Stepping back from a confident tone a week earlier, a top White House official said Tuesday that it might not be possible to win congressional approval for pending trade pacts this summer.President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Bill Daley, said the administration remains committed to a plan to send free trade agreements (FTAs) with South Korea, Colombia and Panama to Congress for votes "very soon

TODA (AFP) -- As jackets go it looks far from fashionable, but its Japanese maker cannot meet sky-rocketing demand for "air conditioned" coats with built-in fans.Kuchofuku Co. Ltd -- whose name literally means "air-conditioned clothing" -- has seen orders soar amid power shortages in Japan after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.As parts of the nation sweat out an uncomfortable summe

Amid the increasing popularity of summer camps, the Daily Beast has introduced the top 10 most lavish programs.A program which costs $8,500 for a week topped the list, the site reported. The program called the “Equestrian Teen Tour of Russia,” covers trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg, horse riding education and other cultural activities including opera.Following was “Global Fellows in Social Ente

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) -- Infamous hacker group Anonymous launched Monday its own social network after being rejected by Google's freshly-launched online community."Today we welcome you to begin anew," the hacker alliance said at the website anonplus.com, which it described as a platform to distribute information."Welcome to the Revolution -- a new social network where there is no fear... of censorsh

People with personality traits of high neuroticism and low conscientiousness are likely to go through cycles of gaining and losing weight throughout their lives, according to an examination of 50 years of data in a study published by the American Psychological Association.Impulsivity was the strongest predictor of who would be overweight, researchers found. Study participants who scored in the top

South Korea plans to restrict domestic and foreign banks from investing in foreign currency bonds sold within the country for the purpose of won conversion, in a bid to curb short-term foreign debt, the central bank said Tuesday.Since May, the Bank of Korea (BOK) and the financial watchdog have been inspecting banks' handling of so-called "kimchi bonds,"foreign-currency debt sold by local and fore

South Korea's state auditor is expected to conduct a special probe as early as later this month to determine the cause behind the frequent malfunctions involving the country's high-speed trains, an official source said Monday.The source said Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) chairman Yang Kun stressed at a meeting of senior officials that there is a need for a full and detailed examination into

SK Telecom’s latest bet for a stake in Hynix Semiconductor is not as reckless as the markets would like to believe. The telecom company’s recent decision to bid for the world’s No.2 memory chipmaker was actually a plan devised by parent company SK Group to gain more leverage in the telecom and handset industry via memory technology, industry sources told The Korea Herald on Monday.“SK knows that h

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Ronald Lewis' beard has turned partially white since he was in Korea nearly 40 years ago, but his brown eyes are the same. And an ostracized girl in a poor Korean village he befriended in 1972 — who went on to become a singing star in South Korea — never forgot them.Lewis and Kim Insoon, now known as Insooni, were reunited Saturday in Northeast Wilmington. Insooni is in the

Emma Veness, a 26-year-old pregnant woman in the U.K., feels  compelled to eat furniture polish even though she knows her eating disorder could harm her baby. Veness has been diagnosed with a rare eating disorder named pica, and requires medical help according to reports.Her bizarre habits started when she ate bubbles while taking baths as a child. Ever since her pregnancy she began eating polish

An online campaign urging women to rip off their clothes in support for Vladimir Putin is spicing up Russia’s tense presidential race. The movement was launched by a group called “Putin’s Army,” which opened its homepage on Russia’s leading social-networking service, vkontakte.ru/armiaputina, over the weekend. A video clip on the site features three young women asking Russian girls to tear off the

 

South Korea and Japan will start working-level consultations early next month on the return of more than 1,200 volumes of ancient Korean royal archives that Japan took during its 1910-45 colonial rule, foreign ministry officials said Monday. The planned consultations, which will come about nine months after Japan promised to hand them over to South Korea in a goodwill gesture, are aimed at discuss

PARIS (AP) -- Scientists in Australia are reporting encouraging early results from a simple eye test they hope will give a noninvasive way to detect signs of Alzheimer's disease.Although it has been tried on just a small number of people and more research is needed, the experimental test has a solid basis: Alzheimer's is known to cause changes in the eyes, not just the brain. Other scientists in t

SANDWICH (AFP) -- Darren Clarke held his nerve to clinch victory at the British Open here Sunday, becoming the oldest winner of the championship in 44 years as he ended his long wait for a Major. The popular 42-year-old from Northern Ireland kept his cool in demanding conditions to card a level-par 70, leaving him five under for the tournament and three strokes clear of Americans Phil Mickelson an

CAIRO (AFP) -- Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, whose health was the subject of contradictory reports on Sunday two weeks before he was due to face trial on August 3 for murder and corruption, enjoyed near absolute power for three decades as president before being toppled in February.The health ministry denied a report that he had gone into a "full coma" at the hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh where he has been

LONDON (AFP) -- Britain's most senior police officer Paul Stephenson resigned on Sunday, citing allegations about Scotland Yard's links to Rupert Murdoch's empire amid the phone-hacking scandal."I have this afternoon informed the Palace, the Home Secretary and the Mayor of my intention to resign as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service," Stephenson said in a statement.British police have

China disclosed a J-10 fighter jet base to the visiting South Korean defense minister last week, a defense official in Seoul said Sunday, a move signaling Beijing's intent to further strengthen bilateral defense and military exchanges.South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin visited a Chinese air force training base in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, on Saturday, the last day of his three-day visit

Dragging its feet on food aid for North Korea, the United States is sending the wrong signal to the international community that the communist nation is not in urgent need of food handouts, an expert said."Taking no decision is really a decision," Roberta Cohen, human rights specialist at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said in a recent report.She said that a delay in the U.S. decision

Apple Inc. may have violated local laws when it tracked the whereabouts of iPhone users, which if found to be true could spell bigger trouble for the California-based company.Sources close to the situation said tracking and storing information on the location of the users may have infringed on domestic laws on location information. In Korea, it is illegal to collect information about the location