CHICAGO (AP) ― Was your kid born to be an elite athlete? Marketers of genetic tests claim the answer is in mail-order kits costing less than $200. Some customers say the test results help them steer their children to appropriate sports. But skeptical doctors and ethicists say the tests are putting profit before science and have a much greater price tag ― potentially robbing perfectly capable you...

For today’s students, life is all about staring at a screen. They spend hours doing homework, playing games, chatting with friends, reading books and just hanging out ― all on computers, smart phones and e-readers or tablets. And doctors say they’re starting to pay the price: in eye strain, neck pain and wrist aches. “Kids have a limited degree of awareness, so they’ll just play and play until...

Flower cafés emerge as new hope amid slump of flower sales and fierce competition in café industry Instead of the expected scent of coffee and waffles, the fresh fragrances of spring flowers greet visitors at the door of Blute, a flower café in Hannam-dong, central Seoul. On a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by bundles of flowers and plants, a barista made hot Americanos while a nearby florist s...

PARIS (AFP) ― It’s getting to be springtime in Paris, but for Karl Lagerfeld it was the moment to send a chill of autumn through the Grand Palais on Tuesday as he presented a tomboyish Chanel fall-winter collection. In a deliberate contrast to the Parisian garden theme that framed the spring-summer show, Lagerfeld sent darker, looser looks down a wooden boardwalk the length of a venue carpeted w...

Strabismus is a visual defect in which the eyes are misaligned and point in different directions. One eye may look straight ahead, while the other eye turns inward, outward, upward or downward. You may always notice the misalignment, or it may come and go. The turned eye may straighten at times and the straight eye may turn. Strabismus is one of the most common pediatric eye problems ― approxima...

English instructor uses sports to motivate and encourage learning Athletic performance and academic motivation for Korean student athletes are often thought to be in inverse proportion to one another. But Hwang Sung-ah, an English instructor at a middle school attached to Dongguk University, has proven that perception wrong by getting the school soccer team eager to learn the language. In Kore...

PARIS (AFP) ― Stella McCartney led a very British day at Paris fashion week on Monday, sending out a chic and casual fall-winter collection to an energetic hip-hop soundtrack. Her compatriot Giles Deacon at Emmanuel Ungaro veered towards a more severe dominatrix look driven by the late Ungaro’s famous statement that he dressed mistresses, not wives. Later in the day, Hannah MacGibbon at Chloe w...

Korean-Americans in Howard County, Maryland, have elected the youngest leader of a Korean-American community in the 108-year history of Korean immigration to the U.S. Charley C. Sung, a 36-year-old born in Korea to first generation immigrants, took office March 1 as the sixth president of the Korean-American Community Association of Howard County, Yonhap news agency reported. In January, Choi J...

Poet Ko Un has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 America Award to be given by the U.S. Contemporary Arts Educational Project, the renowned poet said Monday. The 78-year-old poet said he was notified last month that he had been picked as the award winner. The America Award has been presented annually since 1994 to those who devote their lives to world literature. The previous 17 recipie...