Global investment banks recently revised down their outlook on South Korea’s economic growth, despite the favorable financial indexes for exporters compared to earlier this year.According to the Korea Center for International Finance, the projection of 10 major IBs since June on the nation’s 2015 gross domestic product growth is set at 2.6 percent on average.Though the IBs shared the view that Korea would see a recovery from the third quarter after bottoming out in the second quarter, they cut t

The executive boards of a majority of the Korean conglomerates continue to be dominated by male members despite the rising proportion of female workers over the past few decades. According to corporate assessment site CEO Score, seven out of 10 affiliates of the 30 biggest business groups had a male-only board of directors.About 73 percent, or 210 of the 284 surveyed units, of the 30 conglomerates did not have a single female executive on their board of directors as of the first quarter of 2015.

Regulators have decided to extend a set of deregulations on mortgages or housing-collateralized loans -- introduced on Aug.1, 2014 -- by a year from the scheduled expiry date of end-July.The Financial Supervisory Service on Tuesday said in a statement that it would extend the eased home loan-application rules by another year until the end of July 2016.But the extension of eased rules is raising questions about the consistency in policies as only weeks ago authorities pledged to curb the record h

The nation’s 10 biggest business groups saw their market capitalization on the main bourse drop sharply over the past few weeks or months in the wake of lackluster exports and foreigners’ net-selling streak.According to Chaebol.com, a conglomerate data tracker, listed units of the 10 conglomerates lost about 40 trillion won ($34.4 billion) in their collective market capitalization this year to date.It fell by 5.5 percent from 719.6 trillion won on Jan. 2 to 679.6 trillion won as of July 23.The m

The U.S. dollar posted its strongest position against the Korean won in more than three years on Thursday, with its value gaining more than 8 percent over the past three months.The greenback surged 11.5 won, or 0.99 percent, from the earlier trading session to close at 1,165.1 won. The won-dollar rate marked the highest in 37 months after it traded at 1,165.6 won on June 15, 2012.Compared to a year earlier, when the dollar traded at 1,010 won, the U.S. currency gained about 15 percent. Analysts

HEMPSTEAD, Texas (AP) - Authorities have released dashcam video of a white Texas police officer stopping a black motorist later found dead in a jail cell in what has become the latest case to cast national attention on the interactions between police and minorities in the United States.Authorities say Sandra Bland, 28, hanged herself in her cell three days after her arrest, a contention her family and supporters dispute. The video doesn't reveal what happened while she was in custody, but it dep

ISTANBUL (AP) - Turkey briefly blocked access to Twitter on Wednesday to prevent images of Monday's deadly bombing from being broadcast and to stop Twitter users from calling for protests against the government, which they blamed for not doing enough to prevent the attack, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.Access was restored a few hours later. A government official said Turkey had asked Twitter to remove 107 URLs with images of the aftermath of the bombing Monday in southeast Turkey, which

BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom (AFP) - A Koran manuscript has been carbon dated to close to the time of the Prophet Mohammed, making it one of the oldest in the world, a British university said Wednesday.The two leaves of parchment, filled with "surprisingly legible" text from Islam's holy book, have been dated to around the early seventh century, the University of Birmingham said."The tests carried out on the parchment of the Birmingham folios yield the strong probability that the animal from which

LONDON (AFP) - Five Chelsea fans have been banned from all football matches for up to five years over an incident of racism in Paris in February, in court proceedings that concluded Wednesday.The men, including former police officer Richard Barklie, were involved in an incident in which a black Frenchman was repeatedly shoved off a metro train carriage ahead of Chelsea's Champions League match against Paris Saint Germain."This was an abhorrent, nasty, offensive, arrogant and utterly unacceptable

MADRID (AP) - Spain said Wednesday that it is trying to establish what happened to three Spanish freelance journalists who went missing around the embattled northern Syrian city of Aleppo as news emerged that a fourth journalist, a Japanese national, has gone missing in the war-torn country.Justice Minister Rafael Catala told Spain's Cadena SER radio the government had no news regarding the three Spaniards and will contact the government in Damascus over the case. He could not say if authorities

President Park Geun-hye's chief of staff met with top government officials and leaders of the ruling Saenuri Party Wednesday to discuss the reform of the labor market, the parliamentary passage of the extra budget and other pending political issues.The meeting between Lee Byung-kee and Saenuri Party Chairman Kim Moo-sung and floor leader Won Yoo-chul began at 6:30 p.m. Also attending were Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn and Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan.The three-way policy consultation involvin

Individual borrowers will have to undergo stricter assessments when they apply for bank loans under new guidelines to curb the nation’s household debt.Banks will be instructed to take borrowers’ redemption capability into greater consideration than their collateral from next year, said financial regulators, the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Korea said in a joint statement Wednesday.Their policy reportedly reflected the estimate that the record-high level of outstanding household loans ― worth

The financial authority decided to sell its dominant stake in Woori Bank to a group of investors, scrapping its earlier stance to find a single bidder.The number of investors is expected to be set at between three and 10 on the basis of a split-based holding among a group of oligopolistic stakeholders, according to the Public Fund Oversight Committee.The PFOC, an arm of the Financial Services Commission, Tuesday unveiled its revised method to sell the state-controlled bank. This marked the fifth