LAW

Google Inc. has successfully patented its futuristic driverless car technology that allows a human driver to pass the wheel to the self-driving car.

Lieutenant Commander John Alan Jones, a naval officer found guilty by a military court martial of spanking a young female sailor, is appealing his conviction.

A small plane with five people aboard, including two children, has crashed in central Texas. There were no survivors.

Hundreds of demonstrators faced off with police in riot gears in the streets of Aktau in western Kazakhstan on Monday, the fourth day of violent protest movements in the region that already killed 14 people and wounded scores in two other cities.

Some 30,000 women will have to undergo surgery to remove breast implants suspected of causing cancer on eight women, according to France's health ministry.

A Libyan rebel commander who fought to oust Col. Moammar Gaddafi is suing the British government for its complicity in his torture by American and Libyan military interrogators in 2004.

A group of Indian activists calling for a law prosecuting corrupt government officials, including the prime minister and judges, has received a threat that their supporters will be pricked with needles tainted with HIV.

Papua New Guinea Governor-General Michael Ogio on Monday recognised Peter O'Neill as the prime minister saying he erred in reinstating Sir Michael Somare in that post earlier.

Despite her last-minute effort, billionaire Gina Rinehart lost her bid to keep secret the family's legal battle over its $10-billion wealth.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ordered a California man to stop donating sperm for free via his website after learning that he already fathered 14 children. But Trent Arsenault, 36, of Fremont continues to give his sperm until the court tells him to stop doing so.

Police in Glenn Innes have found 25 dead ponies dumped near a cliff in northern NSW and is asking the public for information about a truck that may have been used to bring the animals there.

Fifteen survivors of an overloaded migrant boat that sank off eastern Java on Saturday were found in two separate islands on Monday.

Australians seeking redress from German drugmaker Grunenthal will have their day in court in Australia as Victoria's Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the class suit should be heard locally.

Police in Bali has detained an Australian involved in the brawl at a disco near Kuta Beach that wounded two other Australians last week, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Monday.

Egypt lost priceless historical documents and maps dating back more than 200 years ago when a library housing the rare collections was burned during violent clashes between protesters and police in central Cairo on Saturday.

Emerging rap star Slim Dunkin died at hospital in Atlanta, Georgia after he was shot in the chest on Friday afternoon.

A boat trying to sneak in 250 immigrants from the Middle East to Australia capsized in rough seas off East Java, Indonesia on Saturday. Some 185 passengers went missing while 15 drowned.

Two Australians figured in a brawl inside a disco near Bali's Kuta Beach on Friday with one getting slashed with a knife in the chest and the other stabbed in the stomach.

You would think such a scene would happen only in medieval fiction, but early this week, a woman convicted of practicing "witchcraft and sorcery" was beheaded in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Practicing "witchcraft and sorcery" is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia.

Some 30,000 non-Arab Libyans plan to return next week to their town, which they abandoned due to reprisal attacks by anti-Gaddafi militias.

A woman who stole a pistol from her gun club to shoot her father was found not guilty of his murder on grounds of mental illness.

She was walking her dog through a Wollongong Park about 5.30pm Thursday when the teenage girl was sexually assaulted at knife point by a teenage boy.

A firm based in Seattle specializing in caller identification technology has sued Apple Inc. for patent infringement alleging that the latter is illegally using its inventions on iPhones.

Victoria police investigating the alleged hacking of the Labor Party's database of supporters in November 2010 searched the computers of three reporters from "The Age" inside the newspaper's office instead of confiscating the machines on Thursday.

Police has detained and charged Chicago Bears player Sam Hurd after he accepted one kilo of packaged cocaine from an undercover federal agent posing as a drug supplier who sold it to him.

Union representatives of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) from Australia and New Zealand were not allowed by the Fiji government to enter the island on Wednesday. The three-day mission was to investigate alleged violation of human and labour rights by the Bainimarama military regime.

An Australian military court sent an erring naval officer to jail after finding him guilty of exercising undue authority over a female sailor he subjected to a humiliating discipline routine.

A backpack with the word "Bang" found inside a Los Angeles subway train prompted authorities to close the train station for more than two hours on Tuesday night.

Authorities investigating the murder of Hayden Miles on Tuesday recovered human remains from a crime scene at Ruru Lawn Cemetery in Christchurch, where they have spent the past few days in search for the teen’s body.