LONDON (AFP) ― A Russian supercomputer posing as a 13-year-old boy has convinced judges that it is human, becoming the first to pass the “Turing Test” in a historic moment in artificial intelligence, British scientists said. The computer became the first in the world to be mistaken for a real person more than 30 percent of the time, during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations with huma...

CAIRO (AFP) ― Ex-army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who was sworn in Sunday as Egypt’s president, may have donned civilian clothes but his crackdown on opponents has raised fears he could herald a return to autocracy. Sissi was chosen as president in a May 26-28 election with 96.91 percent of the vote, nearly a year after toppling the country’s first freely elected leader, Islamist Mohamed Morsi....

While Russia’s relationships with the United States and Europe are frayed over the conflict in Ukraine, the newly minted Eurasian Economic Union ― made official during a signing ceremony in Astana, Kazakhstan, on May 29 ― will surely tighten Russia’s ties with former Soviet republics. But that aspect of the newly minted EEU belies the pact’s real winner, Kazakhstan, how the pact could boost econ...

Nam Kyung-pil, the Gyeonggi governor-elect, is a seasoned politician and former journalist who was educated at Yale in the U.S. and Yonsei University in Seoul. The five-time lawmaker of the ruling party won one of the toughest races on Wednesday, beating his rival and NPAD candidate Kim Jin-pyo by a margin of less than 1 percent. The former deputy floor leader has been considered one of the few...

Park Won-soon of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy defeated conservative candidate Chung Mong-joon in the Seoul mayor election Wednesday. Turnout among Seoul’s 8.4 million voters was 58.6 percent. Chung’s defeat in a key battleground district deals a political blow to President Park Geun-hye and the Saenuri Party, but President Park’s past leadership in political crises ha...

BEIJING (AP) ― Born in 1989, Steve Wang sometimes wonders what happened in his hometown of Beijing that year. But his curiosity about pro-democracy protests and the crackdown on them passes quickly. “I was not part of it,” he said. “I know it could be important, but I cannot feel it.” A quarter century after the Communist Party’s attack on demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square on June 4, ...

After three and a half years at the helm of the Defense Ministry, the hawkish Kim Kwan-jin was expected to leave the government to pave the way for a more flexible, conciliatory policy toward North Korea. Yet, he has reemerged as the centerpiece of the Park Geun-hye administration’s security policy as Park seeks to maintain a robust deterrence posture amid Pyongyang’s saber-rattling and menacing...

The Internet, one of the world’s greatest inventions of the 20th century, faces a possible makeover as it is being threatened by a new U.S. rule that can overthrow its openness and indiscriminate accessibility. Concerns over the possible breakdown in net neutrality, in which all Internet data should be treated equally, have been rising especially since the U.S. Federal Communications Commission ...

Presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon is drawing yet more fire from opposition parties in the wake of Ahn Dae-hee withdrawing his nomination for prime minister. Since the Sewol ferry disaster, the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy has been stepping up pressure on President Park Geun-hye to remove Kim from office. The NPAD and other opposition parties accuse Kim of being res...

President Park Geun-hye’s reform efforts aimed at improving safety measures and ending corruption in offices were dealt with a serious blow on Thursday. Prime Minister nominee Ahn Dae-hee, who has been hailed as a corruption fighter, withdrew his nomination on Wednesday afternoon, saying he would be “a burden to the government” if he kept the nomination. Ahn’s abrupt announcement came amid a gro...

Thomas Piketty rejected allegations that data behind his best-selling book on inequality are flawed as fellow economists spoke up in his defense. Piketty, the French economist whose book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has transformed the debate on the causes and consequences of disparities in income and wealth, called a Financial Times analysis of his statistics “just ridiculous.” He adde...

Watch out Naver, here comes Daum and Kakao. The merger between Daum, the nation’s second-largest search engine, and Kakao, the most-used mobile messaging service, surprised many observers, who said that it was a “game-changing move” that can potentially shake things up, at least here in Korea. But globally, they may find it challenging to stand out among heavyweights such as Naver, Facebook, Te...

The falling credibility of KB Financial Group shows no sign of abating, even appearing to further deteriorate amid escalating internal troubles. The country’s largest banking group by assets struggled in 2013 after its flagship unit, KB Kookmin Bank, was rattled by a series of scandals involving illegal loans, and irregularities at its overseas branches. It suffered another serious blow earlier...

Once known as the “people’s prosecutor,” Ahn Dae-hee is now set for the highest unelected government post with much riding on his shoulders. As a “star prosecutor” who made a point of defying political pressure to bring heavyweights on both sides to justice, Ahn has been hailed as the right man to spearhead President Park Geun-hye’s drive to root out corruption from civil service. As the prime ...

Korea prides itself for being superfast at adopting and building new things like none other. It can make planes, trains and automobiles, and even ships, robots and telecommunication networks faster than most. This culture of “ppalli ppalli,” in which everything has to be taken care of in a matter of seconds, has paved the way for it to become one of Asia’s leading economies. But none of those f...