FORT CAMPBELL, Kentucky (AP) – Brimming with pride, President Barack Obama on Friday met and honored the U.S. commandos he sent after terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, saluting them on behalf of America and the world and capping an extraordinary week for the country. "Job well done," the president declared.Obama addressed roughly 2,000 troops after meeting privately with the full assault team — A

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan's Iwate prefecture, whose coastline was hard hit by the March 11 tsunami, on Saturday won endorsement for its historic Hiraizumi area to be listed as a World Heritage site, the government said.Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs announced that an International Council on Monuments and Sites panel recommended that the Buddhist architecture, gardens and archaeological sites in Hi

CAIRO (AP) -- Al-Qaida has vowed to keep fighting the United States and avenge the death of Osama bin Laden, which it acknowledged for the first time Friday in an Internet statement apparently designed to convince followers that it will remain vigorous and intact even after its founder's demise.Al-Qaida's plots are usually large-scale and involve planning over months or even years. But Western int

The number of North Korean defectors to Thailand has jumped more than 50 times since 2004, a U.S. report claimed Saturday.Radio Free Asia (RFA), citing a Thai newspaper, the Bangkok Post, said the number of North Koreans who illegally entered Thailand and were arrested soared from 46 in 2004 to 2,482 in 2010.Through April this year, 870 North Koreans have been arrested for illegal entry, RFA added

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Barack Obama Friday urged his nation to invest more in the development of clean energy technology in order not to lag behind South Korea and other countries."We're in a competition all around the world, and other countries -- Germany, China, South Korea -- they know that clean energy technology is what is going to help spur job creation and economic growth for years to

WASHINGTON -- The United States and China next week will discuss ways to improve inter-Korean ties and reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the State Department said Friday.Speaking to reporters, spokesman Mark Toner expressed hope that the Security and Economic Dialogue between the U.S. and China, slated to be held in Washington Monday and Tuesday, will serve as a venue to discuss the tension

North Korea on Friday accused South Korea of intentionally avoiding inter-Korean dialogue, also claiming Seoul was blocking its allies from talking or providing assistance to the impoverished North.An unidentified spokesman for Disarmament and Peace Institute, which operates under the North Korean Foreign Ministry, claimed this was because the South was still seeking to unify the two Koreas by "ab

The administration and the National Assembly have begun in earnest to reform the nation’s top financial watchdog, to cut its long-held collusive ties with financial companies it supervises.Assessing that the Financial Supervisory Service, hit by a series of corruption scandals involving its former and incumbent staff, cannot complete a self-purification drive, the Prime Minister’s Office is pushin

Bahk Jae-wanStrategy and finance Bahk began his career as a government official at the Prime Minister’s Office after he passed the civil service examination in 1980.He then moved on to the Board of Audit and Inspection, the nation’s top inspection body, before he became a public management professor at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul.The holder of a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University

Nuclear safety authorities have approved the restart of the Gori-1 reactor in 24 days time, saying that their close inspection found no problems with the nation’s oldest reactor whose operation was halted due to a breakdown in one of its circuit breakers.They also called for emergency diesel generators and up-to-date hydrogen removal equipment to be installed at all of the nation’s 21 atomic power

  President Lee Myung-bak named Labor Minister Bahk Jae-wan, considered one of his closest aides, as the new finance minister Friday in a Cabinet reshuffle that also affected four other ministers, the presidential office said.   The other new ministers are for land and transportation, agriculture, environment as well as Bakh's successor as labor minister. Unification Minister Hyun In-taek and Just