The Korea Herald

Strauss-Kahn charged in prostitution vice ring

PodcastMar 27, 2012

Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged on Monday with involvement in an organised vice ring that procured prostitutes for top-class clients, lawyers said. Prosecutors said the 62-year-old former Socialist finance minister and one-time presidential favourite had been released on 100,000 euros ($135,000) bail after the charges on "aggravated pimping as part of an organised g...
Chimps have ‘police,’ too

PodcastMar 8, 2012

Scientists have revealed that certain members in a chimpanzee group act as an impartial “police” to mediate conflicts and preserve peace, Science Daily and livescience.com reported Wednesday. Animal groups handle conflicts in a variety of ways, but the arbiters in chimps, gorillas, orangutans and other primate group were neither biased nor aggressive. The arbiters did not support allies or punis...
Seaweed seen as alternate fuel source

PodcastMar 6, 2012

With much valuable farmland being used to produce bioethanol, the search for biofuel should turn to the world's oceans and to seaweed, Israeli researchers say. Scientists at Tel Aviv University said marine macroalgae, common seaweed, can be grown more quickly than land-based crops and harvested as fuel without sacrificing usable land. Seaweed can be grown unobtrusively along coastlines and can ...
Official: 44 dead in Mexico prison riot

PodcastFeb 20, 2012

A fight among inmates led to a prison riot in northern Mexico that killed 44 people Sunday, a security official said. Nuevo Leon state public security spokesman Jorge Domene Zambrano said the riot broke out at about 2 a.m. in a high-security section of a prison in the city of Apodaca outside the northern industrial city of Monterrey. Several inmates attacked others, and the fighting then spread...
ESPN sorry for offensive headline on Lin story

PodcastFeb 19, 2012

The cable television sports network ESPN has apologized for using a racial slur in a headline for a story on Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin. ESPN ran the headline “Chink in the Armor” after Lin had nine turnovers in New York's loss to the New Orleans Hornets on Friday night on its mobile website that could be seen on phones and tablet computers. Lin is the NBA's first American-born player of Chine...
Maid kills Singaporean widow after being called stupid

PodcastFeb 16, 2012

SINGAPORE (AFP) - A teenage Indonesian maid is facing a long jail term after pleading guilty to hitting and strangling an 87-year-old Singaporean widow who called her stupid, a report said Thursday. Now 19, Vitria Depsi Wahyuno had lied about her age in 2009, saying she was 23 to meet the minimum age requirement, and landed a job in Singapore working for Sng Gek Wah, the Straits Times said. Wa...
Angry Birds fly to Facebook

PodcastFeb 15, 2012

“Angry Bird,” the most-downloaded mobile app of 2011, was catapulted to the world of Facebook on Tuesday in a bid by its Finnish maker Rovio to get one billion people playing the addictive game. True to the game’s quirky theme, a bird flung at a pig on a giant screen marked its official Facebook launch in Jakarta, the world’s most Facebook-connected city. The company’s strategy is for the game ...
Colombian priests hired hitmen to kill themselves

PodcastFeb 15, 2012

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ Rev. Rafael Reatiga asked his parishioners to pray for him and gave the choirmaster a list of songs for his funeral shortly before he was found shot to death together with another Roman Catholic priest, a Colombian prosecutor said Tuesday. Authorities initially suspected robbery when Reatiga's body was found along with that of Rev. Richard Piffano, 37, in a car in souther...
Malaysia deports Saudi journalist in Twitter row

PodcastFeb 13, 2012

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) -- Malaysia on Sunday deported a young Saudi journalist wanted in his home country over a Twitter post about the Prophet Mohammed, defying pleas from human rights group who said he faced execution. Hamza Kashgari, who was detained in Malaysia on Thursday after fleeing Saudi Arabia, has now left the country, national police spokesman Ramli Yoosuf said. "He was deported to Saud...
Japan's Fukushima reactor may be reheating: operator

PodcastFeb 13, 2012

TOKYO (AFP) - Temperature readings at one of the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactors have risen above Japan's stringent new safety standard but there was no immediate danger, its operator said Sunday. Tokyo Electric Power said one of three thermometers on the number-two reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant indicated gradual heating this month and reached 82 degrees Celsius (179.6 degre...
[속보] 금융위, 하나-외환 합병 승인

PodcastJan 27, 2012

금융위원회는 27일 하나금융지주의 외환은행 자회사 편입 신청안을 승인했다고 밝혔다. 외환은행 대주주인 론스타 펀드가 국내은행을 소유할 자격이 없는 산업자본(비금융주력자)이었고, 따라서 하나금융이 론스타와 맺은 계약 또한 무효라는 논란에 금융당국이 일단 종지부를 찍은 셈이다. 금융권 관계자들은 향후 정치권 및 시민단체의 거센 반발과 함께 가처분신청을 포함한 줄 소송이 잇따를 것으로 내다보고 있다. (코리아헤럴드) Hana Financial entitled to acquire KEB Financial regulators endorsed the deal between Hana Financial Group and Lone Star Funds to trade shares of Korea Exchange B...
‘ My husband gave his life for me ’: Italy ship survivor

PodcastJan 17, 2012

TOULOUSE, France (AFP) - The widow of a Frenchman who died on the Costa Concordia luxury liner gave a chilling account Monday of how her husband sacrificed his life by giving her the only life jacket they had. "I owe my life to my husband," said Nicole Servel, 61, whose husband Francis was one of at least six people to die when the luxury liner ran aground off the Italian coast on Friday night. ...
Perry: Marines in video are 'kids,' not criminals

PodcastJan 16, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry on Sunday accused the Obama administration of "over-the-top rhetoric" and "disdain for the military" in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows four Marines urinating on corpses in Afghanistan. Perry's comments put him at odds with Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said the imag...
Russian spacecraft turned space junk to crash soon

PodcastJan 13, 2012

MOSCOW (AP) _ A Russian spacecraft designed to burnish the nation's faded space glory in a mission to one of Mars' moons has turned into one of the heaviest, most toxic pieces of space junk ever. It will come crashing down to Earth in just a few days. The Russian space agency Roscosmos' latest forecast has the unmanned Phobos-Ground probe falling out of Earth's orbit Sunday or Monday, with the ...
Report: Bomb kills official at Iran nuke facility

PodcastJan 11, 2012

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) _ Two assailants on a motorcycle attached magnetic bombs on Wednesday to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and wounding two others, a semiofficial news agency reported. The attack in Tehran strongly resembles earlier killings of scientists working on the country's controversial nuclear program. The bomb explosion killed M...