Remote control insect toys? What could be cooler!

After 50 years and billions of customers, the fast-food giant is getting a face-lift. Plasma-screen TVs, soft couches, coffee tables and wireless Internet access are just some of the new features customers will begin to see at their local McDonald’s.

A boat that "looks like something the Romulans would travel in" will be attempting to break the eight-year-old speed record for racing around the world in a powerboat. That record is held by the British boat Cable & Wireless Adventurer, which covered 26,000 miles in 74 days, 20 hours, 58 minutes in 1998. Bethune believes [...]

Beijing, China will use three satellites to monitor land use as part of a crackdown on illegal real estate development activities, a local land official has said.

A new obesity pill that helps to control blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes could provide a novel way to treat the illness, a team of international researchers said on Friday.

China’s migrant population has reached 150 million, 11.5 percent of the total, according to the State Population and Family Planning Commission.

Hours of chatting on a mobile phone are suspected to be slashing male fertility around the world, new research shows.

The next big blog trend is about what you and your friends see and others don’t. The online medium built for loudmouths is taking an inward turn to focus on private conversations among friends and family, instead of requiring bloggers to write for a public stage as most current publishing tools do.

NASA has launched twin spacecraft that will send back the first three-dimensional views of the sun and study violent solar storms over its two-year mission.

Just when you thought all cell phones were starting to look alike, Bang & Olufsen has designed something quite different – the ‘Upside Down’ Cellphone.

If you think we know all there is to know about water, think again. Scientists claim they have created a totally new alloy of hydrogen and oxygen molecules by splitting water.

It could be Baroness Thatcher, or Kate Moss. However, a search to find Britain’s greatest living icon suggests that we are still living in a man’s world. Nominations close on Monday for a BBC Two The Culture Show poll to uncover the individual who has played the most significant part in shaping modern British life. [...]

College grads often flock to New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago to start their careers. But they’d be far better off in Washington D.C., Phoenix and Las Vegas.

The government should consider banning smoking in cars where children are present, as it could damage the youngsters’ lungs, medical researchers say.

Quirky products make for for quirky news, and they don’t come much quirkier than the products of Swiss company DeLafee International which creates the most expensive chocolate in the world.

Birmingham, a city where all guns are illegal, is Brittain’s "gun capital", according to the findings of a comprehensive survey of firearms offences by The Independent.

UK researchers are employing tiny gold "nanoparticles", 1/5000th the thickness of a human hair, to deliver the chemical compound directly into cancer cells, tearing them apart instantly. The common dye found in blue jeans and ballpoint pens is called phthalocyanine and is a light-activated, or photosensitive, agent with cell-destroying properties.

In a tracking study conducted across five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) and the US, comScore Networks found that while 29% of European Internet users regularly access the Internet from their mobile phones, only 19% of US users say the same.

Condom sales and bookings at several of South Korea’s pay-by-the-hour "love motels" surged in the aftermath of North Korea’s nuclear test, according to statistics released Thursday.

A recent poll claims that nearly half of Americans support a federal law that would make cigarettes illegal in the next five to 10 years. The poll, conducted by Zogby International with the Drug Policy Alliance, says that 57 percent of 18-29 year olds were in favor of the idea.

Social-networking Web sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com have helped link millions of friends. But now they have a new enemy: 20-year-old Jenny Thompson.

In Denmark, protests by Muslims erupted around the world after a Danish newspaper published caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. In the United States, derogatory remarks Harvard University President Larry Summers made about women in science led to his resignation. And the congressional campaign of Sen. George Allen of Virginia took a hit after he made [...]

Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New Scientist magazine reported on recently.

More than two hundred lottery “insiders” have won prizes of $50,000 or more in Ontario since 1999, and more than two-thirds of these wins may have involved the deception of a customer who bought the ticket.

The typical visitor to a fashion Web site is a female between 25 and 34 years old, with household income in the $60,000-$100,000 range, according to Hitwise, a New York-based online competitive intelligence service. Compared to the average online shopper, visitors to fashion Web sites are slightly younger, more affluent and much more likely to [...]