NEW YORK, Oct 26, 2011 (AFP) - YouTube is teaming up with media companies to produce original content in its latest bid to boost the amount of professional material on the video-sharing site, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.The newspaper said Google-owned YouTube is expected to announce a

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Scientists in California and Sweden said they have used computer translation techniques to solve a 250-year-old mystery by deciphering a coded manuscript written for a secret society.The University of Southern California announced Tuesday that researchers had broken the Copi

Already straining to host seven billion souls, Earth is set to teem with billions more, and only a revolution in the use of resources can avert an environmental crunch, experts say.As early as 1798, Thomas Malthus gloomily forecast that our ability to reproduce would quickly outstrip our ability to

LONDON (AP) — Amy Winehouse drank herself to death. That was the ruling of a coroner's inquest into the death of the Grammy-winning soul singer, who died with empty vodka bottles in her room and lethal amounts of alcohol in her blood — more than five times the British drunk driving limit

 BANGKOK, Oct 26, 2011 (AFP) - Thai authorities urged residents in flood-prone areas of Bangkok to evacuate Wednesday, warning them that the arrival of a massive deluge of water was imminent.A huge runoff from the north equivalent to 480,000 Olympic swimming pools is expected to reach the capit

SEOUL, Oct. 27 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's consumer confidence bounced back in October after staying below par for the last two months, the central bank said Thursday.The consumer sentiment index (CSI) -- a gauge of consumers' overall economic outlook, living conditions and future spending -- stood at

SEOUL, Oct. 27 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean economy grew at the slowest pace in three quarters in the third quarter on weaker consumer spending and faltering facility investment, the central bank said Thursday, showing that growth momentum cooled amid a global economic slowdown.Asia's fourth-largest

SEOUL, Oct. 26 (Yonhap) -- The Korean translation of "Steve Jobs," the authorized biography of the late co-founder of Apple Inc., has repeatedly set daily sales records for most of the country's online and offline bookstores since its release earlier this week, industry data showed Wednesday."The fe

ERCIS, Turkey (AP) — Searchers working under floodlights early Wednesday pulled out an 18-year old university student from the ruins of an apartment building 61 hours after a devastating earthquake struck eastern Turkey.They used tiny cameras mounted on sticks to locate Eyup Erdem and broke in

SEOUL, Oct. 26 (Yonhap) -- Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang arrived Wednesday in South Korea for a two-day visit that is expected to focus on efforts to revive the stalled six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programs and expansion of the bilateral currency swap deal, officials said.Li, widely e

SEOUL, Oct. 26 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in South Korea Wednesday for the first time for an annual bilateral security meeting.Panetta will meet with his South Korean counterpart Kim Kwan-jin at the 43rd Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) on Friday and will also pay a c

SEOUL, Oct. 26 (Yonhap) -- LG Electronics Inc., the world's third-largest mobile phone maker, said Wednesday that it swung to a net loss in the third quarter of this year due to its struggling smartphone business.Net loss amounted to 413.9 billion won (US$366.7 million) in the July-September period,

LOS ANGELES, Oct 25, 2011 (AFP) - Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan has posed nude for Playboy in a deal worth nearly $1 million dollars, the TMZ celebrity news website reported Tuesday.The actress, who has faced a string of legal problems and is currently on probation, had wanted $1 million dollars an

TRIPOLI, Oct. 26 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has banned its citizens in Libya from returning home in an apparent attempt to prevent the popular uprisings in the Arab world from reaching the isolated regime, a source said Wednesday.The development illustrated the North's concern about possible social unr

MISRATA, Libya (AP) — Moammar Gadhafi, Libya's all-powerful leader for four decades, spent his final weeks shuttling from hideout to hideout in his hometown of Sirte, alternating between rage and despair as his regime crumbled around him, said a regime insider now in custody.Gadhafi, his son M

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. A weapons trainer talks to

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — IBM Corp. ushered in Virginia Rometty as the company's first-ever female CEO on Tuesday, as Sam Palmisano stepped down from the position.Palmisano, who turned 60 this year, has been CEO for nearly a decade. He will stay on as chairman. Virginia "Ginni" Rometty, 54, is in c

ATLANTA (AP) — A vaccine against cervical cancer hasn't been all that popular for girls. It may be even a harder sell for boys now that it's been recommended for them too.A government advisory panel on Tuesday decided that the vaccine should also be given to boys, in part to help prevent the c

SEOUL, Oct. 25 (Yonhap) -- A parliamentary trade committee on Tuesday passed a law on the procedures for signing and implementation of a trade pact, considered a first step to ratifying the long-delayed Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (FTA).The procedural law makes it mandatory for the government to

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 (Yonhap) -- After two days of high-level talks in Geneva, North Korea and the United States said Tuesday that there was some progress but no concrete deal.The North's chief delegate said the meetings produced "big progress," but U.S. officials chose more diplomatic and careful wo