South Korea abruptly called off plans to sign its first foreign coach for its national speed skating team after judging the trainer unfit for the position, the sport's national governing body said.After announcing plans to sign former U.S. speed skater Peter Mueller Tuesday morning, the Korea Skating Union (KSU) retracted its statement in the afternoon and said that he was deemed unqualified to gu

A man who has been in a coma for 10 months showed the first sign of recovery after hearing his fiancee’s voice on the phone.Mathew Taylor, 31, who was hurt in a motorbike crash last summer, shed tears, according to his family, when his girlfriend, Anda Nurul, 27, spoke him from Bali.“Anda asked him something and he seemed to say a silent ‘yes’. Then tears were coming down his face. It was brillian

Children living in rural areas of the United States have fewer food allergies than children who live in urban areas, researchers found.Lead author Dr. Ruchi Gupta -- an assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and a physician at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago -- and colleagues said the study involved 38,465 children age 18

A lawyer for a Florida police officer fired for issuing too many traffic tickets said the officer will fight to be reinstated.The Palm Beach director of public safety said in a Tuesday termination letter Officer William Eaton violated department rules, including conduct unbecoming and using his position to intimidate the citizenry, when he wrote 115 traffic tickets in a single month earlier this y

NASA says its Spitzer space telescope has detected the faint glow of the very first objects in the universe with the best precision yet.The faint objects, which might be incredibly massive stars or voracious black holes, are too far away to be seen individually but Spitzer has captured convincing evidence of what appears to be the patterns of their infrared light, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

A positive attitude and a sense of humor might play a role in living a longer, healthier life, U.S. researchers suggested.Study co-author Dr. Nil Barzilai, director of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Institute for Aging Research in New York, and colleagues developed a questionnaire designed to identify certain genetically based personality traits, and used it to assess 243 Ashkenazi Jewi

A U.S. diplomat handling Korea affairs said Wednesday that Washington is willing to "constructively engage" with Pyongyang if it ceases provocation.Jim Zumwalt, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, stressed that the U.S. is not interested in talks for the sake of talks."The United States is prepared to engage constructively with North Korea, but its new leadershi

Wonder Girls and Big Bang go head-to-head with new albumsTop K-pop groups to dominate summer soundtracksWonder Girls and Big Bang dominated the music charts after the release of their new albums on Sunday, proving their firm hold on the K-pop music scene. Wonder Girls returned with “Wonder Party,” filled with playful and cheerful songs including “Like This” and five other new songs. Big Bang unvei

The talks between South Korea and the United States that could allow Seoul to extend the range of its ballistic missiles to cover all of North Korea have not been going well, as the allies have failed to narrow differences, a government source here said Monday.Under an agreement with the U.S., first signed in 1979 and revised in 2001, the range of South Korean ballistic missiles is limited to 300