incident in which Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pulled up ancient Greek jug fragments from the seabed on a diving expedition was staged, his chief spokesman said. The August dive in the Kerch Strait that connects the Black and Azov seas was reported extensively in Russian and overseas media. Putin is noted for his habit of appearing in vigorous and adv...

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56, left an indelible mark on the world with his uncanny ability to marry hard-core technology with an understanding of human nature. In a rare personal moment at one of his last press events, he displayed a huge picture of street signs showing the intersection of "technology" and "liberal arts," saying that it was ther...

SEOUL, Oct. 6 (Yonhap) -- Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking North Korean defector, had sought to create North Korea's interim government before he died last year, his adopted daughter said Thursday. Hwang, a former secretary of the North's ruling Workers' Party, drafted a plan on how to set up the organization as part of efforts to prepare for the potential unification with North Korea, Kim Su...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. scientists used a cloning technique to create the type of customized stem cells that show promise for treating disease. But the first-of-its-kind result comes with a big hitch. The newly created stem cells have too much genetic material to function properly. They include DNA from two people, not just the patient the cells were meant to match. Scientists still have to figur...