Barcelona forward Lionel Messi scored a penalty against Levante on Saturday to match Cristiano Ronaldo's Spanish league record 41 goals in a season, set less than two hours earlier.Messi converted the 72nd-minute spot kick to give Barcelona a 2-1 victory and equal rival Ronaldo, who set the record with a 74th-minute header in Real Madrid's 3-1 victory over Sporting Gijon.Messi had trailed Ronaldo

Wills and Kate were just the warm up for the true wedding of the century. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie arrives at the 84th Annual Academy Awards show at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Los Angeles, California, on Feb. 26,2012. (MCT)After years of cohabitation, six kids and countless tabloid headlines, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie made it official: They plan to make it official.If you thought

Red wine, believed to protect the body from heart disease and cancer, may also help the body lose weight, U.S. researchers suggest. (MCT)Dr. Kee-Hong Kim of Purdue University in Indiana said the substance piceatannol -- a metabolite of resveratrol -- delayed the generation of young fat cells and prevented them from growing into mature fat cells, the Daily Telegraph reported. The study published in

The Secret Service was engulfed in a sex scandal on Saturday after a dozen agents assigned to President Barack Obama's trip to Colombia were sent home amid reports of them using prostitutes.Five US military personnel are also being investigated for misconduct said to have taken place at the same hotel where the Secret Service staff were staying in the resort city of Cartagena, and have been confin

A female college student who went missing in Busan on April 4 was found dead Thursday in a riverside pond near her home. Moon Jeong-min leaving Haeundae library in Busan last Wednesday. (Yonhap News)There were no traces of injury or attack, the Busan Haeundae Police Station said. The body of 21-year-old Mun Jeong-min was discovered eight days after she disappeared while taking a walk at night. “He

A Alabama judge ordered a man to serve three days in jail for contempt of court for wearing so-called saggy pants.Twenty-year-old LaMarcus D. Ramsey was in Autauga County Circuit Court on Tuesday to enter a plea on a charge of receiving stolen property.Circuit Judge John Bush told Ramsey his blue jeans were sagging too low and gave him the three-day stint. The judge told Ramsey to buy pants that f

U.S. researchers say a new instrument will be a "time machine" to allow scientists to study the universe's earliest galaxies that could never be studied before.(MCT)Built by researchers at UCLA, the MOSFIRE instrument -- or Multi-Object Spectrometer for Infra-Red Exploration -- has been installed in the Keck I Telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.The instrument will gath

A lawyer in Georgia allegedly shot her Korean husband dead and fatally injured a woman before killing herself, according to local media Wednesday.The motive behind the shooting was not released yet, but local police said that the shooter’s husband had an affair with the unidentified female victim.Reports claimed that the suspect 44-year-old Sylvia Jean Junn, was an Asian immigrant attorney.Jun all

North Korea was poised Thursday to send a rocket into space as the nation's young leader ascended to new top political posts strengthening his hold on power.There was no word early Thursday morning on the timing of the launch, which the North has said will take place sometime between Thursday and Monday. The launch, which the North says is for peaceful purposes, has raised international concern.Th

Vladimir Putin, the man who will become Russia's president for a third term next month, indicated Wednesday he would back a law that bars others from doing what he did, ruling as president more than twice. Russian Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin (AP-Yonhap News)But Putin also suggested such a law would not apply to himself, leaving open the possibility that he could run for a fou

An Icelandic volcano even bigger than the one that shut down European air travel when it erupted in 2010 is showing signs of activity, scientists say. An aerial photo shows smoke rising from the volcano under a glacier in the Eyjafjallajokull region of Iceland, on April 14, 2010. (Bloomberg)While the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull left millions of travelers stranded across Europe and cost airlines a

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was named to what appears to be a top post in the ruling Workers' Party at a special political conference Wednesday, while his late father was declared its ``eternal'' general secretary. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects a military unit in this undated photo. (Yonhap News)The state-run Korean Central News Agency reported the first details from the secretive p

North Korea's increasingly sophisticated missile technology is a concern to Asia and the United States, the new U.S. Pacific commander said Wednesday ahead of Pyongyang's planned rocket launch."We have seen over time the North Koreans pursue increasingly sophisticated ballistic missile defense technologies," Admiral Samuel Locklear, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command based in Hawaii, said in Tok

The Web site of the national election watchdog came under a cyber attack on the eve of Wednesday's general elections, watchdog officials said.The Web site was hit by a so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack late Tuesday between 10:27 p.m. and11:01 p.m., officials at the National Election Commission (NEC) said. A search engine on the Web site, which helps voters find their designated

Police in Ohio said a robber showed his ID to a store clerk before pulling out a handgun and demanding the money from the register.Xenia police said Hanson Price, 21, showed his driver's license to the clerk at the United Dairy Farmer's on West Second Street just after midnight March 30 to purchase a 59-cent Black and Mild Cigar and paid with a $1 bill before drawing his 9mm Lugar handgun and dema

The Philippine government says its largest warship is engaged in a standoff with Chinese surveillance vessels that blocked it when it attempted to arrest Chinese fishermen anchored at a South China Sea shoal where both sides claim sovereignty.Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario on Wednesday summoned Chinese Ambassador Ma Keqing to resolve the dangerous impasse diplomatically. His office said in a

Shin Dong-hyuk, born and raised in a North Korean concentration camp, on Tuesday appealed for the world to care more about the ongoing tragedy of political prisoners in the communist nation.He warned that a Holocaust-style slaughter could occur there any time if people outside continue to turn a deaf ear to the testimony of defectors."There is a place I always visit whenever I come to Washington D

Polls opened Wednesday in tightly contested general elections that are likely to strip President Lee Myung-bak's ruling party of its control of parliament and set a crucial tone for December's vote to pick his successor.An elderly citizen votes in Seoul during general elections on Wednesday. (Yonhap News)The quadrennial poll is to elect a new 300-member National Assembly, but it takes on extra sig

Mitt Romney on Tuesday effectively won the Republican Party crown to challenge President Barack Obama in November elections, as chief rival Rick Santorum dropped his long-shot White House bid. Surrounded by members of his family Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum announces he is suspending his candidacy effective today in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Tuesday. (A

(MCT)Two public school teachers and a school administrator who call themselves ``The Three Amigos'' are sharing the spoils of last month's record Mega Millions jackpot, planning trips to Europe, new homes and children's college educations, Maryland state lottery officials said Tuesday.The Maryland winners claimed their proceeds Monday and chose to remain anonymous, but the lottery agency shared so