The Nexen Heroes on Tuesday produced four winners of the Golden Glove Awards, presented to the best overall players at each position in the top South Korean baseball league, while Samsung Lions' slugger Lee Seung-yuop bagged his record-setting ninth Golden Glove.Nexen second baseman Seo Geon-chang, voted MVP of the Korea Baseball Organization  last month, led a list of four winners for the Heroes at a ceremony held in Seoul. Seo collected 292 out of 321 possible votes for his second Golden Glove

SOFIA (AFP) -- NATO has observed columns of Russian military equipment including tanks, artillery and combat troops entering eastern Ukraine in the past two days, the military alliance's supreme allied commander said Wednesday."Across the last two days we have seen the same thing that OSCE is reporting. We have seen columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defence systems and Russian combat troops entering into Ukraine," US General Philip Breedlove sa

TOKYO (AP) -- More than three years into the massive cleanup of Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant, only a tiny fraction of the workers are focused on key tasks such as preparing for the dismantling of the broken reactors and removing radioactive fuel rods.Instead, nearly all the workers at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant are devoted to a single, enormously distracting problem: coping with the vast amount of contaminated water _ a mixture of underground water running into recycled water th

BEIJING (AFP) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping suggested US news organisations had themselves to blame for Beijing not granting journalist visas, in response to a rare unscripted question from a foreign reporter on Wednesday.Washington has criticised China's treatment of foreign correspondents after reporters from The New York Times and Bloomberg were not given residence visas in apparent retaliation for investigative stories on the wealth amassed by leaders' families.Beijing is highly sensitive

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government is getting near-daily reports _ and sometimes two or three a day _ of drones flying near airplanes and helicopters or close to airports without permission, federal and industry officials tell The Associated Press. It's a sharp increase from just two years ago when such reports were still unusual.Many of the reports are filed with the Federal Aviation Administration by airline pilots. But other pilots, airport officials and local authorities often file repor

SHANGHAI (AFP) -- He may now be China's richest man but Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has admitted in a US television interview that being so wealthy is actually causing him "great pain". Ma has seen his fortune balloon to $19.5 billion after Alibaba's record-breaking $25 billion initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in September, according to data compiled by Forbes magazine.On Tuesday, the company chalked up a new record -- $9.3 billion of sales conducted t

LONDON (AFP) -- YouTube has struck a deal with a group of independent record labels for a new subscription service to rival Spotify and Apple's Beats Music, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.The Google-owned online media service came to an agreement with rights agency Merlin following months of negotiations, the newspaper said, citing sources familiar with the matter.Contacted by AFP, Merlin declined to comment on the report.Record labels representing 95 percent of the music industry hav

Regulators in the U.S., Britain and Switzerland ordered five banks to pay about $3.3 billion in the first wave of penalties since authorities began a global probe into the rigging of key foreign-exchange benchmarks last year.Switzerland’s UBS AG was ordered to pay the most at $800 million, according to statements from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority. Citigroup Inc. will pay $668 million, fol

DARMSTADT, Germany (AP) -- The European Space Agency's unmanned Rosetta probe successfully released a lander toward the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, putting it on its final seven-hour journey to a historic rendezvous with the fast-moving lump of dust and ice.The audacious landing attempt is the climax of a decade-long mission to study the 4-kilometer wide comet, which is traveling at 41,000 mph (66,000 kph). It is also the end of a 6.4 billion-kilometer journey on whi

TOKYO (AP) -- A man died after setting himself on fire in a public park in apparent protest over Japan's military policies, media reports say.Responding to reports of a fire, a police officer found the man engulfed in flames in central Tokyo's Hibiya Park, Kyodo News Agency said. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.Notes addressed to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and legislative leaders were found near the burning body, the Asahi newspaper said, citing investigators. The notes cr

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) -- Malian authorities on Wednesday reported two new deaths from Ebola that are not believed to be linked to the nation's only other known case, an alarming setback as Mali tries to limit the epidemic ravaging other countries in the region.The announcement in this city of about 2 million came just a day after Malian health authorities said there had been no other reported cases -- let alone deaths -- after a 2-year-old girl who had traveled to Mali from Guinea succumbed to the v

ZHUHAI, China (AFP) - China's new stealth jet fighter rocketed skywards Wednesday as Beijing puts on an unprecedented display of openness -- and military force -- at the country's premier airshow.The black J-31 rose in a nearly vertical climb on take-off in Zhuhai before circling back and doing two rolls, in the aircraft's first announced public appearance.The plane's existence has been the subject of rumour and speculation for years, with photographs appearing increasingly frequently on militar

South Korea on Wednesday called for Japan to explain why it had barred entry to a Korean pop star who recently performed on a set of islets claimed by Seoul and Tokyo.Lee Seung-Chul, 47, was held at Japan's Haneda Airport for hours on Sunday before eventually being sent back to Seoul. According to Lee, a Tokyo immigration official initially told him the ban was related to a "recent event" reported in the media."Then I instantly knew it was about Dokdo ... and knew Japan was exacting its revenge,

North Korea's recent release of two American detainees will not affect the United States' push to denuclearize Pyongyang and improve the human rights situation in the communist nation, the U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights issues said Wednesday."We are very happy that American citizens who had been detained in North Korea have been released when Director of National Intelligence (James) Clapper was there," Robert King said in a meeting with reporters.He said, however, that the rele

LA PAZ  (AFP) -- Bolivia's indigenous President Evo Morales was widely expected to win a third term in power in elections Sunday, along with a legislative majority that would permit him to push through his leftist reforms.Six million Bolivians were casting ballots in the presidential and congressional polls, which would likely expose the weakness of a fragmented opposition.Voting -- which is compulsory -- began on schedule at 8:00 am and was to end at 4:00 pm. Alcohol consumption was prohibited