Hyundai Motor Co. and its sister carmaker Kia offered a formal apology Sunday following reports that they have overstated gas mileage on roughly 900,000 vehicles sold over the past two years in the United States.The leading South Korean automakers, however, stressed that the overstatement was unintentional."We sincerely apologize for these errors, and our top priority is to make things right for you," Hyundai and Kia said in a full-page statement carried by the Washington Post.The troubled firms

A U.S. airman is suspected of assaulting a young boy Friday on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, authorities said. The incident comes just two weeks after a curfew was imposed on all 52,000 U.S. troops in Japan after the arrest of two Navy sailors for allegedly raping a local woman.Authorities on Okinawa said the 24-year-old airman was suspected of entering an apartment and punching the 13-year-old boy before breaking a TV set and trying to escape through a third-floor window. The airman

Six Chinese government ships temporarily cruised in the territorial waters of disputed Tokyo-controlled islands on Friday, Japan's coastguard said.Four maritime surveillance ships entered the 12-nautical-mile zone around one of the East China Sea islands shortly before noon (0300 GMT) but moved out nearly two hours later, the coastguard said.They were sailing near Uotsurijima, the main islet of the disputed chain called the Senkaku Islands in Japan and the Diaoyu Islands in China.Then two fisher

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent in October from 7.8 percent the prior month, the government said Friday in a highly anticipated report ahead of the November 6 election.Though the jobless rate ticked up a notch, the economy added 171,000 jobs in October, well above expectations.The Labor Department said the unemployment rate was "essentially unchanged" at 7.9 percent, and noted job growth in professional and business services, health care and the retail sector.The number of unemplo

South Korea and India agreed on Friday to provide a combined $1.1 billion worth of financial support for their bilateral business cooperation, the finance ministry said.The agreement was signed during the finance minsters' meeting held in central Seoul earlier in the day between the two countries, according to the ministry.Under the agreement, both will provide the financial support through their own export-import banks over the next five years to companies seeking to join in infrastructure cons

A Chinese man currently jailed for attacking the Japanese Embassy in Seoul earlier this year will stand trial to decide if he will be extradited to Japan, officials here said Friday.In accordance with an extradition treaty with Tokyo, Seoul's Justice Ministry requested a local court to make a decision on whether to hand over the 38-year-old man surnamed Liu to Japan, after his release from a Seoul prison next Tuesday, the officials said. Liu received a 10-month term for hurling Molotov cocktails

SK Planet Co., an affiliate of South Korea's top mobile carrier SK Telecom Co., said Friday it has signed an agreement with Japan's largest game developer Sega to strengthen its mobile game business.Under the memorandum of understanding, the two companies will cooperate on marketing and distributing Sega's mobile games in the local market, SK Planet said in a press release. SK said it plans to release Sega's "The Clan Battle" early next year after introducing the mobile game at the upcoming G-St

The nation's top court has ruled that cattle born in other areas but raised in Hoengseong for a certain period of time can be labeled as "Hoengseong hanwoo," officials said Friday.Hoengseong is a rural area in Gangwon Province, about 137 kilometers east of Seoul, famous for its high-quality hanwoo beef.Hoengseong beef is recognized as a premium product, and usually fetches high prices.Annulling a lower court's guilty verdicts for three people, including a suspect surnamed Kim, for violating the

A nuclear reactor, which came to a halt due to a malfunction in its turbine control system earlier this week, will resume its operation, officials said Thursday.The Reactor-2 at Uljin Nuclear Power Plant in the southeastern region of the country automatically shut down on Sunday after a problem was detected in a system designed to supply steam into turbines. No radioactive leak was reported.The Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP), the operator of the nuclear power plant, said that it receiv

Myanmar is moving at ``warp speed'' in opening up after years of authoritarian rule but needs to build institutions to improve transparency and economic governance, the World Bank said Thursday as it approved $80 million in development aid.Pamela Cox, the bank's vice president for East Asia and the Pacific, said the bank has a further $165 million in loan assistance committed for Myanmar after it clears its $900 million in arrears to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Japan is helping th

