Odd News

LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian police said on Thursday they had broken up a gang that allegedly killed dozens of people and sold their fat to buyers who used it to make cosmetics.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish police have arrested two North Korean diplomats on suspicion of smuggling 230,000 cigarettes into the Nordic country, the Swedish Customs Office said Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New fossils unearthed in what is now the Sahara desert reveal a once-swampy world

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The launch of Wikipedia, emergence of the iPhone and the election of U.S. President Barack Obama were among the 10 most influential moments on the Internet in the past decade, according to the annual Webby awards.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An elderly man who went out to fetch a morning newspaper ended up driving nearly 400 miles after getting lost and taking a wrong turn onto a major Australian highway, police said on Wednesday. The man, 81-year-old Eric Steward, eventually stopped and asked for directions after driving for nine hours, from the New South Wales country town of Yass to Geelong in the southern Victoria state.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Shuttle Atlantis astronaut Randy Bresnik awoke early on Sunday to a much-anticipated call that his new daughter had been born.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Herman Van Rompuy, the European Union's new president, may not be very well known around the world but he's already winning fans in Japan -- as a poet rather than a politician.

ROME (Reuters) - An art collector has found a tooth, thumb and finger of the renowned Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who died in the 17th century, Florence's History of Science museum announced on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New fossils unearthed in what is now the Sahara desert reveal a once-swampy world divided up among a half-dozen species of unusual and perhaps intelligent crocodiles, researchers reported on Thursday.

NEW YORK - Nude, yes. Lewd, no.

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.

LYON, France (AFP) - A suspected bank robber may not be most girls' idea of Mr Right, but women are proposing marriage to a jailed French van driver accused of stealing million of euros, his lawyer said Monday.

ATLANTA - A riding lawn mower may have four wheels, a powerful engine and can cost as much as a used car. If it's stolen, however, the Georgia Supreme Court concluded Monday that it's not a motor vehicle.

LONDON (Reuters) - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes might have thought twice about naming their daughter Suri if they'd known that it means "pickpocket" in Japanese, "turned sour" in French, and "horse mackerels" in Italian.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's football chief has joined in the chorus of protestors wanting the noisy vuvuzela trumpet to be banned from next year's World Cup in South Africa.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - A judge on Friday blocked a Tennessee law that allowed people to bring handguns into restaurants and bars.

LONDON - Britain's authority on etiquette says it's more hygienic to exchange kisses on the cheek than to shake hands — so the swine flu pandemic should not make people afraid of kissing under the mistletoe this holiday season.

ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported on Monday.

OSLO (Reuters) - The people of Bergen rolled out the cookie dough Monday as local police tried to sniff out vandals who destroyed the Norwegian city's traditional Christmas decoration -- a town of gingerbread houses.

STREETSBORO, Ohio - Police say a bank robbery suspect in Ohio may have eaten evidence when he gobbled a piece of paper while handcuffed and lying across the hood of a police cruiser.