North Korea said Friday it will hold talks with Japan later this month in Mongolia to discuss ways to mend their relations. "The DPRK and Japanese governments will hold talks in Ulan Bator of Mongolia on November 15 and 16 under the mutual agreement reached in the wake of the contacts between section chiefs of foreign ministries of the two countries in August 2012," the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a brief English-language dispatch.The two countries will discuss wa

AKCAKALE (AFP) --Turkey hammered Syrian targets on Thursday in reprisal for deadly cross-border fire that sent tensions soaring in the tinder-box region, prompting international calls for restraint.In Ankara, the Turkish parliament met behind closed doors in an emergency session and agreed to a government request to authorize military operations inside neighboring Syria.But Turkish Deputy Prime Mi

North Korea last week test-fired one short-range missile off its west coast a day after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak presided over a meeting of security ministers, a government source said Thursday. North Korea fired a surface-to-ship missile into the Yellow Sea on Sept. 27 and the launch could be related to the security ministers' meeting, the source said on the condition of anonymity. "T

The U.S. military in South Korea plans to bring in precision-guided "Excalibur" shells capable of striking artillery batteries in North Korea by the end of the year, a military source said Thursday.The U.S. 2nd Infantry Division and South Korea's Agency for Defense Development successfully conducted a test-firing of the Excalibur shell in May, the source said. The U.S. forces also plan to addition

CHANGWON (Yonhap News) -- An elder brother of the late former President Roh Moo-hyun is expected to be cleared of suspicions that he is related to tens of billions of won (tens of millions of U.S. dollars) in a businessman's bank account, prosecution sources said Thursday.In May, prosecutors said they had discovered several tens of billions of won in the bank account owned by Roh Geon-pyeong's clo

RABAT (AFP) - A bus plunged into a ravine in the Atlas mountains of southern Morocco early on Tuesday killing at least 42 people, a security official said, in the worst such accident recorded in the kingdom.All the victims were Moroccan, a local official told AFP. "But we are still in the process of identifying the bodies, as well as the injured," he added.The accident took place at around 2:00 am

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan officials say a suicide bomber has killed at least 10 civilians and wounded another 30 at a funeral for a village elder in a remote part of eastern Afghanistan. The deputy police chief for Nangarhar province, Jamil Shamal, says the attack took place on Tuesday in the village of Shagai in the Durbaba district.  There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the

A warning against a fish-suffocating red tide was issued Monday along parts of South Korea's southern coast, a state fisheries institute said.The National Fisheries Research and Development Institute issued the warning, the first so far this year, at 6 p.m. on waters off southern coastal areas from Namhae to Geoje.Up to 1,500 cochlodinium, or red-tide-causing algae, were found in 1 milliliter of s

A controversial motion to dismiss Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik over the mishandling of a military pact with Japan was automatically scrapped on Friday after the ruling Saenuri Party boycotted the vote, officials said.The motion was put to a plenary vote in the 300-member National Assembly earlier in the day, but the vote was declared invalid due to a lack of quorum as the Saenuri Party, which hold

AURORA, Colorado (AFP) -- A masked, black-clad gunman in full body armor opened fire at a packed US movie theater showing the new Batman film Friday in a bloodbath which left at least 12 dead and nearly 60 injured.Chaos erupted when the gunman tossed two tear gas or smoke grenades into the audience at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises," then gunned down terrified patrons as they scrambl

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Batman movie director Christopher Nolan lamented Friday the "senseless tragedy' and "unbearably savage" gunning down of 12 movie goers at a Colorado theater screening of "The Dark Knight Rises."The Oscar-nominated filmmaker, who canceled the French premiere of the final part in the Batman trilogy and a media junket in Paris after the shootings, said the "innocent" place he call