BALTIMORE (AP) - Baltimore's top prosecutor charged six police officers with felonies ranging from assault to murder in the death of Freddie Gray, triggering celebrations and a sense of relief in the tension-filled city.                                                                                  State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby (AP)State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Friday that Gray's arrest was illegal and unjustified, and that his neck was broken because he was handcuffed, shackled and pla

Paul McCartney, a member of the legendary band the Beatles, will hold his much-anticipated first-ever concert in South Korea on Saturday.                                                                 Paul McCartney (AP)The concert will take place at Seoul's Jamsil Stadium at 8 p.m. as part of his "Out There" world tour that began in Brazil in 2013.The event has drawn much anticipation as the 72-year-old canceled his previous concert in Seoul due to health problems a year ago.Upon arriving at I

South Korean activists and victims demanded at a U.N. meeting on Friday that Japan should apologize to and compensate Koreans who were taken to Japan as forced laborers and fell victim to the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.The demand was made at the Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It was the first time that the issue of Korean A-bomb victims has been raised at a U.N. meeting.Previous conferences have dealt only with the issue of Japanese victims.The Hiro

South Korea's chief nuclear envoy will visit Washington and Beijing next week for talks with his counterparts on how to restart long-stalled negotiations with North Korea, Seoul's foreign ministry said Friday.Hwang Joon-kook, special representative for Korean peninsula affairs, will meet with his U.S. counterpart, Amb. Sung Kim, in Washington on Monday before visiting Beijing for talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, on Wednesday, the ministry said in a statement also released in Washing

The union of civil servants holds a rally against the pension reform scheme at the National Assembly on Friday. (Yonhap)A task force of government officials, civil servants and experts Friday agreed on a bill that would require civil servants to pay more into and receive less in pension over the next two decades.The task force said the bill would raise contributions by about 30 percent over the coming five years.It also scales back entitlements by about 10 percent over the next 20 years.Entitlem

SANAA (AFP) - Yemen's Shiite rebels said Wednesday that their forces captured Defence Minister Mahmud al-Subaihi as they advanced towards Aden, the port city where President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi has taken refuge."Subaihi was arrested in the city of Houta" in Lahj province, rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said in a statement aired by the militia's Al-Massira television.Yemen's foreign minister called Wednesday for urgent military intervention in his country ahead of an Arab League summit in

BERLIN (AFP) - Budget airline Germanwings said Wednesday there were at least 72 Germans on its plane that crashed in the French Alps, killing all 150 people aboard.Company executive Thomas Winkelmann estimated there had been 35 Spanish victims, a figure far lower than the 49 cited by the Spanish government.Winkelmann said that Germanwings was still working on establishing the nationalities of all the victims, a task complicated by the fact that some passengers had dual nationality.As of 10:00 GM

ROME (AP) - Italian police say they have dismantled a ring of Islamic extremists in Italy and Albania who recruited fighters for the Islamic State group.Three people were arrested, police said in a statement Wednesday, including an Italian of Moroccan origin who purportedly authored an Italian-language IS propaganda booklet for potential Italian jihadis.Police said two others arrested were Albanians: A man who was arrested in Albania and his nephew in Turin. Albanian police identified the uncle

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Yemen's embattled president fled his palace in Aden for an undisclosed location Wednesday as Shiite rebels offered cash bounty for his capture and arrested his defense minister.President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi left just hours after the rebels' own television station said they seized an air base where U.S. troops and Europeans advised the country in its fight against al-Qaida militants. That air base is only 60 kilometers (35 miles) away from Aden, the port city where Hadi ha

The board of KB Financial Group Inc., South Korea's second-largest banking group by assets, has approved a long-protracted takeover of LIG Insurance Co. for 645 billion won ($585 million), officials said Wednesday.The amount is for a 19.47 percent stake in the country's No. 4 non-life insurer and is lower than the 685 billion won price the two parties agreed to in June when they first signed the takeover deal. KB Financial had demanded the price be slashed, citing LIG's poor earnings.The two par

