SK Innovation Co., Korea’s top refiner, broke ground on its second plant Monday to produce batteries for electric vehicles, upping the ante for its fledgling green energy business as a next-generation revenue source.Located in Seosan, South Chungcheong Province, the facilities will start manufacturing 200-megawatt-hour batteries early next year and 300-MWh batteries by the end of 2012, SK Innovati

STX Offshore and Shipbuilding Co. announced Monday that it has won a $150 million contract from a Greek shipping company.The Changwon, South Gyeongsang-based shipbuilder said that the contract for four petroleum product carriers was signed with the Greek shipping firm Thenamaris Ships Management Inc. on Friday.The shipbuilder said that the first of the four vessels will be delivered to Thenamaris

The union members of the Standard Chartered First Bank Korea ended Monday their one-day strike in protest of the management’s proposal to adopt a performance-based pay system.The union said it decided to return to work from Tuesday, adding that it would push for a meeting with the management to settle the labor dispute. “But if the negotiation makes little progress, we will go into another strike,

The nation’s educational expenditure fell by the most in six years, mainly due to the declining number of students brought on by the country’s low birthrate, a state-run agency said Monday.The Statistics Korea said households with two persons or more spent 292,357 won ($269) monthly in education costs per child on average in the first quarter, down 14,434 won or 4.7 percent from same time last yea

Agency says consumer loan, M&A and foreign currency liquidity problems unlikely to ease soonMoody’s Investors Service on Monday highlighted several uncertainties in the local banking industry, saying that unfavorable factors could hamper banks’ long-term growth.Negative factors cited by the ratings agency included growing consumer loans, M&A issues and foreign currency liquidity.“A key credit issu

TAIPEI (AFP) ― The question of how to get 3-D technology into every living room and a tablet computer into every hand is set to dominate Asia’s largest IT fair which opens in Taiwan this week.Around 1,800 exhibitors from across the world will descend on Taipei for the Computex fair, which runs from Tuesday to Sunday, hoping to generate an estimated $23 billion of sales from 36,000 buyers, organize

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ― Instead of paying attention in high school, Nick Cammarata preferred to read books on whatever interested him. He also has a gift for coding that got him into Carnegie Mellon University’s esteemed computer science program despite his grades.But the 18-year-old programmer won’t be going to college this fall. Or maybe ever.Cammarata is one of two dozen winners of a scholarship j

Only a few days after Kim Jong-il returned to Pyongyang from a week-long tour, it may be premature to assess the outcome of the North Korean leader’s latest China visit, his third in about a year. News dispatches by official Chinese and North Korean outlets provide few clues to substantial economic gains for the North but the visit again demonstrated the deepening ties between the two neighbors an

The leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Kim Jong-il paid a successful visit to China from May 20 to 26. The attention-grabbing event marks the further consolidation of relations between the two neighbors. It also sends a strong signal to the outside world that the two will make joint efforts to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. This is Kim’s third visit to China

Voices critical of Prime Minister Naoto Kan appear to be getting louder within the Democratic Party of Japan. One cannot give high marks to Kan for his performance as the nation’s leader in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.Even so, as Japan faces the difficult task of reconstruction and bringing the nuclear accidents at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant under control, DPJ poli

A few years ago, if Americans had been asked to name the world’s most conservative countries, Canada likely wouldn’t have been on most people’s list. But as so many previous top contenders, including the U.S., slide into socialism, Canada is beginning to shine as a beacon of free-market success. After decades of Liberal Party rule, broken only by eight years of Conservative governance in the 1980s