By DANIEL COLLINS, Scripps Howard News Service

Steven Lopez was only 5 years old when he began taekwondo training with older brother Jean in their family's garage in Sugar Land, Texas.A few years later his younger brother, Mark, joined them. Then little sister, Diana, started.

Helen Rhine was 16 when she saw a UFO in Amarillo, Texas.She had just finished watching a lunar eclipse at 2 a.m. one day in 1958. Suddenly, she saw three lights traveling swiftly and silently in a V shape across the sky."I was instantly terrified," said Rhine, now 66 and a retired software engineer in Wylie, Texas.Rhine's story is hardly unique.

WASHNGTON -- A flyby by a NASA probe has settled a decades-old debate among scientists about Mercury's surface and led to a startling discovery about the planet.The trip has provided scientists with evidence that lava flows and other volcanic activity helped shape the planet's surface and revealed the possible existence of water.

WASHINGTON -- A children's magazine strolled into the Guinness World Record books this week by assembling a record-setting chain of shoes that, ultimately, will be used for good.

WASHINGTON -- More than 130 former and current Olympic and professional athletes from 22 countries have signed an open letter urging China to pressure Sudan to temporarily end all violence in the Darfur region.The letter came Tuesday, the first day of U.N. Security General Ban Ki-moon's three-day trip to Beijing, site of the summer Olympic Games next month.

World-record holders and wannabes alike will face the same pressure-packed assignment at the upcoming U.S. Olympic track and field trials: perform or stay home.

WASHINGTON -- Less than seven months after post-election violence wracked Kenya, Prime Minister Raila Odinga is now welcoming tourists and Peace Corps volunteers back to his country.

WASHINGTON -- As court hearings resume at Guantanamo Bay this week, the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the trial rights of detainees held there continues to generate debate.Among those weighing in is Steven Wax, an attorney who battled the federal government on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.

With two young children in her Sherman Oaks, Calif. home, Jessica Gottlieb has no shortage of kid's books and DVDs. When she discovered swaptree.com, a Web site that lets users trade unwanted books, DVDs, CDs and video games at no cost, she was eager to trade her kids' Barney books for books without pictures.

WASHINGTON -- Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced Wednesday a partnership to combat hunger and poverty in Africa between two of the largest grant-making organizations in the continent.