South Koreans aged 50 and above have few plans for post-retirement life, a poll showed Monday, urging the authorities to revise its pension programs to cover those in need of support for basic needs.According to a nationwide poll conducted by the National Pension Research Institute in 2011, only 16.1 percent of 6,341 South Koreans aged 50 and above surveyed said they are enrolled in public pension programs.Among those who are covered by pensions, the majority were enrolled in the national pensio

South Korean high school students swept the top awards at the annual international science competition, claiming the overall crown for the third year in a row, the Science Ministry announced Monday. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said the country’s national team grabbed the championship at the International Earth Science Olympiad by winning three gold medals and one silver medal. The competition was held in Mysore, India, from Sept. 11 to 19. Korea shared the top spot with Taiw

Voyager 1 has crossed a new frontier, becoming the first spacecraft ever to leave the solar system, NASA said Thursday.Thirty-six years after it was launched from Earth on a tour of the outer planets, the plutonium-powered probe is more than 11 1/2 billion miles (18.51 billion kilometers) from the sun, cruising through interstellar space _ the vast, cold emptiness between the stars, the space agency said.Voyager 1 actually made its exit more than a year ago, according to NASA. But it's not as if

MEXICO CITY (AP) ― A new study of the Monarch butterflies’ winter nesting grounds in central Mexico says small-scale logging is worse than previously thought and may be contributing to threats facing the Monarch’s singular migration pattern.The reserve’s 13,550-hectare core zone lost 16.6 hectares of pine and fir trees so far in 2013, about half of that because of illegal logging, said the study by Omar Vidal, head of Mexico’s chapter of the World Wildlife Fund, the WWF, and other authors. The r

PARIS (AP) ― The world’s largest solar-powered boat has docked on the banks of the Seine River, its final port of call after a three-month voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to study how the Gulf Stream and climate change could influence each other.The 31-meter-long Turanor PlanetSolar catamaran looks like one of Darth Vader’s TIE Fighters turned on its side.Starting from Miami in June, University of Geneva scientists sailed up the eastern seaboard of the United States, then across the Atlantic, t

ATLANTA (AP) ― NASA officials say brilliant lights seen at an outdoor rock concert in Alabama and by eyewitnesses as far away as Georgia and Tennessee came from a meteor that streaked across the night sky.Officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville said a baseball-size fragment of a comet entered Earth’s atmosphere above Alabama at 8:18 p.m. Central Time on Monday.NASA officials say the meteor traveled at a speed of 122,310 kph. They say that just three seconds after hitting the

Under the rich Venezuelan soil, paleontologists have found treasures rivaling the bountiful oil: a giant armadillo the size of a Volkswagen, a crocodile bigger than a bus and a saber-toothed tiger.Oil companies’ surveys of the soil have uncovered a trove of fossils dating from 14,000 to 370 million years ago.Many of the 12,000 recorded specimens from different eras are now kept in a tiny office of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research.A strong smell of oil fills the room as Ascania Ri

WASHINGTON (AP) ― A study of a dozen of last year’s wildest weather events finds that in about half the cases, man-made global warming increased the likelihood of their occurrence.Researchers with the United States and British governments concluded that the other cases reflected the random freakiness of weather.They said climate change had made these events more likely: U.S. heat waves, Superstorm Sandy flooding, shrinking Arctic sea ice, drought in Europe’s Iberian peninsula, and extreme rainfa

DETROIT (AP) ― As cars become more like PCs on wheels, what’s to stop a hacker from taking over yours?In recent demonstrations, hackers have shown they can slam a car’s brakes at freeway speeds, jerk the steering wheel and even shut down the engine ― all from their laptop computers.The hackers are publicizing their work to reveal vulnerabilities present in a growing number of car computers. All cars and trucks contain anywhere from 20 to 70 computers. They control everything from the brakes to a

BEIJING (AFP) ― Hundreds of thousands of dead fish were left floating in a Chinese river after a chemical discharge, officials said, the latest industrial accident to pollute the country’s battered environment.About 100,000 kilograms of fish were cleared from 40 kilometers of the Fu River in Wuhan, the capital of the central province of Hubei, the official Xinhua news agency said. Xinhua said the probe found ammonia levels “far in excess of the national standard” at a drain outlet from Hubei Shu

Some of the tiniest frogs on Earth have no middle ears or eardrums but can hear by using their mouths, scientists said.Gardiner’s frogs live in the rainforests of the Seychelles, a series of 115 small islands in the Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar. Most frogs have eardrums on the outsides of their heads. The eardrums vibrate when incoming sound waves hit, sending the vibrations to the inner ear, then the brain.But not the wee Gardiner’s frogs, which measure about a centimeter long or the size