INCHEON (Yonhap) – The South Korean women's handball team cruised to the final of the Incheon Asian Games after defeating Kazakhstan 41-30 on Sunday.South Korean captain Woo Sun-hee scored 10 goals to help her country in the semifinal held at Seonhak Handball Gymnasium in this port city.Kazakhstan hung tough for the first 15 minutes and the teams were tied at 9-9 early. Then South Korea poured in five unanswered goals to take the lead at 14-9 and finished the first half at 20-16.Kazakhstan ate i

INCHEON (Yonhap) -- South Korea's badminton duo of Lee Yong-dae and Yoo Yeon-seong won the silver medal in the men's doubles event at the Asian Games on Sunday.The Indonesian team of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan thrashed the world's No. 1 team of Lee and Yoo 2-1 (16-21, 21-16, 21-17) at Gyeyang Gymnasium in South Korea's western port city of Incheon.South Korea lost a chance to win its first Asiad gold in the men's doubles in 12 years.

HONG KONG (AP) – Hong Kong police used tear gas on Sunday to try to clear thousands of pro-democracy protesters who had gathered outside government headquarters in a challenge to Beijing over its decision to restrict democratic reforms for the city. After spending hours holding the protesters at bay, police lobbed canisters of tear gas into the crowd on Sunday evening. The searing fumes sent protesters fleeing down the road, but many came right back to continue their demonstration.Students and a

INCHEON, South Korea (AFP) – North Korea's athletes got an unexpectedly rousing welcome at the opening ceremony of the Asian Games in Incheon on Friday as South Korean fans put aside their bitter rivalry and cheered them warmly.The two countries are technically still at war, and a recent spike in tensions prompted speculation about what kind of reception the North's delegation would get at the gala launch of the 17th Asiad.The crowd in the 61,000-seat stadium bellowed their approval as the North

(Bloomberg) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the e-commerce company started in 1999 with $60,000 cobbled together by Jack Ma, cemented its status as a symbol of China’s economic emergence by raising $21.8 billion in a U.S. initial public offering. The company and shareholders including Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) sold 320.1 million shares for $68 each, according to a statement, after offering them for $66 to $68. Half of the shares went to just 25 accounts, a highly concentrated group for an IPO, people wit

FREETOWN (AFP) - Sierra Leone launched a nationwide three-day shutdown on Friday to contain the deadly spread of an Ebola epidemic described by the UN Security Council as a threat to world peace.Most of Sierra Leone's population of six million were confined to their homes from midnight (0000 GMT), with only essential workers such as health professionals and security forces exempt from the lockdown.Almost 30,000 volunteers began door-to-door rounds to educate locals and hand out soap, in an exerc

INCHEON, South Korea (AFP) - Badges handed out by Japanese competitors at the Asian Games in South Korea revived antagonism Friday over their country's harsh colonial rule of its neighbor.The organizing committee of the event in Incheon sent a protest letter to the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) over the badges which appear to show Japan's wartime rising sun flag.   The flag is seen by many Koreans as a symbol of Japanese cruelty during the occupation up to 1945. The flag was changed after Wor

NEW YORK (AP) – Microsoft is giving its MSN news service a crisper look, new lifestyle tools and seamless syncing across devices.The company says the revamped site fits in with Microsoft's overall strategy of making mobile phones and Internet-based services priorities as its traditional businesses – Windows and Office software installed on desktops – slow down or decline. The changes also come as people increasingly read news on smartphones and tablets rather than desktop computers.Rather than b

BEIJING (Yonhap) – The top national security adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama held talks with her Chinese counterparts on Monday, during which they discussed a range of bilateral and international issues, including North Korea. The visit by U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice to Beijing comes about two months before Obama is to hold a one-on-one meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on the sidelines of the APEC leaders' summit. At the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beij

BEIJING (Yonhap) – China has renewed its commitment to an early resumption of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program ahead of the United Nations General Assembly later this month.North Korea withdrew from the six-party talks with South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia in 2009 and conducted its third nuclear test in 2013. Mindful of Pyongyang's track record of saber-rattling before returning to negotiations for economic concessions, Seoul and Washington insist

