BEIJING (AFP) -- Two-thirds of high-street garments tested in a study by Greenpeace contained potentially harmful chemicals, the group said Tuesday, highlighting the findings with a "toxic" fashion show in Beijing.The environmental campaign group is pushing for fashion brands to commit to "zero discharge of all hazardous chemicals" by 2020 and to require suppliers to publicise any toxic chemicals they release into the environment.Greenpeace said its investigation tested 141 garments from 20 top

The Seoul prosecution service said Tuesday that it was investigating allegations that South Korea's largest drug manufacturer, Donga Pharmaceutical Co., has created slush funds by buying and selling gift cards.Donga Pharmaceutical is suspected of buying tens of million dollars of gift cards by corporate credit cards and resold them to secure cash, prosecution officials said.A gift card is exchanged for cash at a discount at the local black markets.Prosecutors said they were trying to find out th

YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar's president has ordered more than a dozen ministries to repay tens of thousands of dollars "embezzled" by staff, in a rare public move to tackle graft in one of the world's most corrupt nations.The order comes after the auditor general found dozens of cases of "misuse and dishonest actions" involving 15 ministries that stripped nearly $65 million from government coffers over the 2011-12 fiscal year.Around $150,000 is owed by staff at the ministries, who have until March ne

LONDON (AFP) -- UBS trader Kweku Adoboli, who gambled away $2.3 billion of the Swiss bank's money, was found guilty of one count of fraud in London on Tuesday.The jury at Southwark Crown Court was still deliberating on one other charge of fraud and four counts of false accounting between October 2008 and September 2011.Ghanaian-born Adoboli, 32, who stands accused of Britain's biggest ever fraud, admitted the losses but denied any wrongdoing.During the two-month trial he claimed senior managers

Bus drivers vowed Tuesday to begin a naitonwide strike later this week in protest against a bill that redefines taxis as a mode of mass transit and offers them compensation for losses.The debate over whether taxis are public transportation means heated up after a parliamentary committee last week unanimously passed the bill that effectively categorized taxis as a mode of mass transit.The bill has yet to be approved by a full parliamentary session.Expressing immediate opposition to the move, the

France's loss of the top credit rating at Moody's Investors Service may weaken President Francois Hollande's leverage in European budget talks and deepen concern in Germany over its neighbor's lagging competitiveness.The downgrade late yesterday of Europe's second-biggest economy underscores the concern expressed by allies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Socialist Hollande's failure to recognize the urgency of France's woes risks a deepening of Europe's slump."This downgrade will cer

Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co., a major South Korean shipbuilder, said Tuesday that it has won a $239.9 million deal to build industrial tank farms in Saudi Arabia.Under the deal with Sadara Chemical Co., Daewoo E&C will construct chemical storage tanks and other facilities for Saudi Arabia's new tank farms at the Jubail petrochemicals complex on the Persian Gulf coast, the company said in a filing.Sadara Chemical is a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical Co. of the United

JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Israel on Tuesday halted a threatened Gaza ground offensive to give Egyptian-led truce talks a chance as top diplomats flew in to boost efforts to end nearly a week of cross-border violence.The move came as UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged both Israel and Gaza militants to stop their fire "immediately" as he held talks in Cairo aimed at securing a deal between the Jewish state and Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers.And US officials said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would break away

CAIRO (AFP) -- UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday urged all sides to the Gaza conflict to immediately cease their fire, warning at a news conference in Cairo that an escalation will endanger the whole region."All sides must halt fire immediately," Ban said, as an Israeli military operation against rocket-firing militants in Gaza entered a seventh day, with 116 Palestinians and three Israelis killed."Further escalating the situation will put the entire region at risk," he added, sitting alongside Ar

