A New Zealand woman was temporarily partially paralyzed by a "love bite" on her neck from her amorous partner, doctors reported in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

The 44-year-old woman went to the emergency department of Middlemore Hospital in Auckland last year after experiencing loss of movement in her left arm while watching television, the journal reported.

A new hotel has opened in the heart of Madrid proudly declaring that it's complete rubbish.

More of a wooden shack than a five-star establishment, the walls of the Beach Garbage Hotel are strewn with detritus dragged up by the tide, recovered from landfills or snapped up at flea markets.

Have your luck and eat it, too.

That's the philosophy behind traditional Chinese New Year's dishes, which are loaded with symbolic meaning auguring prosperity for the coming year.

Japanese toilets are famed for functions such as posterior shower jets and perfume bursts, but entertainment company Sega has gone a step further by installing urine-controlled games in Tokyo urinals.

Four types of "Toylets" games are available to be played during a test period ending this month at four male bathrooms in pubs and game arcades, in a project aimed at drawing attention to digital adverts.

A centuries-old Russian prison notorious for its primitive conditions will soon offer inmates a new perk — tanning beds.

The ITAR-Tass news agency on Sunday cited federal prisons service Viktor Dezhurov as saying the tanning beds at Moscow's Butyrskaya prison will be ready for observances of its' 240-year anniversary this year.

Police in Spain seized 162 kilos (356 pounds) of cocaine hidden inside plastic bananas that had been concealed in a 20-tonne shipment of real fruit from Ecuador, the interior ministry said Thursday.

"The imitations with the drugs, which were very similar to real bananas, were hidden amongst a shipment of real fruit," it said in a statement.

A new business in Georgia is offering single women who need household help the chance to hire 'husbands' by the hour -- but the company's owner admits that all that some of his customers need is love.

"Our service is here to assist those women who need help with tough housekeeping tasks, such as for example minor repair works," company owner Beso Mchedlishvili told Agence France Presse.

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, who wrote the worldwide bestseller "The Alchemist," accused Iran Monday of banning his books.

"My books have been published in Iran since 1998, in different publishing houses," Coelho wrote on his website http://paulocoelhoblog.com, noting estimates that over six million copies of his books have sold in the country.

The offensive squawks of a pet bird so enraged a Taiwanese man that he sued its owners -- his neighbors -- for inflicting emotional stress and injuries, a report said Tuesday.

Wang Han-chin, an electrician in central Taiwan, accused five neighbors of teaching their mynah, a parrot-like bird, to curse at him as revenge after he complained to the police that they were too loud, the Liberty Times reported.

Hundreds of New York subway riders, unencumbered by skirts, trousers or modesty, took part Sunday in a spontaneous showing of leg despite sub-freezing temperatures.

The 10th annual "No Pants Subway Ride" saw hundreds of New York strap-hangers shed outer garments from the waist down, even as they wore seasonally-appropriate jackets, scarves, earmuffs and other winter garb on their upper halves.