North Korea's parliament will hold its annual meeting on April 9, state media announced Saturday. The Korean Central News Agency gave no more details of the upcoming session. The rubber-stamp Supreme People's Assembly normally meets once a year to endorse bills put forward by the ruling communist party. Leader Kim Jong-Il attended last year's session, which re-elected ...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's rubber stamp parliament will meet in April for an annual session where the secretive and isolated state typically reveals changes to its ruling elite and spending priorities for the coming year. The meeting will take place as the North faces pressure to return to nuclear disarmament-for-aid talks and as speculation mounts that reclusive leader Kim ...

South Korea Friday rebuffed North Korean pressure to lift a tourism ban which has cost Pyongyang millions of dollars, and a Seoul official said trade worth millions more dollars could dry up unless ties improve. The shutdown of the Mount Kumgang resort has intensified an acute hard currency shortage in the impoverished North, which was also hit by tougher UN ...

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Friday criticised excessive bank profits following the global slump and said tougher financial regulations would be the key issue at this year's G20 summit. "Look at the profit of the banking sector this year following the crisis: this is unacceptable. We must be strongly determined to balance this within the G20," Kouchner said ...