GOMA, Congo (AP) -- A rebel group created just seven months ago seized the strategic provincial capital of Goma, home to more than 1 million people in eastern Congo, and its international airport on Tuesday, according to a rebel spokesman and witnesses.Explosions and machine-gun fire rocked the lakeside city as the M23 rebels pushed forward on two fronts: toward the city center and along the road that leads to Bukavu, another provincial capital which lies to the south. Civilians ran down sidewal

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected Israel's assertion that its strikes on Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip were self-defense, saying the Jewish state is carrying out "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians."No one can say Israel is using its right to self defense," Erdogan told lawmakers from his party in a speech at the Turkish parliament in Ankara today. "Israel is snubbing peace in the region, stomping on international law and carrying out ethnic cleansing against a people.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (AFP) -- Six Palestinians were killed Tuesday in a new wave of Israeli strikes on Gaza, medics said, raising the Palestinian toll from six days of bombardment to 116.The raids ended a night of relative quiet in which no-one was killed for the first time since Israel launched its relentless aerial assault on rocket-firing militants in the enclave on November 14, Palestinian medics said.More than 920 people have been injured in the bombing campaign.Emergency serv

The U.S. ambassador to South Korea voiced optimism Tuesday about the future alliance between the two countries, saying that Seoul-Washington ties will be further bolstered whoever wins the December presidential election here.U.S. President Barack Obama won re-election and South Koreans go to the polls on Dec. 19 to pick their next leader. Some South Koreans are concerned that the current lockstep cooperation between the two countries is unlikely to be sustainable, particularly for the North Kore

Germany sold its last European Union carbon permits for immediate delivery in the bloc's second phase, completing three years of sales that earned the nation almost 3 billion euros ($3.84 billion).Europe's largest economy today sold 868,000 permits at 6.56 euros a metric ton on the European Energy Exchange AG. EEX has hosted 269 German sales of a total 129 million tons starting in 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In 2008 and 2009, the country sold 80 million permits through its sta

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Asia-Pacific nations will launch negotiations for two giant free trade pacts Tuesday that diplomats say may foster warmer ties at a time of deep tensions over multiple territorial rows.China, Japan and South Korea, embroiled in maritime disputes that have frayed diplomatic ties, were due to start talks for a free-trade agreement when their trade ministers met on the sidelines of an Asian summit.Negotiations for a separate Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership involving t

Concentrations in the atmosphere of the three main gases blamed for global warming all rose in 2011 to their highest since records began, the United Nations said.Carbon dioxide, responsible for about 80 percent of the global warming effect of greenhouse gases, gained 0.51 percent to 390.9 parts per million molecules of air, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization said today in an e-mailed bulletin. The methane concentration increased 0.28 percent and the nitrous oxide level rose 0.31 percen

PHNOM PENH (Yonhap News) -- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak headed to the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday after attending a set of annual cooperation summits with Southeast Asian and other Asia-Pacific countries in Cambodia.During a summit with the 10 member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Lee pledged to expand South Korea's development assistance and other aid to the increasingly important region of vibrant economies with high growth potential.Lee also attended a mee

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- President Barack Obama closed his Asian tour in diplomatic talks with leaders of Japan and China, their economic message overshadowed by security tensions over disputed waters and territories. The crisis between Israel and Hamas militants intervened, too, as Obama rushed his top diplomat straight from Cambodia to the Mideast.Obama was wrapping up four days in Southeast Asia on Tuesday and starting the long journey home, where fiscal deadlines and decisions await.On t

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A knife and ax-wielding Israeli man attacked and lightly wounded a security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv on Tuesday before he was apprehended at the scene, police said.Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the assailant was an Israeli citizen in his early 40s. He said man's motive was unknown, but political motives were not suspected and the incident had nothing to do with Israel's battle with Hamas militants in Gaza.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- President Barack Obama dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Middle East on Tuesday as the U.S. urgently seeks to contain the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas.Clinton hastily departed for the region from Cambodia, where she had joined Obama for summit meetings with Asian leaders. The White House said she would make three stops, meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Palestinian officials in Ramallah, in the