Russia is the top source country for ISIS fighters, with 3,414 of them joining the group. Four hundred have now returned home, as have 760 of Saudi Arabia‘s 3,244 fighters. Across the European Union, 1,200 foreign fighters have returned out of 5,000 who flocked to war zones in the Middle East. The United Kingdom has the highest total in Europe with 425 individuals returning home while Germany ...

South Korean electronics giant LG Corp. took 10th place on the list of the World’s 500 Best Employers, according to a Forbes report. Google parent company Alphabet, with a workforce of around 72,000 employees, topped the list after its employees credited it with having excellent working conditions, diversity and company image. Microsoft ranked second, followed by Japan Exchange Group, Apple, ...

Chrome is the most popular browser in the world, used by 62.09 percent of web surfers. The advent of Chrome had signaled trouble for all other browsers. Today, it easily outperforms the likes of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Firefox and former market leader Microsoft Windows’ Internet Explorer are distant second and third most popular browsers. Other browsers like Yandex, Co...

Environmental pollution - from filthy air to contaminated water - is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. A major study released in the Lancet medical journal says 1 in 6 premature deaths in the world in 2015 - about 9 million total - could be attributed to dise...

Switzerland retained top spot as the most competitive economy for a ninth straight year, according the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018. Three Asian economies, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, ranked in the top 10 of the study, which covered 137 economies. South Korea ranked 26th and China inched up one place to 27th. The 12 c...

The number of people with HIV in South Korea has nearly tripled over the past 10 years, data showed last week. A total of 13,584 people had been diagnosed with HIV in 2016, up from 5,316 tallied in 2007, according to data from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted to the National Assembly. Patients in their 30s accounted for 27.2 percent of the total, followed by those ...

South Koreans used a monthly average of 3.83 gigabytes of data on their smartphones last year, ranking eighth among member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to a report by the OECD. Finland was No. 1 with monthly data usage on smartphones standing at 10.95 GB in 2016, followed by Latvia with 8.21 GB, Austria with 6.28 GB and Sweden with 4.38 GB. A...

Global hunger has fallen more than a quarter since 2000, but conflict and climate shocks are beginning to reverse these gains, an annual global hunger index said. Nearly half of the 119 countries surveyed had “serious,” “alarming” or “extremely alarming” hunger levels between 2012 and 2016, with war-torn Central African Republic worst affected, followed by Chad, Sierra Leone, Madagascar and Za...

Canada has been named the most advanced country in the world when it comes to cashless payments, followed by Sweden and the UK, according to a recent study by Forex Bonuses. The North American country came in at No. 1 largely due to its number of credit cards, averaging about two per person, despite only 26 percent of cards there having contactless capabilities. The data was based on six met...

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, 1 out of 6 South Korean children and youths (elementary, middle school, and high school students) are obese with the rate increasing every year. The obesity rate increased from 11.2 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percent in 2010, 14.7 percent in 2012, 15 percent in 2014 and moved up to 16.5 percent in 2016, the data showed. Also, the data showed that...

Nearly 70,000 cases of exotic diseases and insect pests were detected at airports and sea ports across South Korea over the last seven years, government data showed, pointing to a possible loophole in the nation’s quarantine system for imports. The number of interceptions of non-indigenous diseases and insect pests at airports and ports nationwide from 2010 to 2016 amounts to 69,445, according...

A statue symbolizing the victims of Japanese wartime sexual slavery was unveiled in New York, a local Korean association said. The girl statue was installed inside the Museum of Korean American Heritage in Manhattan following an unveiling ceremony at the site. Historians estimate that some 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, were forced to work in brothels for Japanese troops during World War ...

FIFA has promised to deliver a "transparent" bidding process for the 2026 World Cup after the controversy surrounding the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 tournaments to Russia and Qatar. The successful bid will have to "formally commit to conducting their activities based on sustainable event management principles and to respecting international human rights and labor standards" laid out by the ...

The number of traffic-related deaths in South Korea has been on a steady decline, but still remains in the top level among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to data compiled by Statistics Korea. Based on the OECD’s criteria, the country’s death rate from traffic accidents reached 10 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2016, which is relatively high...

Technology giant Apple is the best brand in the world, according to the annual Interbrand Best Global Brands Report for 2017. Google once again took second place, while Facebook entered the top 10 this year at eighth. Tech giant Microsoft displaced beverage brand Coca-Cola from third place this year. Other brands among the top 10 are Amazon, Samsung, Toyota, Facebook, Mercedes-Benz and IBM. ...