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"If tired or wasted passengers fall asleep in a traditional taxi or rideshare, the driver can shout or shake them awake," reports Bloomberg. "Not so in a robotaxi..." Ditto Kasendar remembers soft music drifting from the robotaxi's speakers as he rode home late at night from a friend's birthday party in 2025. The next moment, Los Angeles firefighters were opening the door and asking if he was OK. His six-minute trip had ended nearly an hour before. A remote Waymo assistant, dialling in through the car's speakers, repeatedly tried to rouse him and finally called 911 when he wouldn't stir... Kasendar's robocab nap was, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. As companies like Alphabet and Tesla bring self-driving taxis to more cities, the messier aspects of serving unpredictable humans are becoming harder to ignore. Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it. These seemingly minor nuisances are becoming a drain on municipal resources and complicating the roll-out of robotaxi service. So many robotaxi customers have nodded off in the midst of a ride that Austin police and firefighters even have a name for the incidents: "sleepers". The Texas capital recorded 99 such calls in Waymo's first nine months of service there, said Roger Patterson, a commander with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services... Remote assistants monitoring the cars try talking through the speakers and checking on passengers with interior cameras. But if they get no response, company protocols often require them to call 911. And first responders have to assume the worst. Austin dispatchers treat an incident as a potential heart attack if the remote assistant can't tell whether the passenger is breathing, Patterson said. In the end, only about 3% of such calls require transporting the passenger to a hospital, he said. But the incidents tie up personnel who might be needed elsewhere.

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Follow Daily Mail Sport's live coverage for the latest updates as Argentina attempt to defend their crown against European Champions Spain in the World Cup final at the MetLife Stadium.

Argentinian businessman Rogelio 'Roger' Nores, 38, has now been fully cleared of all criminal charges relating to Payne's fatal fall from a hotel in late 2024.

An unidentified United Airlines employee threatened to call ICE on an US-Mexican traveler after his tickets got mistakenly canceled.

Sophie Fouracre, 34, was fatally injured in a cross-country accident at Swalcliffe Park in Oxfordshire. Shortly afterwards, Kerry Donoghue, 42, died in another event in Cumbria.

Millions of Americans have flocked across the country to see the largest locomotive make its trip across the US in celebration of America's 250th birthday.

The spectacle at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium will see a powerhouse lineup take the field. But it is threatening to unravel as tensions brew between Madonna and Bieber, insiders say.

World Cup final referee Slavko Vincic suffered an embarrassing moment with the eyes of the world on him during Sunday's World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

The singer - who is an EGOT having scooped an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award in her remarkable career - took to the stage ahead of the action between Argentina and Spain in New Jersey.

Smiling Cat Deeley was pictured looking very smitten with a movie executive, a year after her split from husband Patrick Kielty.

The game descended into chaos when Argentina's Enzo Fernandez received a second yellow card for clattering into Pau Cubarsi.

Wayne Rooney said it best on the BBC. He described it as 'crap', explaining: 'I thought the best part was when it finished.' In that moment, Rooney became a man of the match contender.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times: A federal judge has halted California's groundbreaking "Truth in Recycling" law, which aims to reduce consumer confusion about which packaging can be recycled. [Originally planned to take effect October 4th], California's recyclable packaging law prohibits manufacturers from using a "chasing arrows" recycling symbol on products or materials unless they are actually being recycled in a meaningful way, which the law quantifies... A coalition of farming, forestry, restaurant and packaging organizations sued the state in March, arguing the law violates their right to free speech. They argued that Senate Bill 343 operates as "government-imposed censorship." Judge William Hayes agreed that their challenge has merit, and on Tuesday ordered California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the defendant in the case, to pause enforcement of the law "until further order of the Court...." Advocates of reducing plastic use disagreed. "The court got it wrong, and I'm confident that the state will ultimately prevail," said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste. "S.B. 343 does not violate the 1st Amendment; it requires companies to tell the truth when they make recyclability claims. Suggesting that the 1st Amendment protects misleading environmental marketing is inconsistent with the basic principles of consumer protection that states like California have implemented for decades." In January, CalRecycle, the state's waste agency, reported that less than 10% of most single-use plastic materials in the state were being recycled. Even yogurt containers and margarine tubs — made of ubiquitous polypropylene, or No. 5 plastic — are being recycled at a rate of only 2% in the state, the report said. Only 5% of colored shampoo and detergent bottles, made from polyethylene, or No. 1 plastic, are getting recycled... Plastic materials that can't be recycled are typically sent to landfills or sometimes illegally shipped overseas, where they are burned or end up in landfills, rivers and waterways. The bill's author told the Los Angeles Times "All you have to do is look at the numbers. These products are not getting recycled, despite what the industry is claiming. They are just confusing consumers, clogging the waste stream, polluting the environment, leading to higher and higher prices for local governments and ratepayers." He argues the symbols shouldn't be used to "confuse people who see the symbols [on products] and assume they can be recycled." The article also quotes Judith Enck, former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator and president of the nonprofit Beyond Plastics. "Given the long history of the plastics industry deceiving the public about plastics recycling, this is an especially bad outcome. It is a reminder that the plastics industry has enough money to fight even the most modest policy designed to protect people and the planet."

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President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, joined the crowd of about 80,000 spectators on Sunday afternoon to watch the 2026 World Cup final between Spain and Argentina.

Tyler Morgan spent two years working in sales at Apple, where he watched countless customers walk into the company's iconic, minimalist stores to upgrade their iPhones.

Pictures showed the crumpled dockside crane leaning on a cargo ship at the Port of Tyne in South Shields, County Durham, after emergency services were called at 1.02pm this afternoon.

The US military has announced a third service member has been killed in the Middle East by an Iranian drone and tensions between the two countries continue to hit a peak.

The reality star, 36, revealed she is pregnant with her first baby with boyfriend Alan Wallace, less than a year after they began dating following her tumultuous stint on the hit Channel Nine dating show.

Furious soccer fans rushed to social media to reveal the reason they couldn't fully enjoy Sunday's World Cup final showdown between Spain and Argentina at MetLife Stadium.

There was to be no final-day heroic march towards the Claret Jug, not even a finish close enough to eventual winner Ryan Fox for his army of fans to claim he'd been robbed.