KUALA LUMPUR: A 30-year-old man spent RM80,000 on a weight loss programme but ended up having 30 open wounds, with one as big as a fist, around his waistline.The man, who only wanted to be known as Lim, said he got to know about the “needleless injection” treatment when a friend suggested that they enter into the cosmetics business in October 2009.“Initially, I was not interested, but after much p

South Korean college students spend less time on study and are passive in class, research showed Tuesday. A report released by the Korea Educational Development Institute indicated that full-time college students don’t devote much time to studying. The institute surveyed 2,019 full-time students attending four-year universities nationwide on their study habits from June 14-July 2. The report showe

A fire broke out at SK Energy’s oil storage facility in Incheon Tuesday afternoon.No casualties were reported. Fire fighters have been struggling to put out the fire.

Sony Corp. introduced its first tablet computers, joining Samsung Electronics Co. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. in their pursuit of Apple Inc., a year after the iPad spurred a surge in demand for the devices.Sony will use Google Inc.’s Android operating system for the personal computers, Kunimasa Suzuki, Sony’s head of personal computers, said in Tokyo today. The S1 model will feature a 9.4-

Police in India are investigating a case where 10 million rupees ($222,000) were reportedly missing after a raid. Those who broke into the steel chest at the bank were not human but termites.According to a report by the Telegraph, the termites had been damaging bank furniture and documents before they broke into the storage where the money had been preserved since January.“It’s a matter of investi

HANOI (Yonhap) -- A growing number of Vietnamese students are studying the Korean language at university, mainly to work at Korean firms operating in their country, local sources said Tuesday.More than 2,000 students are studying Korean at 10 universities nationwide, including Vietnam National University (VNU) in Hanoi and another national college in Ho Chi Minh, the sources said.About 150 profess

A woman in Gwangju requested a police investigation after she received a can of butane gas from an online seller instead of the iPod she had paid for. Kim ordered an iPod from an online second-hand vendor who offered it at half the market price.After a phone call with the seller, the woman sent half of the money to the vendor’s account. But what Kim received was a can of butane gas. Kim tried to r

Linguists from the University of Oxford are striving to preserve the Dusner, an endangered Indonesian tribal language, as its only three speakers were reportedly injured in natural disasters. Two of them narrowly escaped death during a flood and the other was living next to a volcano when it erupted, the Astralian newspaper said. The scholars including Mary Dalrymple, a professor of syntax, have v

South Korean prosecutors have summoned about a dozen employees of Deutsche Bank's New York and Hong Kong offices for questioning over alleged stock manipulation that forced the key index to nosedive last year, officials said Monday.The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office believes that employees at the German bank's overseas bureaus gave orders to the Seoul unit to place massive sell orders

The ratification bill for South Korea's free trade agreement with the European Union is expected to pass the parliament's standing committee later this week, as the South Korean government has responded positively to rival parties' demand to offer transfer tax cuts to small livestock farms, removing the last remaining hurdle to the long-stalled free trade deal, officials and lawmakers said Monday.

South Korea's top financial regulator said Monday that it has launched a probe into SC First Bank, the local unit of British banking giant Standard Chartered Plc, on allegedly infringing domestic bank regulations by giving metal loans to corporate customers. "Investigators were dispatched to SC First Bank and if we find (the bank) violated local regulations, we will summon the bank officials and d

South Korea is extending its travel restriction to all parts of Syria amid escalating violence between the country's protesters and government forces, the foreign ministry said Monday.Earlier this month, Seoul restricted its people from traveling to Syria's western governorates of Daraa and Latakia after dozens of people were reported killed there in violent government crackdowns.The Level 3 trave

A group of North Korean defectors and civic activists on Monday urged South Korea's parliament to pass a bill aimed at improving the human rights situation in the reclusive communist state.In an opening ceremony for "North Korea Freedom Week," some 100 Seoul-based defectors, human rights advocates and lawmakers gathered in the National Assembly to discuss ways to abolish gulags in the North and pa