...sh and gift certificates from SLS Group Chairman Lee Kuk-chul over the past decade. During the questioning, Shin admitted to occasionally taking gift certificates from Lee but denied the businessman‘s widely-published claim that he was lavishly bribed constantly over the long period of time, the sources said. The former official also reiterated his firm stance that he has never peddled influence...

CAPE TOWN (AFP) -- It has never been easier to fly to Ouagadougou, Juba or Maputo but Africa’s increasingly busy skies are still among the most expensive in the world. Budget carriers are cropping u... the world’s second-highest growth in passengers by 2014. “Slowly but surely governments seem to be loosening up,” predicts Comair’s Van der Linden. “Slowly but surely things are starting to evolve.”

Investment by South Korea’s state-run pension fund in overseas properties jumped almost nine times this year, compared with that of the 2008 global financial crisis, according to data Monday, showing...of June, up from 564.2 billion won tallied at the end of 2008, according to industry data. The NPS’s investment in overseas property has been on the steady rise as the world’s fourth-largest pension ...

...ed States will hold a second bilateral meeting to discuss the stalled six-nation talks on the North’s nuclear weapons programs, a senior Seoul diplomat said Monday. The exact date for the meeting has...e after this week’s planned summit in Washington between South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and U.S. President Barack Obama, the diplomat said on the condition of anonymity. North Korean and U.S. o...

South Korea’s rice production is expected to fall to the lowest level in 31 years due to bad weather and a steady decrease in the size of rice paddies, a government report showed Monday. The report by Statistics Korea said the country’s rice production could reach 4.21 million tons this year, down 1.9 percent from around 4.29 million tons harvested in 2010. If production falls to this level, it...

...reets, attacking cars they suspected had Christian passengers. In many areas, there was no visible police or army presence to confront or stop them. Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people, blame the country’s ruling military council for being too lenient on those behind a spate of anti-Christian attacks since Mubarak’s ouster. As Egypt undergoes a chaotic power transition and security vacuum in the wake ...

...es in Hong Kong continue to break records. Andrew Lloyd Webbers wine collection was sold by Sotheby’s for $5.6 million in January 2011. China is also becoming an increasingly important market with bo...on is not unique. “Language is the biggest problem. They don’t know French, Italian, Spanish so it’s difficult to learn the wine words. It’s a big problem,” the president says. To train students, he ...

The National Assembly’s foreign affairs committee will discuss the long-disputed Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement bill in its general meeting on Thursday, according to its chairman. “The U.S. Congress is expected to pass its bill within the week, and parties have agreed to follow suit,” said Grand National Party Rep. Nam Kyung-pil in the party’s Supreme Council meeting on Monday. “Now that the r...

...in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in his memory. Fromlet said other hot candidates for this year‘s award include: the India-born game theorist Avinash Dixit; French professor Jean Tirole, for work ...ins without contributing to productivity. Another potential candidate is American professor Martin S. Feldstein for his work on macroeconomics and public finance, including research on public pension...