South Korea’s National Assembly on Thursday authorized sending about 300 military personnel to South Sudan on a peacekeeping mission that will last until the end of 2013, officials said. Since last year, South Korea has taken steps to join the U.N. Mission in South Sudan, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the newly independent African nation. The Korean peacekeeping unit, consisting mostly of en...

The Korea Food and Drug Administration has drafted new guidelines for children’s food safety under which high caffeine energy drinks such as Hot Six and Red Bull may be banned from school stores and areas around schools. The agency on Thursday unveiled a set of nutrition management guides for children’s snacks and school lunches. According to the plan, schools stores will be banned from selling...

Korea is likely to face tough price negotiations for its planned purchase of advanced attack helicopters, with costs currently appearing almost double the budget allocated for the project. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration plans to select the provider for 36 advanced military copters by late November. Boeing’s AH-64D Apache Longbow, Bell’s AH-1Z Cobra and Turkish Aerospace Industri...

NEW YORK (AFP) ― Climate change caused by global warming is freezing the world economy and already leading to the deaths of millions every year, a report commissioned by 20 of the world’s most vulnerable countries said Wednesday. “Climate Vulnerability Monitor: a guide to the cold calculus of a hot planet” says global warming will not only lead to environmental catastrophe, but is choking the in...

KADENA AIR BASE, Japan (AP) -- Years before F-22 pilots began getting dizzy in the cockpit, before one struggled to breathe as he tried to pull out of a fatal crash, before two more went on television to say the plane was so unsafe they refused to fly it, a small circle of U.S. Air Force experts knew something was wrong with the prized stealth fighter jet. Coughing among pilots and fears that co...

The National Assembly on Thursday passed a bill temporarily reducing taxes on purchases and transfers of homes in a move to boost the slumping housing market. The revision comes after the government announced measures earlier in the year aimed at reviving the real estate market that included halving acquisition taxes and scrapping transfer taxes. Under the revised bill, the tax rate on purchase...

Independent presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo apologized Thursday over allegations his wife evaded paying around 10 million won (US$8,940) in taxes by under-reporting the price of an apartment she bought in 2001. The apology came one day after local media reported allegations that Ahn's wife, Kim Mi-kyung, did not report the correct price of an apartment she bought in southeastern Seoul by at...

The trunk of a giant oak tree unearthed from a field in Britain may be more than 5,000 years old, forestry experts say. They called the 44-foot Norfolk bog oak “the largest-ever intact 5,000-year-old sub-fossilized trunk of an ancient giant oak,” but said they believe it could be just a section, possibly just a quarter, of the original tree. Until about 7,000 years ago the East Anglia fenland b...