LEXINGTON, Kentucky ― Five years ago, Bill Cole weighed 420 pounds, had little strength and less endurance, and generally avoided physical exercise. Cole, 49, is a Lexington real estate consultant. Before that, he taught sociology at the University of Kentucky and Morehead State University. “I was born with some foot problems and had a bunch of surgeries, which kind of gave me an excuse not to ...

DALLAS ― Are kids growing up too fast? Dr. Michelle Fowers says too many are. “I think all the time about kids with grown-up illnesses,” says Fowers, a pediatrician at Baylor Medical Center in Irving, Texas. Societal pressures, poor nutrition, and inadequate or too narrowly focused exercise are causing serious health problems for kids, experts say. These problems include obesity, high blood pr...

A malignant tumor in the stomach, gastric cancer, is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in Korea. According to the National Health Insurance Corporation, 29,418 people were newly registered as gastric cancer patients in 2010, taking up almost 10 percent of the 218,884 new cancer patients that year. The high prevalence of gastric cancer here is due to Koreans’ diet pattern, said Dr. Lee Ju-ho ...

Senior adviser to Samsung Electronics Yun Jong-yong has been named the president of the National Intellectual Property Committee. President Lee Myung-bak appointed Yun as the first head of the presidential committee on Wednesday. The committee is expected to help prepare the nation for intellectual property conflicts worldwide and promote overall competitiveness of Korean companies. Yun has pl...

Korean looks to ride 400-meter freestyle gold into Olympics So far so good. Olympic gold medalist Park Tae-hwan has ended his 2011 World Championship campaign on a high note, successfully retaining his 400-meter freestyle title and raising expectations for the 2012 Olympics. Having had a bitter experience at the previous worlds in Rome, where he failed to advance into finals in any race, Park w...

HARRISON, New Jersey (AP) ― Wayne Rooney set up two goals and Park Ji-sung danced around a defender for another as Manchester United put on another show during its tour of the United States with a 4-0 victory over the MLS All-Stars on Wednesday. Anderson, Dimitar Berbatov and Danny Welbeck also scored for the reigning English Premier League champions, who have outscored their opponents 18-2 to w...

BEIJING (AP) -- Design flaws in signal equipment and human error caused last weekend's high-speed train crash in China that killed at least 39 people, a railway official said Thursday. The preliminary finding comes in the face of public anger about the government's handling of the accident near Wenzhou in Zhejiang province. Premier Wen Jiabao, who arrived in Wenzhou on Thursday to check on the ...