WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Barack Obama returned to Washington on Monday after a brief family break in California to find himself confronted once again by the nightmare from which America thought it had escaped: Iraq. Obama ran for the White House as a young leader who opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion, and then won re-election as the steady hand who had finally withdrawn American troops eight years later....

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister-nominee Choi Kyung-hwan stands at a crossroads as he will soon have to make tough decisions and policy recommendations for President Park Geun-hye to revitalize the economy, which has become sluggish following the ferry disaster in April. A slew of economic tasks await the incoming deputy prime minister after his parliamentary confirmation hearing, and ...

Minister of Oceans and Fisheries Lee Ju-young, whose ministry was directly responsible for handling the Sewol ferry disaster, has managed to hang onto his post. The news came as a shock to many, as speculation was rife that he would be the first to be replaced in the government’s recent personnel shake-up aimed at repairing its image. It was more surprising because the seven ministers that Pres...

Park’s close aide set to take economic helm Choi Kyung-hwan, a third-term lawmaker from the ruling Saenuri Party, was nominated on Friday as South Korea’s new deputy prime minister and finance minister, a key post for the nation’s economic policy direction. The appointment of Choi, the floor leader of the ruling party who is considered a close aide of President Park Geun-hye, is seen as signali...

FOZ DO IGUACU, Brazil (Yonhap) ― Players on the South Korean national football team have put their recent big loss to Ghana behind them as they get ready for a more crucial task ahead. On Wednesday, head coach Hong Myung-bo and his 23-man team arrived in Foz do Iguacu, their base camp during the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, after wrapping up an earlier camp in Miami. South Korea has struggled migh...

Prime Minister-nominee Moon Chang-keuk took a single path as a newspaper journalist for 38 years. The 66-year-old former political correspondent never strayed from his job or attempted to cross over into politics or elsewhere. Even after his retirement in 2012, he stood in front of college students, offering lectures on the principles of journalism and its role of pursuing truth without favor. M...

LONDON (AFP) ― A Russian supercomputer posing as a 13-year-old boy has convinced judges that it is human, becoming the first to pass the “Turing Test” in a historic moment in artificial intelligence, British scientists said. The computer became the first in the world to be mistaken for a real person more than 30 percent of the time, during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations with huma...

CAIRO (AFP) ― Ex-army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who was sworn in Sunday as Egypt’s president, may have donned civilian clothes but his crackdown on opponents has raised fears he could herald a return to autocracy. Sissi was chosen as president in a May 26-28 election with 96.91 percent of the vote, nearly a year after toppling the country’s first freely elected leader, Islamist Mohamed Morsi....

While Russia’s relationships with the United States and Europe are frayed over the conflict in Ukraine, the newly minted Eurasian Economic Union ― made official during a signing ceremony in Astana, Kazakhstan, on May 29 ― will surely tighten Russia’s ties with former Soviet republics. But that aspect of the newly minted EEU belies the pact’s real winner, Kazakhstan, how the pact could boost econ...

Nam Kyung-pil, the Gyeonggi governor-elect, is a seasoned politician and former journalist who was educated at Yale in the U.S. and Yonsei University in Seoul. The five-time lawmaker of the ruling party won one of the toughest races on Wednesday, beating his rival and NPAD candidate Kim Jin-pyo by a margin of less than 1 percent. The former deputy floor leader has been considered one of the few...

Park Won-soon of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy defeated conservative candidate Chung Mong-joon in the Seoul mayor election Wednesday. Turnout among Seoul’s 8.4 million voters was 58.6 percent. Chung’s defeat in a key battleground district deals a political blow to President Park Geun-hye and the Saenuri Party, but President Park’s past leadership in political crises ha...

BEIJING (AP) ― Born in 1989, Steve Wang sometimes wonders what happened in his hometown of Beijing that year. But his curiosity about pro-democracy protests and the crackdown on them passes quickly. “I was not part of it,” he said. “I know it could be important, but I cannot feel it.” A quarter century after the Communist Party’s attack on demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square on June 4, ...

After three and a half years at the helm of the Defense Ministry, the hawkish Kim Kwan-jin was expected to leave the government to pave the way for a more flexible, conciliatory policy toward North Korea. Yet, he has reemerged as the centerpiece of the Park Geun-hye administration’s security policy as Park seeks to maintain a robust deterrence posture amid Pyongyang’s saber-rattling and menacing...

The Internet, one of the world’s greatest inventions of the 20th century, faces a possible makeover as it is being threatened by a new U.S. rule that can overthrow its openness and indiscriminate accessibility. Concerns over the possible breakdown in net neutrality, in which all Internet data should be treated equally, have been rising especially since the U.S. Federal Communications Commission ...

Presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon is drawing yet more fire from opposition parties in the wake of Ahn Dae-hee withdrawing his nomination for prime minister. Since the Sewol ferry disaster, the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy has been stepping up pressure on President Park Geun-hye to remove Kim from office. The NPAD and other opposition parties accuse Kim of being res...