More than 400 people attended a special mass held by Catholic priests on Friday urging President Park Geun-hye to step down, just hours after the presidential office expressed displeasure at their move.Members of the left-leaning Catholic Priests' Association for Justice gathered in the southwestern city of Gunsan for the mass demanding Park take responsibility for the state agencies' alleged intervention in last year's presidential race to sway the election in her favor. "We can only conclude t

Israel's opposition Labour party announced on Friday that its members have elected a new leader -- former government minister Isaac Herzog -- seen as more open to joining the right-leaning ruling coalition.Herzog defeated incumbent Shelly Yachimovich with 58.5 percent of the vote in Thursday's election among the party's some 55,000 members, official results showed.Herzog's victory could affect the make-up of rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition, with the new Labour lead

MANILA (AP) -- The death toll from one of the strongest typhoons on record has risen above 5,000 and is likely to climb further, although recovery efforts are beginning to take hold, Philippine officials said Friday.Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said 4,919 people were killed on Leyte, Samar and nearby islands in the Eastern Visayas region. Civil defense chief Eduardo del Rosario said 290 others died in other parts of the central and southern Philippines.The regions were battered two weeks ago by

Official records have confirmed that Japanese military police massacred Koreans during Tokyo's colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula following a powerful earthquake in Japan in 1923, a South Korean lawmaker claimed Friday.The claim by Rep. Yoo Ki-hong of the main opposition Democratic Party comes three days after the National Archives of Korea unveiled decades-old records of Koreans who were killed during the March 1919 independence movement and following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.Histor

South Korea's trade commission said Friday that it has decided to launch an investigation into an alleged dumping of Japanese polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film.The decision follows a formal complaint from three South Korean manufacturers, according to the Korea Trade Commission."The commission decided to launch an antidumping investigation after a review of materials submitted by the petitioners yielded a conclusion that their complaint was reasonable," the commission said in a press release

Relief pitcher Oh Seung-hwan of the Samsung Lions decided to move to Japan's Hanshin Tigers on a record-breaking, first-term contract, his agency said Friday.The 31-year-old signed on for two years with the Nippon Professional Baseball team for 300 million Japanese yen (US$2.9 million) a year with a signing bonus of 200 million yen. With 50 million yen in annual incentives, Oh can receive up to 900 million yen from the Hanshin Tigers. The amount is the highest among his three predecessors includ

BEIJING,  (AFP) -- An oil pipeline exploded Friday in the Chinese coastal city of Qingdao, killing 35 people, state media said, in the latest deadly industrial accident in the country.The force of the blast ripped roads apart, turning cars over and sending thick black smoke billowing over the city, pictures showed.One pedestrian had a leg blown off and another man's head was crushed under a piece of concrete debris.The pipeline, run by state-owned oil giant Sinopec, sprang a leak early Friday an

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan and Russia held their first high-level defense and diplomatic talks Saturday and agreed to step up cooperation between their militaries amid regional security concerns such as North Korea and China.Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, and their Russian counterparts Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Shoigu also agreed to hold joint military and anti-piracy exercises and establish a defense consultation framework. Their countries' defense ties a

TORONTO (AP) -- A lawyer for Toronto's embattled mayor accused the city's top cop of acting as "judge, jury and executioner" a day after police said they had obtained a copy of a long-rumored video that appears to show Rob Ford puffing on a crack pipe.Ford's lawyer Dennis Morris attacked Police Chief Bill Blair on Friday for saying he was ``disappointed'' in the mayor at a news conference announcing the video had been recovered from a computer hard drive during an investigation of an associate o

BEIJING -- China's propaganda minister pledged to deepen relations with North Korea during a meeting here with theNorth's media delegation, according to state media Saturday.Liu Qibao, chief of the publicity department of China's Communist Party, made the remarks on Friday when he met with the North Korean delegation led by Kim Won-sok, deputy editor of the North's ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun, Xinhua news agency reported."It's an unswerving principle of the Chinese Party and government

 LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A man pulled a semi-automatic rifle from a bag and shot his way past a security checkpoint at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, killing a federal security officer and wounding at two others in an attack that disrupted more than 700 flights across the U.S., authorities said.Officials said the gunman, who was wounded in a shootout with police and taken into custody, targeted Transportation Security Administration agents, who handle security checks at U.S. airports. 

President Park Geun-hye left for Paris on Saturday on a three-nation European  trip aimed at forging closer economic and financial partnerships, and securing support for her regional peace and cooperation initiatives from major players in global diplomacy. The weeklong trip, which also includes stops in Britain and Belgium, is the last overseas trip in her first year in office. It rounds off a series of visits to important countries, including the United States, China, Russia, and rising Southea

South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator will visit the United States next week to discuss recent developments in efforts to restart the stalled six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Seoul's foreign ministry said Saturday.Cho Tae-yong, Seoul's chief envoy to the six-party talks, plans to meet with his U.S. counterpart, Glyn Davies, and other National Security Council officials during the five-day trip that kicks off on Sunday, the ministry said.Cho's trip comes after Dav

South Korean stocks are expected to trade lower next week, dented by worries that China may take austerity measures at its political meeting to keep inflation under control, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) closed at 2,039.42, up 0.1 percent from a week earlier. The main index almost touched the 2,060 mark on Wednesday on the back of a strong foreign buying spree that had continued for 44 consecutive sessions, starting on Aug. 28 until Oct. 30.The foreign buy

South Korea has become a formal partner with the United States under a multilateral treaty aimed at the prompt return of wrongfully removed or retained children, the U.S. government said Friday.The 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction entered into force that day between the two nations, according to the State Department.The U.S. now has 72 partners under the treaty, also known as Hague Child Abduction Convention.It is the primary civil law mechanism for par

The most iconic place to commemorate the Korean War in the U.S. capital has gone electronic, enabling people anywhere to experience it anytime.A Pentagon team dedicated to honoring all veterans of the 1950-53 war on Friday unveiled the Korean War Veterans Memorial Virtual Walking Tour at a website, http://koreanwar60.com/kwm"Korean War veterans and individuals who want to learn more about the Korean War can now access a wealth of information, including videos, electronically regardless if they a

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A member of the Swedish institution that awards the Nobel prize for physics publicly contested this year's award, saying the honour for two physicists should have included the CERN laboratory which proved their theories."I think it's wrong," Anders Barany, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences told AFP, commenting after the decision Tuesday, which was delayed for an hour due to "a lot of discussion"."I think those experimental researchers have done incredibly fantas

TEHRAN, (AFP) -- Iran's police should keep a lower profile in their enforcement of the rules for women to cover up their bodies, President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday.His remarks were seen to be keeping a promise of more social freedoms, a cornerstone of the campaign that gave him a surprise victory in the June presidential election."If there is a need for a warning on the hijab (head and shoulder veil) issue, the police should be the last to give it," the moderate president told police aca

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- The chief of the world's chemical weapons watchdog says the organization has to visit more than 20 sites in Syria as part of the unprecedented international mission to destroy the country's poison gas arsenal, including some where it may be necessary to negotiate cease-fires before they can gain access.In his first public remarks about the mission, Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Ahmet Uzumcu said Wednesday inspectors ha

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei (AP)  -- U.S. officials said Wednesday that the Obama administration is poised to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic assistance to Egypt. The announcement is expected this week, once official notifications have been made to all interested parties.The U.S. has been considering such a move since the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically elected leader in June. It would be a dramatic shift for the Obama administration, wh