They say you can't beat City Hall, but Paris authorities who once took a dim view of the thousands of "love locks" adorning the bridges of the Seine River have had a change of heart.

"We are letting the phenomenon be, looking at it with benevolence," City Hall spokesman Damien Steffan told Agence France Presse with a Gallic shrug. "It's not a problem for us."

The U.S. population reached a number dear to mathematicians on Tuesday: 314,159,265 or pi times 100 million.

"So go out and celebrate this American pi," quipped the U.S. Census Bureau's chief demographer, Howard Hogan, in a statement marking the milestone.

The largest Burmese python ever found in Florida has been caught in the Everglades, scientists said Tuesday, and it contained 87 eggs -- also thought to be a record.

"This thing is monstrous, it's about a foot wide," Kenneth Krysko, the herpetology collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said of the 17-foot-7-inch (5.35-meter) creature.

Addiction to morphine and heroin can be blocked, according to research released Wednesday which could prove a major breakthrough in treating addicts and in pain relief treatments.

Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia worked with colleagues at the University of Colorado in the United States to pinpoint a key mechanism in the body's immune system that amplifies addiction to opioid drugs.

Japan's coastguard stepped up security Wednesday in waters near disputed islands in the East China Sea as a group of pro-Beijing activists sailed towards the chain.

"We are on high alert so as to prevent them from entering Japanese territorial waters or landing on the islands, while exercising caution to avoid a possible collision," said a local official of the Japan Coast Guard.

Four people were killed as another tropical storm swept across the Philippines on Wednesday, triggering landslides in the mountainous north and dumping more heavy rain on the flood-battered capital.

Tropical Storm Kai-tak hit the northeast of the main island of Luzon before dawn, dumping up to 35 millimeters (1.4 inches) of rain an hour on a vast farming region, the state weather bureau said.

The United States on Tuesday accused Iran of setting up a pro-regime militia in Syria as Washington increasingly ties the crisis there to interference by its long-time foe Tehran.

Western powers are already locked in a diplomatic stand-off with Iran over what they say is its plan to develop nuclear weapons, and tensions are high between U.S. and Iranian patrols in the oil shipping lanes of the Gulf.

The new defense minister appointed by Egypt's Islamist president has pledged to uphold the strong military ties between Cairo and Washington, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta said Tuesday.

In a surprise move Sunday, President Mohamed Morsi retired Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi -- head of the military council that assumed power after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak -- and replaced him with Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.

Israel has not yet decided whether to strike Iran over its suspect nuclear program, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday, as Tehran dismissed the threat of an imminent attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in recent days had stiffened their rhetoric on Iran, suggesting they were thinking more seriously of military action against Tehran's nuclear facilities.

An emergency summit of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) began late Tuesday with a proposal to suspend conflict-wracked Syria, a move strongly opposed by Iran.

A draft final statement obtained by Agence France Presse said the summit "approves the suspension of Syria's membership," a measure recommended by a preparatory ministerial meeting held Monday in the western Saudi city of Jeddah.