National defense officials of South Korea, the United States and Japan will hold a video conferencethis week to discuss their joint response to the North's imminent long-range missile, a government official here said Thursday.   The video conference will be held early on Friday with working-level national defense officials from the three countries on hand, the official said on condition of anonymity.   The move comes after North Korea recently notified U.N. agencies that it will launch what it c

Brazil is not sharing enough samples and disease data to let researchers determine whether the Zika virus is, as feared, linked to the increased number of babies born with abnormally small heads in the South American country, U.N. and U.S. health officials say.   The lack of data is forcing laboratories in the United States and Europe to work with samples from previous outbreaks, and is frustrating efforts to develop diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines. Scientists tell The Associated Press that

The body of a missing Italian student was found with signs of torture, including multiple stab wounds and cigarette burns, by the side of a highway on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital, an investigating prosecutor told The Associated Press on Thursday.   Giulio Regeni, A 28-year-old graduate student, went missing in Cairo on Jan. 25, the fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.   His body was found Wednesday along the Cairo-Alexandria Road in the 6 Octo

At No. 7 in the women's singles badminton rankings with a slew of international victories, Sung Ji-hyun admits she remains a work in progress.   Sung, however, has been improving at a rate that has the South Korean national team camp buzzing with talks of an Olympic medal for the 24-year-old in Rio de Janeiro in August.   She's fresh off a Badminton World Federation (BWF) Grand Prix victory in India last week. During an open training session in Seoul Thursday, Sung said she was pleased to get th

The country's two umbrella labor groups have recently lost their organizational power and are faced with their own internal strives, labor industry experts said Thursday.   The Korea Confederation of Trade Unions initially planned to go on an indefinite walkout in protest of the government's adoption of contentious labor guidelines.   However, the KCTU's general strike has de-facto ended in February, the experts said, adding that there has not been a single rally despite its plan to hold it ever

South Korea’s fourth-quarter economic growth slowed on reduced investment in the construction sector, the country’s central bank said Tuesday. 　In the three months that ended on Dec. 31, the nation’s gross domestic product rose 0.6 percent from the previous quarter, according to preliminary data from the Bank of Korea. From a year earlier, the quarterly GDP grew 3 percent.　For the year, Asia’s fourth-largest economy expanded by 2.6 percent, lower than the 2.7 percent projected by the central ban