Google scanning: Theft or freedom?

A proposed partnership between the French government and Google is stoking fears in France that the country’s literary treasures will fall under commercial control of a U.S. technology company.

Dianne McLeod recalls her husband, Stanley, getting so visibly upset when the debt collectors called that she had to take the phone away from him. She believes constant harassing phone calls and other tactics eventually killed him.

Now that the big guns have waded into the public standoff between Google and China, who will be the next to blink?

The ambassadors of eight Western nations urged Japan on Friday to consider signing The Hague Convention on international child abduction.

China has further expanded technical access — allowing text-messaging services to resume — in its western Xinjiang autonomous region after cutting service because of deadly rioting over the summer, state-run media reported.

U.S. innovation slowed this year for the first time in 13 years as the recession cut into budgets, and costs to protect inventions rose.

Stocks closed sharply lower Thursday, ending a six-day rally as investors questioned the runup in the face of an unclear recovery.

Tiger Woods’ marital “transgressions” have left some of his major sponsors with cold feet, but history shows that a dose of bad publicity is in no way terminal to the earning power of sporting stars.

Colombia lost one of its best-known independent magazines this month when the parent company of Cambio suddenly announced it was ceasing publication.

President Obama is under increasing pressure to decide whether the United States will commit more troops and resources to the conflict in Afghanistan.

Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff was moved back to his jail cell Monday after being treated for 10 days at a medical facility at the prison where he’s incarcerated in North Carolina, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The past 12 months have been a banner year for cyber crime. And that could be bad news for the future of e-commerce.

The economy may get a good report card Thursday for the first time in a long time.

A former commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan has warned history is being repeated in the war-ravaged country as the United States and its allies become increasingly mired in an “unwinnable war.”

Pulling the plug too quickly on stimulus spending could undermine the global economic recovery, leaders of Asia-Pacific nations agreed on Sunday at the APEC summit.

Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming “feed” technology — more specifically, “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network,” complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved.