The naval service is to use drones in the fight against international drug smugglers and illegal fishing, with the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) also to help with search and rescue missions.

Police officers in Los Angeles have reportedly shot and killed a homeless man in a struggle over an officer's weapon, according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

Cheering crowds, hundreds of handshakes, and plenty of pats on the back. It’s not every day you win the world’s top science competition, but these three Cork girls almost make it look easy.

Thailand’s ruling military council yesterday warned it will not tolerate protests over its takeover of power.

Chris Hadfield, the retired Canadian astronaut, rock star, and internet sensation, began his new role as an ambassador for tourism to Ireland with four short films promoting the Emerald Isle.

Chinese and Australian planes have spotted several objects in an area identified by multiple satellite images as containing possible debris from the missing Malaysian airliner.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is to become a tourism ambassador for Ireland.

A ship brought 143 survivors, mostly Syrians, from a capsized smugglers’ boat to Malta today.

Environmentalists have expressed anger after it emerged that two US fighter jets dropped four unarmed bombs into Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park when a training exercise went wrong.

Thieves ripped out a small safe from the wall of a hotel room near the Cannes Film Festival and made off with about $1m (€780,000) worth of jewellery that may have been intended for the red carpet stars.

Jewellery worth about one million US dollars (€780,000) has been stolen from a safe in a Cannes hotel room, against the backdrop of the Riviera resort town’s film festival.

Two American soldiers are among 15 people killed in a car bomb attack in Kabul, officials say.

Highlights from the man who tweeted in space.

Italian prosecutors placed the captain of the Jolly Nero cargo ship under investigation today for alleged manslaughter after his vessel slammed into the dock at Genoa’s busy port and toppled the control tower into the harbour, killing at least seven people.

This never gets old - astronaut Chris Hadfield passed overhead this morning, tweeting some more amazing pictures of Ireland from space.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has wooed the Irish with his space tweets as Gaeilge. His son tells Jonathan deBurca Butler about his father’s journey from farm boy to fighter pilot

The US military is investigating the apparent suicide of a Navy SEAL commander in Afghanistan.

The man who broke a code which helped jail the British gangster who organised €500m drug shipment says this county “will be in grave danger of further large importation attempts” if there are any cuts to the Naval Service.

A Canadian porn actor suspected in the dismemberment of a Chinese student has arrived in Canada via military transport from Germany, where he was arrested this month.

Big waves have smashed a passenger boat into rocky outcrops and sunk the vessel in stormy weather in the south-western Philippines, killing at least five people, officials said today.

The US navy has deployed a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf amid rising tensions with Iran over its nuclear programme.

A cruise ship with 1,000 people on board that was disabled by a fire and was drifting in southern Philippine waters has been repaired and is headed towards Malaysia, the Philippine coast guard has said.

A disabled cruise ship will spend an extra 10 to 12 hours at sea without electricity, air conditioning or toilet facilities because of a row over tugs, a Seychelles minister says.

Divers have found a woman's body in a submerged section of the grounded Costa Concordia, raising the death toll in the cruise liner tragedy to at least 12.

The captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner’s boss said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers.

Coast guard divers searching the submerged part of the stricken cruise ship Costa Concordia today found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, authorities said.

An Italian prosecutor has confirmed allegations from passengers and others that the captain of the cruise ship abandoned the stricken liner before all the passengers had left.

A third survivor was discovered today inside the overturned Costa Concordia cruise ship grounded off the Tuscan coast.

THE man credited as the driving force behind the Navy’s determined counter -narcotics campaign retired yesterday after nearly 40 years battling the import of drugs into this country.

Space Shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts arrived at the International Space Station today with the most expensive payload ever carried by a shuttle, a $2bn magnetic device scientists hope will unravel the mysteries of the cosmos.

Residents barricaded themselves inside their homes, blanketing windows and pushing furniture against doors as Abidjan awaited the final battle between the two men who claim Ivory Coast’s presidency.

THREE teenage boys who spent 61 days adrift in a tiny boat in the South Pacific walked ashore on shaky legs yesterday after their chance rescue — celebrated on their home island hundreds of kilometres away as a miracle that brought them back from the dead.

An oil platform exploded and burned off the Louisiana coast in the second such disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in less than five months.

A RELENTLESS southern California wildfire raged yesterday with 53 homes up in smoke, thousands more threatened and new rounds of evacuations as towering flames crackled close to foothill neighbourhoods in the path of the blaze.

PENTAGON officials said yesterday that the American crew of a US-flagged cargo ship had retaken control from Somali pirates who hijacked the vessel far off the Horn of Africa.

A roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan killed four Nato troops today, as bombings and clashes elsewhere in the country killed 14 other people, officials said.

THERE was some friendly sibling rivalry in the ranks yesterday as “‘brothers-in-arms” were among 37 naval recruits who took part in a passing-out parade at Haulbowline.

A NEW international force to battle pirates off the Somali coast is being formed under American command in an attempt to focus more military resources to protect one of the world’s key shipping lanes, the US Navy said yesterday.

Local people were not really surprised at the latest landing in Castletownbere, writes Donal Hickey.

In a stunning turnaround, the former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay says he will be a defence witness for the driver of terror chief Osama bin Laden.

British sailors seized today in Iraqi territorial waters were taken by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards navy, a radical force that operates independently from the regular Iranian Navy, a US official said.

A HIGH-calorie diet combined with life in the cell block — almost around the clock in some cases — is making detainees at Guantanamo Bay fat.

Fire swept through a third-floor apartment in Chicago earlier today, killing six children and injuring their mother and three siblings, authorities said.

Murder suspect John Karr will appear in a Colorado court on Monday over the killing of the child beauty queen.