SOCIETY

Joining a club of countries like Canada, Germany, Israel and the UK, the United States on Tuesday has become the 30th country to allow open military service. After a long period of 18 years, the controversial don't ask, don't tell policy banning homosexuals on serving in the U.S. military has been repealed.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday delayed a decision on the Troy Davis execution after hearing pleas from the families of both the inmate and the victim.

Two Marines aboard a helicopter were killed on Monday when the aircraft crashed during a training mission at a Southern California military base, officials said.

Scientists rule out the idea that remnants of the Baptistina asteroid killed the dinosaurs.

A badly decomposed body, which is suspected as the missing nursing student Michelle Le's remains by the authority, was found in a bushy area of Alameda County of the San Francisco Bay Area late Saturday morning.

Starbucks is being sued after a father and his five-year-old daughter found a hidden spy camera secretly taping them in a bathroom at a branch in Washington D.C.

The recently released 2011 Times Atlas grossly exaggerates the amount of ice loss in Greenland, according to researchers at the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University.

Violent crime in the U.S. declined for the fourth year in a row in 2010, the FBI announced Monday, in its annual Crime in the United States reported. All four categories of violent crime decreased, despite the fact budget cutbacks resulted in fewer law enforcement staff nationally. Pproperty crimes (excluding arson) victims lost an estimated $15.7 billion in 2010.

Thousands of people have protested against the scheduled execution of Troy Davis, a Georgia inmate who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday.

The five-member Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will meet on Monday to consider whether to grant clemency to Troy Davis, a death row inmate scheduled to be executed on Sept. 21 for the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer.

There have been a number of high-profile earthquakes in the last month, including ones in India, Japan, Cuba, Indonesia and the United States. Here are the ten worst quakes over the past 100 years.

Global warming is temporarily on hold as the deep ocean currents and circulations absorb the sun's heat before releasing it finally, scientists said on Sunday.

The charity biker festival at Tennessee turned out to be tragedy as three men and two women died inside a recreational vehicle in the campground, after they apparently inhaled fumes from a generator.

New investigations reveal that the World War II-era plane that crashed at the Reno Air Race show Friday, killing nine people, had undergone a radical makeover to increase its speed at the cost of stability.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have proposed an auction of the right to broadcast the baseball team's games in a bid to bring in billions of dollars to stabilize its finances and end its bankruptcy.

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit a remote Himalayan region in northern India on Sunday evening, killing at least four people and five in neighbouring Nepal as well as damaging buildings and blocking roads, officials said

Astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was scheduled to fly aerobatics in a P-51 Mustang in the Reno air show on Saturday, a Giffords' spokesman said.

A gunman killed his wife at their home in Florida on Sunday then walked into a nearby church and shot the pastor and associate pastor before parishioners wrestled with him, Polk County police said.

Searchers found unidentified remains Saturday while looking for Michelle Le off a dirt trail in Sunol, Calif., about 50 miles (80km) southeast of San Francisco.

Protesters have camped outside an east China-based solar panel manufacturer accusing it of dumping toxic waste into a river, China's official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

Searchers looking for Michelle Le found a decomposed body on a dirt trail this weekend and officials at Alameda County coroner's will now determine whether it belongs to the missing nursing student.

Thanks to their granddaughter, an older couple who accidently made a webcam video entitled Web Cam 101 for Seniors have become viral Internet celebrities.

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more on Sunday. The quake struck at 6:10 p.m. local time near the India-Nepal border, centered about 40 miles from the city of Gangtok, in Sikkim state.

Protesters congregated in New York's Financial District on Saturday for a global Day of Rage movement called Occupy Wall Street to protest corporate greed in a demonstration set to last days.

Oktoberfest 2011 runs from Sept. 17 to Oct. 3, the most important days being each of the three weekends. The festival opens when Munich Mayor Christian Ude taps the first keg at the Spaten tent,

The Indian government has reported that at least eight people died in India and Nepal, and at least three people died when a building in Kathmandu collapsed. The quake also created a number of mudslides on the outskirts of Gangtok, India, killing at least one man who was trapped inside his car.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles is the only thing standing between death row inmate Troy Davis and execution next week. The board will convene on Monday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, on his way to Cuba for a fourth round of chemotherapy on Saturday, dismissed an international court ruling that cleared a key opposition candidate to run against him in 2012.

In a preparation for future space exploration, a group of NASA's diving crew will live in Aquarius underwater research laboratory located near Key Largo, Florida during October.