A man allegedly threw a cup of scalding hot water into a barista’s face at Starbucks in San Diego on Thursday morning, Daily Mail reported.Now arrested on suspicion of battery, Dennis Christopher Lee, 58, came into the café and asked for a cup of hot water, which Starbucks provides for free.However, after the female barista served him, Lee started taking items from the condiments table. Since the

SEOUL, June 20 (Yonhap) -- An alleged North Korean police document reported a case of cannibalism, a South Korean missionary group said Monday, a development, if confirmed, that could support what has long been rumored in the North.There have been accounts among some defectors of eating human flesh amid chronic food shortages that culminated in a massive famine in the late 1990s that was estimated

LONDON (AFP) – The meteoric rise to fame of Scottish singer Susan Boyle is to be brought to life in a new stage musical, producers announced on Friday. Actress Elaine C Smith -- best known for playing Mary in long-running Scottish sitcom "Rab C Nesbitt" -- will play Boyle, who was catapulted into the media spotlight in "Britain's Got Talent" in 2009. Boyle, 50, has since sold more than 14 million

SEOUL, June 20 (Yonhap) -- The prosecution and police on Monday agreed to end their long-standing disputes over the rights to open criminal investigations through government arbitration, officials said.According to the compromise agreement announced in the attendance of Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik, both parties agreed to the revision of the Criminal Procedure Code, which calls for granting police

LONDON, June 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korean boy band SHINee put on a showcase at a famed recording studio here Sunday ahead of the release of their first Japanese single this week.In the latest sign of the growing popularity of Korean pop music, or "K-pop," the five-man dance and R&B unit was greeted by hundreds of fans from Britain and other nations around the world at the Abbey Road Studios. The Be

ULSAN, June 19 (Yonhap) -- An internal audit by Hyundai Motor Co. revealed that 97 workers have accessed Internet gambling sites at work, leading the company to discipline them for improper use of company computers, corporate officials said Sunday. The audit was launched in April after the company received a whistle-blower's tip that some employees on production lines were betting online with offi

SEOUL, June 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's military said Sunday it will not reprimand two Marines who fired rifles last week at a civilian jetliner after mistaking it for a North Korean military aircraft. The two Marines guarding an island near the tense Yellow Sea border with the North fired their K-2 rifles at the Asiana Airlines plane flying in sea fog in a pre-dawn incident on Friday. The plane

SEOUL, June 19 (Yonhap) -- Eyesvision Co., a new entrant to the South Korean mobile phone market, said Sunday that it plans to launch prepaid wireless service through a leased network in the country next month.Eyesvision, which sells prepaid cards for international phone calls, said that it has agreed with SK Telecom Co. to lease the top mobile carrier's network and to roll out prepaid mobile phon

SEOUL, June 19 (Yonhap) -- The number of government officials punished for bribery has jumped more than five-fold over the last five years due to a tighter crackdown on bureaucratic corruption, the home ministry said Sunday.Civil servants who were dismissed or disciplined for accepting kickbacks numbered 624 last year, 5.5 times more than the figure in 2006, according to the Ministry of Public Adm

Spanish clubs are looking for chances to bring South Korean football star Park Ji-sung to their league, according to Mirror Football.Mirror Football reported that the Manchester United star Park is “attracting interest from Spanish outfits Atletico Madrid and Sevilla.”“Atletico have money to spend with Manchester United-bound David De Gea and Sergio Aguero and Jose Reyes all on their way out of th

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory has developed beef based on proteins from human excrement, the Huffington Post reported Friday. His idea was inspired when Tokyo sewage plant asked him to explore possible uses for the sewage and Ikeda found that the sewage contained a great deal of protein. The final product is made up of protein (63 percent), carbohydrates (25 percent), m

Julian Assange has put himself on eBay. You can now bid to be one of eight people to join Assange for lunch, accompanied by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Digital Trends reported. The winning bidders will get to dine with the pair in London on July 2 and also receive a front-row ticket to Assange’s presentation regarding “the impact of Wikileaks.”The initial price was $564. As the number of b

SEOUL, June 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korean mortgage rates have soared to a near 30-month high due to the central bank's rate hike, sources said Sunday, raising concern that an increase in household interest costs could dampen consumer spending.Following a two-month freeze, the Bank of Korea on June 10 hiked the benchmark seven-day repo rate by a quarter percentage point to 3.25 percent for this month

SEOUL, June 19 (Yonhap) -- Cnet.com, a major U.S. technology review site, selected Samsung Electronics Co.'s plasma display panel (PDP) TVs as the best TV of the year, industry sources said Sunday.Cnet said the D8000 series, which consists of a string of Samsung's PDP TV models, outperformed rivals' products released in the U.S. market this year, according to a Samsung official.Judges of the U.S.

SEOUL, June 18 (Yonhap) -- Corruption is widespread in South Korean society and ending irregularities in the bureaucracy is a top priority for the country if it wants to become an advanced nation, Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik said Saturday.Kim made the remarks at a meeting of all Cabinet ministers and other top officials, a day after President Lee Myung-bak chided officialdom in harsh language ove

SEOUL, June 18 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has nothing to gain from provocations against South Korea, Seoul's Cabinet minister handling inter-Korean relations said Saturday, urging the communist nation to carry out reform and open up to the outside world.Unification Minister Hyun In-taek accused Pyongyang of launching "reckless political provocations after military provocations," referring to the Nort

SEOUL, June 18 (Yonhap) -- North Korea replaced its top envoy to Germany, the country's official news agency said Saturday.Ri Si-hong was appointed the new ambassador to the European nation under a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, the North's legislature, according to a one-sentence dispatch of the Korean Central News Agency. It provided no further details.Little is known

SEOUL, June 18 (Yonhap) -- The government will consider changing the working hours of public-sector employees and splitting up the long school winter vacation into several breaks in an effort to spur domestic demand, officials said Saturday.The measures were among a package of proposals discussed at a meeting of Cabinet and other top government officials that President Lee Myung-bak presided over

Kim Yoh-jin emerging as a leading figure on TwitterKim Yoh-jin, an established actress, is attracting attention as a social activist as she takes part in various rallies on sensitive social issues.The police are considering summoning the actress for questioning over her participation in a sit-in protest at Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction’s shipyard in Busan last week.She was one of the ac

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Older people who eat olive oil have a lower risk of stroke than those who do not, suggested a study of more than 7,000 French people that was published Wednesday in the United States.Researchers at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Bordeaux, France followed 7,625 people age 65 and older from three cities -- Bordeaux, Dijon and Montpellier -- for a period o