Vienna police have shut down an unusual cannabis "ring" — hemp growing along the Austrian capital's busy Ring Street encircling the city's center.

Alerted by a news article about the illegal crop, police officers on Friday plucked a 200-meter (yard) stretch of green space along the three-lane street clean of the offending plants.

Hit hard by the global economic crisis, the Gulf city of Dubai decided Friday not to bid for the 2020 Olympics and will focus instead on a possible candidacy for the 2024 Games.

A feasibility study found 70 percent of the infrastructure demands were already in place but that a "a bid would be better timed for 2024," the National Olympic Committee of the United Arab Emirates said.

"Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization" (Penguin Group), by Richard Miles: For ancient Romans, "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" had to be the wave of the future if they were to become the unrivaled masters of the Mediterranean and the lands on its shores. Look at a map.

Carthage, a colony of seagoing Phoenicians from what is now Lebanon, was strategically on the Mediterranean's south coast, halfway between its Middle East homeland and the entry to the Atlantic. It was building an empire of its own, subjecting tribes in North Africa, Spain and the big islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.

A fugitive who taunted police on his Facebook page to 'catch me if you can. I'm in Brooklyn' has been arrested.

The Daily News says U.S. marshals and NYPD detectives tracked Victor Burgos down to an apartment in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood Monday night, sitting at a computer with his Facebook page open.

Want fries with that ... doughnut?

A food booth in Syracuse will unveil the "Big Kahuna Donut Burger" at this year's New York State Fair.

South Korean troops searched Friday for land mines that may have been dislodged by landslides and flooding that have killed dozens of people.

Torrential downfalls since Tuesday have severely disrupted life in Seoul and its surrounding areas, submerging streets filled with idled cars, flooding subway stations and forcing businesses to shut. At least 50 people have been killed.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavezsang, danced and said he intends to stay in power for two more decades as he celebrated his 57th birthday looking ahead to months of cancer treatment.

Chavez rallied a crowd of cheering supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace on Thursday, waving a large Venezuelan flag and briefly wrapping himself in it. He said he expects to lose his hair soon as a result of chemotherapy and that a long process of treatment lies ahead.

A minibus ran over a roadside bomb Friday in southern Afghanistan, killing all 18 passengers, police said.

"The mine was very powerful and destroyed the vehicle," said Kamaluddin Sherzai, deputy police chief in the southern Helmand province. "They were all civilians. Some were children."

A bomb blast struck an oil pipeline in western Syria on Friday in what Syrian state television described as a "terrorist" attack, saying that a group of "saboteurs" was behind the explosion.

The TV said the bombing targeted the pipeline in the western town of Talkalakh between the cities of Homs and Tartous, near the Tal Hosh dam. The explosion left a 33 feet (10 meter) deep crater, the TV said.

A blast at one coal mine in eastern Ukraine and an elevator collapse at another killed at least 17 people and injured 11 on Friday, officials said. Nine miners are still missing following the blast.

The twin accidents in eastern mining regions shocked the country and highlighted the persistent dangers of the local mining industry, believed to be one of the world's most dangerous because of outdated equipment and widespread disregard for safety regulations.