Lender succeeds in selling yen-dominated bonds at low interest rates for second yearThe Export-Import Bank of Korea said Thursday it has issued Samurai bonds worth 100 billion yen ($1.25 billion), the largest amount ever to be issued by an Asian institution, despite instability in global financial markets.Samurai bonds are yen-denominated bonds issued in Tokyo by non-Japanese companies, and are subject to Japanese regulations. The maturities are two years for bonds worth 51.4 billion yen, three

WASHINGTON (AP) ― Maybe the U.S. economy’s strength this winter wasn’t just weather-related after all.Home construction is near a three-year high. And factory output has risen in three of the year’s first four months.The data released Wednesday suggest growth in the April-June quarter is off to a good start, helped by falling gas prices and solid hiring gains. Fears of a spring slump are easing.“It’s all very encouraging,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “Things lo

NEW YORK (AP) ― The unending turmoil in Greece spread fallout across the financial markets Wednesday. The Dow Jones industrial average fell for the ninth day out of 10, and gold, oil, and the euro all dropped to multi-month lows.Greece called a new round of elections for June 17 after coalition talks to form a government fell apart. The president said depositors were pulling hundreds of millions of euros out of banks, weakening the country’s strained financial system.The main cause for investor

Lee Won-chang, head of the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corp. or KOBACO, was named the new CEO of the soon-to-be-inaugurated organization that will succeed KOBACO.According to a revision approved by the National Assembly in February, the new KOBACO will be inaugurated on May 23. KOBACO’s executive board approved the appointment after evaluating and recommending candidates following an open call for the position, according to the Korea Communications Commission. The 69-year-old Lee is a graduate o

Executive of OLED Development Group gets bronze medal for technologyLG Display’s technology for making large organic light-emitting diode displays has been recognized ahead of Invention Day with one of its executives scheduled to win the bronze medal on Friday.The Korea Invention Promotion Association will give the industrial bronze medal to LG Display’s senior vice president Ahn Byung-chul of the OLED Development Group for coming up with the firm’s proprietary White-OLED technology for 55-inch

Traveling time from Seoul to Busan to be cut to one-and-a-half hours by 2015CHANGWON, South Gyeongsang Province ― Korea’s new high-speed train HEMU-430X showed its long, navy nose to the public for the first time in this southeastern city of Changwon on Wednesday. The faster and bigger successor to the KTX-Sancheon is the nation’s second bullet train developed with local technologies and its production has been carried out in the city by Hyundai Rotem, the train maker. The HEMU, short for High-s

Recent Facebook-related crimes are exposing a number of less-than-intelligent criminals who use the social networking service.Such was the case of two men in Colombia who recently robbed an Internet cafe. They waited until the time was ripe, held the owner at gunpoint, took the cash and made a clean getaway on a motorcycle.They did everything right except for one thing; forgetting to log out of a Facebook account that had detailed information about one of the culprits, allowing police to simply

 Robot arms used for surgery at the UM Hospital in Miami. Robot development is on the rise. (MCT)Two U.S. patients paralyzed by stroke learned to make reach-and-grasp movements with a robotic arm, guided by their thoughts, researchers say.The trial’s lead investigator, Dr. Leigh Hochberg -- an associate professor of engineering at Brown University in Providence, R.I., and a critical care neurologi