The European Union has agreed to significantly expand its sanctions against Iran over its refusal to freeze its disputed nuclear activities, European diplomats said Thursday.EU foreign ministers are expected to approve the new measures, which will add several subsidiaries of companies already on the sanctions list, at a meeting in Brussels on Monday, the diplomats said.(AFP)

Korea's national pension fund needs to rigorously exercise its shareholder rights as it is along-term investor with massive assets under management, its headsaid Thursday.Controversy has heated up over whether pension funds should exercise their shareholder rights in the country's family-ownedconglomerates since Kwak Seung-joon, a key presidential aide,brought up the issue last month."Exercising s

North Korea has vowed full disclosure of how donated food is distributed among its people, a senior World Food Program official said Thursday in an apparent bid to encourage Seoul to send food to the impoverished state. The comments by Claudia Von Roehl, director of the U.N. food agency in Pyongyang, come as Washington prepares to send its own delegation to North Korea to monitor the food conditio

President Lee Myung-bak on Thursday hosted a dinner for the participants in the two-day G20 Seoul Speakers Consultation at the presidential office.About 110 people invited to the event at Cheong Wa Dae included parliamentary speakers and delegates from the G20 states, National Assembly Speaker Park Hee-tae, vice speakers Chung Eui-hwa, Hong Jae-hyung, Grand National Party floor leader Hwang Woo-ye

The international community must work together on issues of climate change, food shortage and famine, parliamentary leaders from the world’s 20 major economies said Thursday, discussing global challenges during the conference in Seoul. The two-day meeting opened here Thursday, bringing together parliamentarians from the G20 nations, five non-G20 members ― Spain, Ethiopia, Singapore, Equatorial Gui

South Korea has amended a conscription law to allow retired female officers to serve in the Reserve Forces, in line with a move to give women more opportunities in the military, officials said Thursday.Unlike men, retired women officers had been banned from being automatically admitted to the Reserve Forces because their military service is not mandatory by law. The revised law means that female o

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Thursday a plan to support the city’s 217,000 senior citizens living alone. According to the city’s recent survey, of the more than 1 million elderly people aged 65 or older in Seoul, 21.5 percent live alone, many of them financially struggling.The number of aged living alone has continued to increase in recent years from 16.2 percent in 2004, the city s

Results of Defense Ministry survey more divided on financial supportNearly 80 percent of the public support the re-installment of a military duty employment plan, previously abolished for being unconstitutional, according to a Defense Ministry survey released Thursday. Working to gain parliamentary approval for the system, the ministry released a survey showing that 79.4 percent of the 508 men and