WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama announced Friday that he was naming his longtime foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough to lead the White House staff.Obama, appearing with McDonough at the White House, called him ``a great friend to me and everybody who works here at the White House.''McDonough is taking over the key role from Jack Lew, Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary.

As North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong-un, continues to make wrong choices, it's very important for the international community to stay united against Pyongyang, the U.S. State Department official said Friday."It's really a pretty sad story, because the new North Korean leader has a choice to make, as the secretary has said so many times," department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a press briefing.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has consistently called for Kim to make a right choice to

North Korea is loosening some restrictions on foreign cellphones by allowing visitors to bring their own phones into the country. However, security regulations still prohibit mobile phone calls between foreigners and locals.For years, North Korea required visitors to relinquish foreign cellphones at the border until their departure, leaving many tourists without an easy way to communicate with the outside world.The ritual of handing over phones was part of an exhaustive security check that most

China's top diplomat said Monday that his country does not support North Korea's nuclear weapons programs or its recent rocket launch, hoping that tension on the Korean Peninsula would be resolved as soon as possible by resuming six-party denulcearization talks.Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi made the remarks when he met in Beijing with a four-member delegation sent by South Korea President-elect Park Geun-hye, according to the delegation.The South Korean team, led by former Rep. Kim Moo-su

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama has prepared a second inaugural speech that broadly lays out his vision for the country's future, setting the stage for looming debates over taxes, guns, immigration and other issues while leaving the details for another day.Monday's speech, to be given right after Obama takes an oath to “faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States” outside the Capitol, includes no new policy, aides say. Instead, the president plans to use the mom

DIABALY, Mali (AP) -- About 200 French infantrymen supported by six combat helicopters and reconnaissance planes advanced Monday on the town of Diabaly, seized one week ago by Islamic extremists including fighters under the command of the mastermind of Algeria's recent terror attack.Diabaly, a small bucolic town in central Mali, has been the scene of the first major battle in the war to retake northern Mali from bearded fighters who have occupied the region for nine months."The operation in Diab

The yen strengthened from its weakest level against the dollar since June 2010 as Bank of Japan officials started a two-day policy meeting. Japan’s currency has declined 5.9 percent versus the greenback in the past month on speculation the BOJ, under pressure from the government of new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will boost stimulus to lift the economy out of recession. Technical indicators signaled the yen’s drop may have been overdone and data showed traders became the least bearish on the curr

The presidential transition committee is likely to exclude civil servants, service personnel and teachers from a new pension plan pledged by President-elect Park Geun-hye during her campaign, a committee official said Thursday.The so-called "basic pension" scheme would double the monthly allowance for senior citizens aged 65 or older to 200,000 won ($189)."The basic pension scheme aims to support elderly citizens who are excluded from welfare benefits, so it makes sense to exclude those who are

South Korea rose one notch to 34th place in the FIFA rankings for January, the world's football governing body said Thursday.The rankings, published on FIFA's Web site, showed South Korea with a total of 687 points this month, up one point from December.The increase was calculated from an adjustment in the weighted average of the country's points in the past four years.South Korea was the second-highest ranking Asian nation after Japan, which ranked 21st.(Yonhap News) 

Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers killed in the Korean War will be posthumously awarded commemorative medals as South Korea marks 60 years since the end of the conflict, organizers said Thursday.The first recipients of the medals, made of rusty barbed wire from the tense inter-Korean border, will be the families of 36,000 American soldiers killed in the 1950-53 war, they said.The Korean war, which started with an invasion by North Korea on June 25, 1950, ended in an armistice three years later.

ZURICH (AP) -- World and European champion Spain leads an unchanged top 10 teams in FIFA's latest world rankings.Ecuador at No. 12 and Haiti at No. 38 both climbed one place to highest-ever positions as 46 international matches in the past month counted toward the standings.Spain leads from Germany, Argentina, Italy and Colombia. Europe completes the top 10 with England, Portugal, Netherlands, Russia and Croatia.World Cup host Brazil remains at No. 18.Ivory Coast is the highest-ranked African te

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has made the first arrests as part of a global investigation into the manipulation of interbank lending rates.The SFO said on Tuesday three British men, aged 33, 41 and 47, had been taken to a London police station for interviews. They had all been living in Britain.Sources had said that regulators and prosecutors in the U.S. and Europe were closing in on individual traders they suspected of colluding to rig key benchmark lending rates such as Libor (London interba

Eleven Chinese sailors were rescued from their cargo ship that was tilting in South Korean waters near the border with North Korea, the Coast Guard said Tuesday.The Cambodian-flagged 1,996-ton freighter sent out a distress signal at around 5:40 p.m. as it was listing on its right side about 56 kilometers south of Daecheong Island, it said.The Coast Guard said it immediately dispatched a helicopter and a patrol boat to the scene but the sailors had already been rescued by a passing freighter.The

Two Chinese fishing boats were seized near the southern island of Jeju on Thursday on suspicions of poaching in South Korean waters, maritime police said.The Jeju Coast Guard said it seized the two boats in waters some 78 kilometers northwest of the island at around 3:30 p.m. for violating South Korea's exclusive economic zones and fishing illegally.The sailors are also suspected of falsifying their daily logs, the police said. A crewman of one boat wrote it caught 570 kilograms for the day thou

Gen. James Thurman, the commander of the United Forces in Korea, got a Korean name in a gesture of friendship and goodwill for his service in the nation, an alliance association said Friday.The Republic of Korea-U.S. Alliance Friendship Association conferred the name, "Seo Min Jae," to the four-star general, who is dual-hatted as the commander of the United Nations Command, during a ceremony held at the U.S. Army garrison in Yongsan, Seoul.The society has made a special plaque, containing a mess