WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) ― A U.S. congressional committee is pressuring the Obama administration to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.The House Armed Services Committee, dominated by Republicans, approved an amendment to the fiscal 2013 national defense authorization bill Thursday that calls for the re-introduction of the sensitive weapons to South Korea, according to Foreign Policy magazine.It also would require Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Le

SINGAPORE (AFP) ― Premium airlines in Asia are rethinking their strategies and slashing costs as high fuel prices, global economic uncertainty and pressure from Middle East and budget carriers squeeze profits.Singapore Airlines reported Wednesday that its net profit for the financial year ended in March tumbled 69 percent to S$336 million ($268 million), weighed down by a rare loss in the fourth quarter.It was only SIA’s third quarterly loss in its 40-year history of uninterrupted full-year prof

Oracle Corp. Chairman Jeff Henley is giving $50 million to the University of California, Santa Barbara -- the largest donation in the school’s history -- to promote scientific research and help overcome budget cuts. Henley’s donation to his alma mater will go toward the engineering college and the school’s Institute for Energy Efficiency, which conducts research in areas such as batteries, lighting and computer data centers, the university said late yesterday in a statement. The gift is also in

Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill. Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website whoownsfacebook.com. At the high end of the proposed IPO market capitalization, that would be wor

KABUL (AP) ― Men wearing Afghan police uniforms shot dead two NATO service members Saturday in southern Afghanistan, authorities said, the latest in a string of attacks on international troops by Afghan security forces or militants disguised as police.Two other coalition service members also died Saturday in Afghanistan, one in an insurgent attack and another of non-battle related injuries.There were conflicting reports about the shooting in Helmand province.Fareed Ahmad, a spokesman for the Hel

ALGIERS (AFP) ― Algeria’s ruling party tightened its grip on power in an election that bucked the regional trend of Islamists gaining strength since the Arab Spring, according to results Friday that drew accusations of fraud.President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s National Liberation Front won 220 out of 462 seats up for grabs in Thursday’s election, improving on its share in the outgoing national assembly.The seven Islamist parties contesting the polls could only manage a combined 59 seats, a major se

DAMASCUS (AFP) ― Violence in Syria cost at least 15 lives on Saturday as a U.N. force to oversee a truce neared half its planned strength, monitors said.In Idlib province, a stronghold near the Turkish border of rebels fighting President Bahar al-Assad’s regime, security force gunfire killed a man and a woman during a series of raids, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.Another civilian and a child were killed in pre-dawn shelling in central Hama province, the Britain-based watchdog sai

MOSCOW (AFP) ― Russia’s newly sworn-in President Vladimir Putin will make what could be his first foreign trip to China next month after deciding to skip the G8 summit in the U.S., a diplomatic source said on Friday.Putin’s June 5-7 visit will include talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and attendance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, the source told Russian news agencies.Putin, sworn in for a third term as president on Monday after spending the past four years as premier, had