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

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

SAO PAULO (AFP) -- A fragile global economic recovery could falter unless Europe averts sovereign defaults, the United States gets its fiscal house in order and emerging economies prevent overheating, the IMF warned Friday.“There are very clear risks to the recovery,” the International Monetary Fund‘s research director, Olivier Blanchard, said in Sao Paulo as he presented the Fund’s latest update

Mortgage rates hit a 30-month high fueled by Bank of Korea’s rates hike this month, raising concerns for damaging effects to the economy.On June 10, the central bank raised the benchmark rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.25 percent in an effort to counter the rising inflationary pressure. Against market expectations, the central bank had kept the rates frozen for two consecutive months in April

Prosecutors defy plan to empower policeThe prosecution and the police have locked horns with each other over whether to share the rights to launch investigations, which is now exclusive for prosecutors. While prosecutors are concerned that empowering police could lead to redundant and abusive investigations causing various problems, police are determined to demand certain level of independence, wh

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 about Ri, except that he acc

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 militaryprovocations,” referring to the North’s unilateral disclosure of

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 to brainstorm ideas on how

South Korea is easing its previous stance that it will not resume any kind of dialogue with North Korea until Pyongyang apologizes for last year’s deadly attacks, Seoul officials said Sunday. The two Koreas, still technically at war, have had their frostiest ties in decades since the North conducted two naval attacks that killed 50 South Koreans.Since the last attack in November, Seoul has suspend