Internet search pioneer Lycos on Wednesday said it is selling some of its technology patents as the company prepares to lauch "a suite of hard good products."

Patents being put on the block by the Internet enterprise spun out of Carnegie Mellon University in 1994 ranged from search engine technology to online advertising and gaming, according to Lycos.

Anthropologists said Wednesday that stone tools found in northwest Kenya dating back 3.3 million years challenge the mainstream story of mankind. 

The tools are an astonishing 700,000 years older than the first known implements, which have been attributed to Homo habilis, a forerunner of modern humans.

A Slovenian doctor was in custody on Thursday on suspicion of having killed at least seven terminally ill patients, authorities said.

"After a very thorough investigation, we believe there are reasonable suspicions of several crimes committed by the accused," state prosecutor Katarina Bergant said.

China called for restraint Thursday after North Korea claimed to have developed the ability to deliver miniaturized warheads on high-precision long range rockets.

"China urges parties concerned to exercise restraint, avoid provoking each other, (and) do more to ease tension," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular briefing in Beijing.

Scientists say they've discovered Washington state's first dinosaur fossil, an announcement that marks a unique find for the state and a rare moment for North America's Pacific coast.

Paleontologists at Seattle's Burke Museum said Wednesday that the 80 million-year-old bone fragment probably belonged to an older, smaller cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex.

The governor of California declared an emergency as crews scrambled to contain an oil slick and clean up popular beaches after a pipeline rupture dumped thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean.

A day after the spill near Santa Barbara, northwest of Los Angeles, the U.S. Coast Guard said helicopter overflights had shown the slick stretched some nine miles (14 kilometers) along the Pacific Ocean coast.

Islamic State group jihadists in Egypt have called for attacks on judges in retaliation for the hanging of six convicted militants and a crackdown on Islamists.

The audio message, posted online on Wednesday night, comes days after militants in the Sinai Peninsula gunned down two judges, a prosecutor and their driver, in the first such attack in Egypt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to mend fences with Israel's Arabs at a meeting Thursday with the head of the Arab parties in parliament, Ayman Odeh, after polarizing election-day remarks.

Netanyahu had caused an uproar when during the March 17 vote he warned that Arabs were being mobilized "in droves" to the ballot boxes, putting his rightwing rule at risk.

Al Nassr winger Fabian Estoyanoff was Thursday banned for six matches and fined $10,000 for a violent assault on Lekhwiya's South Korean midfielder Nam Tae-hee in an Asian Champions League match.

The Uruguayan was seen grabbing Nam by the neck in television footage, pushing him against a wall and raining down punches on him in the players' tunnel at the end of a group stage match in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) premier club competition on May 6.

On a windy hilltop overlooking the mountainous Syrian border, a fighter from Hizbullah says the battle against militants in the area is among the toughest the group has ever faced.

The powerful movement, a key ally of the government in Damascus, has fought across Syria in the years since an uprising began in 2011.