Seoul’s Defense Ministry said Friday that there will not be any problem in safely transporting to South Korea the 69 secondhand surface-to-air missiles impounded earlier this week by Finnish authorities.Finnish police seized the Patriot missiles and 160 tons of explosives on a British-registered cargo ship at a port in Kotka in southern Finland. The ship, which departed from Emden port in northern Germany on Dec. 13, was to make a stop in South Korea and travel to its final destination of Shangh

Apple Inc. is unlikely to win a ban on sales of Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy 10.1N tablet computer, a modified version introduced after sales of the original tablet were blocked, a German court said.The Dusseldorf court that banned sales of the Galaxy 10.1 on Sept. 9 is unlikely to grant Apple an injunction against the Galaxy 10.1N, presiding judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann said at a hearing Thursday. Samsung has changed the device’s design sufficiently to distance it from the iPad, she said

DAMASCUS (AFP) ― An Arab League advance team arrived in Syria on Thursday to launch a hard-won observer mission to oversee a plan to end nine months of bloodshed after the opposition accused regime forces of “massacring” hundreds in two days.Meanwhile, there was no let-up in the killing, with human rights activists reporting at least 21 more people killed and clashes between defectors and regular troops in flashpoints Homs and Idlib.The Arab League team “arrived in the afternoon and then left to

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) ― An oil spill near the coast of Nigeria is likely the worst to hit those waters in a decade, a government official said Thursday, as slicks from the Royal Dutch Shell PLC spill approached the country’s southern shoreline.The slick from Shell’s Bonga field has affected 185 kilometers of ocean near Nigeria’s coast, Peter Idabor, who leads the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, told The Associated Press. Idabor said the slick continued to move toward the shore Th

SINGAPORE (AFP) ― Global ratings agency Fitch on Friday cut its 2012 growth outlook for Asia to 6.8 percent from 7.4 percent previously, citing the weak global economy.For 2011, the region is seen growing at 7.1 percent, it said in a statement.The downgrade was also to reflect the impact of policy tightening measures in some of the region’s economies, notably China and India where taming high inflation has been a major government priority, Fitch said.It expects China’s economy, the world’s secon

As instructed at school at an early age, South Koreans used to regard eventual unification with North Korea as a matter of course. They were taught a song whose lyrics said in part: “What we desire even in our dreams is unification.”But the envisioned unification has lost much of its appeal, as evidenced by a survey conducted by a Seoul National University think tank in July. Moreover, the number of unification advocates is declining at a sizable rate.The poll by the research institute of 1,200

Chung Bong-ju, a former opposition lawmaker who has gained fame as one of the four hosts of a podcast talk show, is set to be sent to prison because the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision on Thursday. He had been sentenced by the lower court to one year in prison for making a false statement that President Lee Myung-bak was involved in a stock price manipulation scam.The ruling also deprived Chung of his right to election to public office for the next 10 years, making it impossible for

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the general secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, died Saturday.After the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, he struggled for 17 years to maintain the reclusive country’s regime. News of the dictator’s sudden death flashed around the globe, after the fact was hidden for two days.It is inevitable that North Korea, a country with a father-son political succession system, will become more unstable for a while.What will the regime be like under the rule of

For the tremendous physical and emotional damage it has wrought, “Sendong” is one for the books.But there will be time enough for blame after the dead are buried and the missing are found, whether breathing or rendered extinct, in the storm-stricken areas of Mindanao. For now, let sorrow and the ceremony of mourning take their course. Let those suddenly bereft of loved ones and earthly possessions find the strength to come to grips with their loss and, though inconceivable for the moment, to go

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Saturday, reported by Pyongyang’s special broadcast from noon Monday, could destabilize the isolated communist country as well as all of the Korean Peninsula. Events unfolding in the North Korean leadership must be watched carefully to prepare for possible deterioration of regional stability.Kim, reported to have suffered a stroke in 2008, died of a heart attack on his train due to “great mental and physical strain caused by his uninterrupted field