South Korea's top financial regulator has said the watchdog will push to make a final decision this month over whether Lone Star Funds has the legal right to be the top shareholder of Korea Exchange Bank (KEB).Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Kim Seok-dong said in a meeting with reporters, "We are working to make a final decision on Lone Star's eligibility in April."The regulator is ex

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (AFP) – Japan's prime minister set foot Saturday in the tsunami zone for the first time since calamity struck three weeks ago, as the UN warned of a "very serious" nuclear situation.Naoto Kan, who flew into Rikuzentakata on a military helicopter from Tokyo, was also due to stop in nearby Fukushima prefecture, in a show of support for emergency crews risking their lives to prev

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Three insurgents attacked a NATO base on the outskirts of Afghanistan's capital Saturday but were killed by coalition forces before they could enter the compound, NATO and Afghan police said.The attack came just hours after Afghans angry over the burning of a Quran at a U.S. church stormed a U.N. compound in northern Afghanistan, killing seven foreigners.NATO told The Ass

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) – The United States has the capability to intercept ballistic missiles from North Korea, a senior U.S. official has said.Patrick O'Reilly, director of the Missile Defense Agency, made the remarks at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday in response to a lawmaker who expressed "concerns about the ground-based midcourse defense system in Alaska and California," c

South Korea's ruling party said Saturday that it plans to hold an emergency meeting with the government early next week to discuss how to tackle Japan's repeated territorial claims over Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo.Japan approved on Tuesday new middle school textbooks claiming the islets as its territory, drawing a strong protest from the Seoul government.The Grand National Party said it wi

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli aircraft killed three Palestinian militants who were planning to abduct Israelis over the upcoming Jewish festival of Passover, the military said early Saturday.An Israeli military spokeswoman said that an ``aircraft had fired at a terror squad of the terror group Hamas that was planning to carry out kidnappings.'' She said the group was plotting the attacks for the Jewish

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Japan's unfolding nuclear disaster is "much bigger than Chernobyl" and could rewrite the international scale used to measure the severity of atomic accidents, a Russian expert said here Friday."Chernobyl was a dirty bomb explosion. The next dirty bomb is Fukushima and it will cost much more" in economic and human terms, said Natalia Mironova, a thermodynamic engineer who became

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Facebook and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg have been hit with a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages over a page on the social network which called for a "Third Intifada" against Israel.Facebook this week shut down the "Third Intifada" page, which had almost 500,000 fans, but the lawsuit filed in a court here claims that the social network showed "negligence" by not quic

World No. 1 Nadal sets up showdown with FedererMIAMI (AFP) ― World tennis No. 1 Rafael Nadal will square off against Swiss rival Roger Federer in a rare semi-final showdown Friday that will be their first match on American soil in six years.Spain’s Nadal reached the last four at the $9 million WTA and ATP Masters tournament on Thursday by beating Czech Tomas Berdych 6-2, 3-6, 6-3.Third seed Federer barely broke a sweat as his quarter-final match was called off after just 10 minutes when Frenchma