Notorious serial killer “Jack the Ripper,” who terrorized the streets of London in 1888, was a surgeon from Essex called Stephen Herbert Appleford, claims a statistics professor in Uruguay. In an essay called “Travelling through time to trap Jack the Ripper,” Professor Eduardo Cuitino at the University ORT in Montevideo said for the past two years he analyzed data related to Doctor Appleford and found clues linking the surgeon to the killer.According to the profile provided by Cuitino, Appleford

Stressed-out parents are more likely to have obese children, U.S. researchers suggest. "Stress in parents may be an important risk factor for child obesity and related behaviors," Dr. Elizabeth Prout-Parks, a nutrition specialist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who was the study leader, said in a statement. "The severity and number of stressors are important."Among the parental stressors associated with childhood obesity were poor physical and mental health, financial strain and leadi

South Korea's consumer prices grew at the fastest pace in four months in October due mainly to an increase in prices of farm products, a government report showed Thursday.The country's consumer prices index rose 2.1 percent in October from a year earlier, compared with a 2 percent on-year gain in the previous month, according to the report by Statistics Korea. The index fell 0.1 percent from September when the consumer prices rose 0.7 percent on-month.The so-called core inflation, which excludes

A French court on Tuesday slapped a two-year suspended sentence on a Russian woman who kidnapped her seven-year-old daughter from the girl's French father in 2009.Irina Belenkaya was convicted on two counts of kidnapping and assault against the girl's father Jean-Michel Andre, who has custody of the child.A court in the southwestern town of Tarascon ordered Belenkaya to pay 8,000 euros ($10,000) in damages. Andre had sought 63,000 euros.The girl Elise was abducted on March 20, 2009 by Belenkaya

Monkeys are just like the vast majority of human beings when it comes to sex -- when they go ape, they want privacy.Among long-tailed macaques, the urge for hanky-panky was dampened when they were watched by other monkeys, according to an unusual experiment reported in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.Scientists from the Biomedical Primate Research Center in the Netherlands monitored 15 female and seven male macaques in a giant enclosure for four months.They installed everything f

NASA says initial experiments by its Mars rover Curiosity show the mineralogy of Martian soil is similar to basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii.Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) identified minerals in the first sample of Martian soil ingested recently by the rover, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported Tuesday."Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy," said David Bish, CheMin c

A gas explosion at a shipyard here in the southwestern part of the country killed at least two and injured nine on Wednesday, local police said.The explosion, whose cause has not yet been determined, occurred at 8:09 a.m. at the shipyard inside the Daebul Industrial Complex in Yeongam, about 400 kilometers south of Seoul, police added.They said two unidentified workers were killed and nine others sustained injuries. Rescue workers said a dozen workers were inside a ship for block assembly work a

The most devastating storm in decades to hit the most densely populated U.S. region cut off modern communication and left millions without power Tuesday, as thousands who fled their waterlogged homes wondered when _ if _ life would return to normal.A weakening Sandy, the hurricane turned fearsome superstorm, killed at least 50 people, many hit by falling trees, and still wasn't finished. It inched inland across Pennsylvania, ready to bank toward western New York state to dump more of its water a

Syrian fighter jets pounded rebel areas across the country on Monday with scores of airstrikes that anti-regime activists called the most widespread bombing in a single day since Syria's troubles started 19 months ago.The death toll for what was supposed to be a four-day cease-fire between the regime of President Bashar Assad and rebels seeking his overthrow exceeded 500, and activists guessed the government's heavy reliance on air power reflected its inability to roll back rebel gains.“The army

The Lotte Giants' manager Yang Seung-ho has resigned from his post, the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) team announced Tuesday, to take the fall for the club's failure to reach a final during his two-year tenure.The Busan-based Giants said Yang had offered to step down in a meeting with the team president, Chang Byung-soo, last Wednesday, and the management decided to accept his resignation offer.Yang, 52, replaced Jerry Royster as the Giants' manager in October 2010. Royster, the first Americ