IN BRIEF (Page 12)

Webcam creates recipe for fame

Every evening, 14-year-old Kim Sung-jin orders fried chicken, pizza or Chinese food to eat in a small room in his family's home south of Seoul. He gorges on food as he chats before a live camera with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of teenagers watching.

Thousands of letters hold up legislation to curb tobacco use

Bulging sacks of letters gathering dust at India's Health Ministry are the latest obstacle to a push for tougher laws to curb smoking, as more than 100,000 unread messages from members of the public overwhelm officials and stall legislation.

PM can't build coalition as new election looms

Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday told President Recep Tayyip Erdogan he had failed to form a coalition government, paving the way for new general elections just months after June polls.

Rivals invited to work together

Sri Lanka's prime minister invited all political parties in the island nation to work together after his party won the most seats in parliamentary elections and thwarted a political comeback bid by the country's former strongman president.

DPRK drills target ROK loudspeakers

Military forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in front-line units conducted exercises targeting Republic of Korea loudspeakers used for propaganda broadcasts, Yonhap News Agency reported on Wednesday, citing military officials.

President rides to bottom of Black Sea

Another summer, another trip to the bottom of a sea for Russia's adventure-loving president.

Islamic State beheads leading antiquities scholar

Islamic State militants beheaded one of Syria's most prominent antiquities scholars in the ancient town of Palmyra, then strapped his body to one of the town's Roman columns, Syrian state media reported on Wednesday.

Rescuers discover first bodies from remote plane crash site

The first bodies of 54 people killed when a plane went down in eastern Indonesia were carried from the remote crash site on Wednesday after bad weather hampered efforts to airlift them.

Police: Bombing conducted by 'network'

Thailand's national police chief said on Wednesday that a deadly bombing at a central Bangkok shrine was carried out by "a network," as investigators focused on a man seen in a grainy security video leaving a backpack behind just 20 minutes before the explosion.

Sketch of bomb suspect released

Thai police released a sketch on Wednesday of the main suspect in a bomb blast in Bangkok that killed at least 20 people, more than half of them foreigners.

Record number of migrants reported

A record 107,500 migrants crossed the European Union's borders last month, according to new figures, showing they are arriving in dramatically increasing numbers and creating a humanitarian crisis for the 28-nation bloc.