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – It is a marketing strategy that few experts would recommend and even fewer companies can pull off.But the less Apple says about its eagerly anticipated event on Tuesday at a performing arts center in Silicon Valley, the more frenzied the speculation becomes.In keeping with its style, Apple has revealed little about what is expected to be the unveiling of the company's first "big thing" since the death of legendary co-founder and driving force Steve Jobs nearly three years a

South Korea's top nuclear envoy left for the United States on Monday for negotiations with his U.S. counterpart on ways to resume the long-stalled six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program.Hwang Joon-kook, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, is scheduled to meet Glyn Davies, the U.S. envoy on North Korean policy, according to the foreign ministry. The trip comes only about three months after he last visited Washington to meet Davies

SPARTAK, Ukraine (AP) – Shelling and other clashes between government forces and Russian-backed separatists threw the cease-fire agreement in eastern Ukraine into deepening peril Sunday, two days after it took hold.At least two houses hit by artillery fire blazed in the rural village of Spartak, which lies just north of the main rebel-held city of Donetsk and adjacent to the airport. A man whose house was struck by a shell said rebels had fired from a spot nearby, and that apparently provoked a

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, 2014 (AFP) - Crisis-stricken Malaysia Airlines said Thursday its second-quarter loss nearly doubled as the loss of flight MH370 spurred a decline in bookings, warning the red ink would accelerate as the year wears on.The flag carrier said it posted a 305.7 million ringgit ($97.2 million) loss in the April-June quarter, which followed the March 8 disappearance of flight MH370 with 239 passengers and crew aboard.That compared to a 175 million ringgit loss in the same period

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) – A Japanese pro-wrestler-turned-politician arrived in North Korea with a former NFL lineman and more than a dozen martial artists on Thursday for the first big sports event featuring well-known foreigners since Dennis Rodman's controversial basketball game earlier this year.Japanese parliamentarian Kanji ``Antonio'' Inoki says he hopes the event will open a door of sports diplomacy with the North.  Bob ``The Beast'' Sapp, who briefly played American pro football befo

GENEVA (AP) – The Ebola outbreak in West Africa eventually could exceed 20,000 cases, more than six times as many as doctors know about now, the World Health Organization said Thursday.A new plan to stop Ebola by the U.N. health agency also assumes that in many hard-hit areas, the actual number of cases may be two to four times higher than is currently reported.The agency published new figures saying that 1,552 people have died from the killer virus from among the 3,069 cases reported so far in

SEJONG (Yonhap) – South Korea's antitrust watchdog has launched an investigation into Kakao Corp., the operator of the country's most-used messenger service Kakao Talk, for possibly abusing its market leader position, industry sources said Thursday.Kakao is also under investigation by the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations that it had also abused its market dominance in deals with another service supplier, SK Planet. According to insiders, Kakao Talk has come under scrutiny after it un

BEIJING (AP) - Sixty-five people were killed and dozens seriously burned Saturday by an explosion at an eastern Chinese automotive parts factory that supplies General Motors, state media reported. The blast at the factory in an industrial zone of the city of Kunshan also left more than 100 people injured, with many suffering severe burns, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Kunshan, in Jiangsu province, is about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) southeast of Beijing. State broadcaster CCTV showed f

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- More than 3 million people are estimated to be living in North Korea's capital city of Pyongyang, a research report said Saturday.A total of 3.06 million people are living in the capital city as of this year, an increase of 7 percent from two years ago, the U.S.-based consulting firm, Demographia, said in its report on the world's urban areas published in May. According to the firm's 2012 report, Pyongyang was home to 2.86 million people. It is unclear whether this is the first

KIROVSKE, Ukraine (AFP) - US President Barack Obama has told Russia's leader of his "deep concerns" about Moscow's increased support for separatists in Ukraine as international experts finally gathered more remains at the crash site of downed flight MH17.In a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday Obama also expressed "his preference for a diplomatic solution to the crisis", the White House said."I think that we have done everything that we can to support the Ukrainian go