One construction worker was killed and eight others were severely injured after a scaffolding collapsed at a road construction site in Gyeonggi Province on Wednesday, authorities said. The construction site in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, which collapsed on Wednesday (Yonhap)A sole plate fell from a height of 10 meters at 5:20 p.m. when workers were pouring a concrete slab to build a road in Yongin, 49 kilometers south of Seoul, burying 16 under the rumble, officials said.All of them were rescued

A Seoul court on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for a former POSCO executive, allegedly engaging in embezzlement and creation of shady slush funds during a project in Vietnam, to take the suspect into custody.Judges acknowledged the necessity of detaining the ex-POSCO Engineering & Construction executive, surnamed Park, for further investigation by prosecutors, according to the Seoul Central District Court.The allegations raised by the prosecution involve that Park, 52, stashed away company fu

A Seoul court on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Kim Ki-jong, who committed a knife attack on U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert a day before, to take him into custody.Judges from the Seoul Central District Court admitted the suspect’s charges of attempted murder, violence against and obstruction of official duty. The court cited the necessity of investigators' further scrutiny into a variety of allegations after detaining him.  At around 7:40 a.m., Thursday, Kim ran toward the amba

After rejoining his former South Korean team following an unsuccessful U.S. minor league season in the Baltimore Orioles system, right-hander Yoon Suk-min put the blame squarely on himself for his failure to reach the majors.Yoon arrived at Incheon International Airport Friday, hours after the Kia Tigers of the Korea Baseball Organization announced their signing of the pitcher to a four-year, 9 billion won ($8.2 million) contract. It's the largest contract ever handed out to a free agent in the

South Korea needs to think more carefully about how to "balance" its relations with the United States and China, the outgoing South Korean ambassador to China said Friday, warning that China's "assertive diplomacy" could put Seoul in a dilemma.While South Korea has repeatedly stressed the importance of Seoul-Washington ties, analysts say China's rise could put South Korea in a strategic dilemma amid possible conflicts of interests between the U.S. and China in Northeast Asia."Although Korea-Chin

BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraqi forces pressed their offensive against the Islamic State group Friday, expecting to reach the outskirts of the militant-held city of Tikrit, a day after the extremists reportedly “bulldozed” a famed archaeological site in the area.In Paris, the head of the U.N.'s cultural agency said the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage _ such as the latest rampage at Iraq's archaeological site of Nimrud _ amounts to a “war crime.'' The discovery of the treasures of Nimrud's royal

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The United Nations on Friday condemned as a "war crime" the bulldozing by the Islamic State group of the ancient city of Nimrud, the jihadists' latest demolition of Iraq's cultural treasures.After rampaging through Mosul's museum with sledgehammers and torching its library last month, IS on Thursday "bulldozed" the nearby ruins of Nimrud, according to the tourism and antiquities ministry.Antiquities officials said IS militants had moved trucks last week to the site, which overloo

North Korea called on South Korea on Wednesday to take "practical measures" to resume dialogue, criticizing Seoul for not having the will to break the prolonged deadlock in inter-Korean relations.The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea also blamed U.S. "interference" for the current stalemate, saying that it will not believe the South's will for dialogue if the current situation continues. "To talk about dialogue without taking practical measures is not an attitude to truly settle

ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) -- Nearly 1,000 Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been killed battling the Islamic State jihadist group since June, a senior security official said on Wednesday.Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the ministry responsible for the  peshmerga, told a news conference that 999 Kurdish fighters were killed and 4,569 wounded between June 10 and February 3.Previous casualty figures released on December 10 put the toll at 727 killed and 3,564 wounded.IS spearheaded a sweeping of

CAIRO (AP) -- A video purportedly showing Islamic State militants burning a captive Jordanian pilot to death brought an outpouring of grief and rage across the Middle East on Wednesday, its brutality horrifying a region long accustomed to violence.Political and religious leaders offered angry denunciations and called for blood, while at least one wept on air while talking about the killing of 26-year-old Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, whose F-16 crashed in Syria in December during a U.S.-led coalition