South Korea's Navy fired warning shots against North Korean boats operating south of the western sea border, military officials said, after raising the alert status in response to a number of ships violating the demarcation line over the past week.The North Korean boats retreated to north of the border upon the warning shots, officials said.The latest move comes as a growing number of North Korean

For anyone who's ever been tired of listening to someone drone on and on and on, two Japanese researchers have the answer.The SpeechJammer, a device that disrupts a person's speech by repeating his or her own voice at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds, was named Thursday as a 2012 winner of the Ig Nobel prize _ an award sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine for weird and humo

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda prevailed in a ruling party leadership vote and now faces a decision on whether to call elections as he grapples with a slowing economy and a territorial spat with China. Noda’s win in today’s Democratic Party of Japan contest allows him to remain premier because the DPJ controls the more powerful lower house of parliament. The main opposition Liberal Democra

Adult giant African land snail, measuring about 12 centimeters or almost 5 inches. (UPI)Customs officers at Scotland's Glasgow Airport say they seized 36 live giant African land snails from a Nigerian man attempting to bring them into the country.The snails, about 6 inches long with shells the size of a small human fist, were discovered in the man's luggage following a flight from Amsterdam earlie

Workers clean the rooftop of a building near an Apple Store that started selling its new iPad tablet computers on July 20 in Shanghai. (AP-Yonhap News)Apple Inc. has been scaling back purchases of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels for tablet computers from Samsung Display Co., data showed Friday, amid speculation the iPhone maker is trying to rely less on the affiliate of its archrival Samsung E

President Lee Myung-bak on Friday endorsed a parliamentary motion authorizing an independent investigation into suspicions surrounding his retirement home project, despite complaints it is unfair for the opposition party to select candidates to lead the probe.The decision, made at an extraordinary Cabinet meeting, appears to reflect concerns about political repercussions a veto could cause, includ

South Korea's air carriers have again agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as part of national efforts to fight climate change, the government said Friday.The voluntary agreement is the third of its kind signed by the country's seven airlines, including flag carriers Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs."Under the first agreem

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its 2012 growth estimate for South Korea to 3 percent on Thursday, citing the heightened eurozone crisis as a major risk factor.In June it forecast Asia's fourth-largest economy would grow 3.25 percent. But the IMF said South Korea's economy is likely to hit the bottom soon and called for preparations for raising interest rates. "The Korean economy is slow

Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan - the visa stamps in Matt Harding's passport are of the less usual kind. It is thanks to dancing that the 35-year-old American has made his way around the globe, stopping in exotic and rarely visited places."I know that I've passed the figure of 100 countries. Since then, I stopped counting," revealed the globetrotter in an interview with dpa from his home in Seattle

A recent wave of anti-Japanese protests in China will likely have a limited short-term impact on Japanese firms that are likely to recover easily from the losses inflicted so far, Moody's Investors Service said Thursday.Protesting Japan's claim over disputed islands between the two countries, tens of thousands of angry Chinese vandalized a number of Japanese factories and stores in China over the

 A young woman was prepared to take the fall for a drunken car crash until her ex-boyfriend reneged on a promise to pay her expenses, the New York Post reports. Sophia Anderson, 21, who lives in New York City's Brooklyn borough, no longer faces a charge of driving while intoxicated, the Post reports. She can expect to be charged with obstruction of justice, sources told the newspaper Tuesday. Ande

South Korea on Wednesday dismissed an allegation that it has purchased a historical building in Washington at an unreasonably high price.South Korea's Cultural Heritage Administration recently signed a contract with a local lawyer to buy his Logan Circle mansion here that was used as the Korean legation in the U.S. more than a century ago.The building was forcibly taken over by Japan during its co

South Korean stocks opened lower on Thursday as shares lost ground across the board, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) fell 8.61 points, or 0.43 percent, to 1999.27 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Tech blue chips led the decline, with market behemoth Samsung Electronics falling 1.07 percent and its smaller rival LG Electronics losing 0.26 percent. Leading car

Seventeen leading universities in the U.S. and abroad will start offering free cyber courses through the online education platform Coursera, the company said Wednesday. The announcement by Mountain View-based Coursera underscores the rapid expansion of so-called MOOCs, or massive open online courses, that are reshaping the higher education landscape.Coursera, a for-profit company started by two co

Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader-in-waiting, and U.S. defense chief Leon Panetta held "constructive and candid" talks Wednesday on North Korea and other global security challenges and on territorial disputes in Asia, according to the Pentagon.Panetta's meeting with Xi in Beijing highlighted the secretary's trip to Asia, which also took him to Tokyo."Secretary Panetta and Vice President Xi also discu

Elmo, Big Bird and the rest of the ``Sesame Street'' crew have always talked to kids. Now, they'll try to have a two-way conversation with their pint-sized audience using Kinect, the motion and voice-sensing controller created by Microsoft.``Kinect Sesame Street TV,'' out Tuesday, is not exactly a video game, though it runs on the Xbox 360 video game system. There are no winners and losers, no rea

A Virginia law librarian with two jobs says she lost 85 pounds on the "Starbucks diet," a diet she designed herself by only eating food from the coffee chain.Christine Hall, who is 5 foot 4 inches tall, said she went from weighing 190 pounds to 114 pounds during a two-year period by tracking the calories online for food she bought at her nearby Starbucks, NBCNews.com reported.The 66-year-old libra

South Korean rapper PSY's ``Gangnam Style'' video has more than 200 million YouTube views and counting, and it's easy to see why. No Korean language skills are needed to enjoy the chubby, massively entertaining performer's crazy horse-riding dance, the song's addictive chorus and the video's exquisitely odd series of misadventures. Beneath the antic, funny surface of his world-conquering song, how

The Bank of Japan on Wednesday announced additional monetary easing saying it was boosting an asset-purchasing fund by 10 trillion yen ($128 billion) to 80 trillion yen.The BoJ also kept interest rates at between zero and 0.1 percent in a unanimous decision, a statement said.Following the announcement of the fresh measure, the dollar edged up against the yen, trading at 78.95 yen, from about 78.78

Two Swedish women received new uteruses at the weekend in the world's first mother-to-daughter uterine transplants aimed at helping them have babies, Gothenburg University announced on Tuesday.Uterine transplants are new, with the first successful one conducted in Turkey in 2011."One of the women had previously had her own uterus removed after undergoing treatment for cervical cancer. The other wo