Thailand's Supreme Court today ruled that the family of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra be stripped of 46.3 billion baht (US$1.4 billion) in frozen assets, more than half of a contested $2.3 billion fortune. According to the court, the seized assets were illegally gained while Thaksin was Prime Minister; specifically,...

 Toyota has been accused by a U.S. House of Representatives committee with misleading the public and investigators over itsrecent recalls.The accusations, in a statement from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, claim that Toyota both relied on a flawed study in its assessment of the issue of sticking accelerator pedals...

Former Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, said that "I think 2010 will be a phenomenal year for the conservative cause and I think Barack Obama is a one-term president," at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Other speakers at the conference included the newly elected Senator Scott Brown,...

 A new website, PleaseRobMe.com, was created earlier this week, claiming to indicate the location of empty homes based on social networkers' posts online, especially Twitter.The developers of the site told the BBC they had intended to display how dangerous it is to share one's precise location over the Internet. The site takes...

 Belgian authorities have confirmed that at least eighteen people died in a head-on collision between two passenger trains in the suburbs of Brussels. Other reports suggest that the death toll could be as high as 25. More than 125 passengers are reported injured, 11 of them "very seriously". Rescuers were still trying to free...

 A court in the Netherlands ruled yesterday that the fast-food company McDonald's over-reacted in dismissing an employee who added a piece of cheese to a colleague's hamburger without charging for it. McDonalds has been ordered to pay compensation since, the court ruled, "The cost of a slice of cheese is not comparable to a...

 A spokesperson stated on Monday that UK television company ITV have been fined $2591 for cruelty to animals in an incident on programme "I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!", where two celebrities killed and ate a rat.The incident involved actor Stuart Manning and television chef Gino D'Acampo, who went on to win the ninth...

An opinion poll performed by the Japanese government reported that 85.6 percent of respondents considered death penalty is "unavoidable". The survey, released this Saturday, registered the highest percentage since 1994, when the government began conducting the polls. For the survey, 3,000 man and women aged 20 or older were...

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said that, in the last month, 258 civilians were killed and a further 80,000 displaced by the ongoing violence in Somalia, between the government and rebel groups. "According to local sources, intense clashes between government forces and militia groups fighting ...

 The US military has halted the evacuation of victims of the Haiti earthquake for medical care, reportedly due to uncertainty about who will pay for the costs.A military official told the New York Times that flights to the US were stopped on Wednesday, as some hospitals didn't want to receive the refugees."Apparently, some ...