A broken-down vacuum cleaner, an old bicycle, a torn shirt ... almost nothing is impossible to fix for a group of crafty Dutch volunteers dedicated to giving potential trash a second lease of life.

The volunteers of Amsterdam's "Repair Cafe" are part of a network of 20 similar groups across The Netherlands who mend broken household appliances and electronics, rather than relegating them to the trash heap -- an all-too-easy choice in today's consumer society.

A northwest Arkansas teenager thought it would be funny to text a random phone number saying she hid a body, but the joke backfired.

Of all the local phone numbers she could have chosen, the 15-year-old Rogers girl picked one that belonged to a police detective. Police found the girl's address by tracing her cellphone number.

An earless baby bunny that was a rising star on Germany's celebrity animal scene had his 15 minutes of fame brought to an abrupt end when he was accidentally stepped on by a television cameraman.

The fate of 17-day-old Til, a bunny with a genetic defect, was plastered across German newspapers on Thursday, the same day a small zoo in Saxony was to have presented him to the world at a press conference.

A British newspaper on Wednesday published emails it claims were sent by Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, allegedly revealing the couple’s lifestyle.

The messages believed to have been sent to and from the accounts document the couple's opulent lifestyle.

A rare Cuban crocodile was named ambassador for the environment at Rome's zoo on Wednesday, days before the sharp-toothed creature and Pope Benedict XVI travel to Cuba.

In a colorful ceremony in front of children waving Cuban, Italian and Vatican flags, the head of Rome's Bio Park zoo, Paolo Giuntarelli, said the 60 centimeter (two foot) croc was also the ambassador "of peace and solidarity".

Prince William and Kate Middleton will stay married, but don't necessarily bet on Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes managing the same thing -- not according to an updated celebrity marriage formula.

Created in 2006 by scientist Garth Sudem, the Sundem/Tierney Unified Celebrity Theory is surprisingly accurate, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Jocko Besne, father of hundreds of thousands of the world's most productive dairy cattle, has died in France of natural causes aged 27, the farming cooperative which raised him said.

Jocko was the sire -- literally in at least 161,888 and perhaps as many as 400,000 cases -- of the Prim'Holstein race of cattle, the main French strain of the black and white Holstein or Friesian breed of milk-producing cows.

Street lights have been turned off in a Sicilian town after local authorities failed to pay a million-euro bill for power supplies, Italian news websites reported on Tuesday.

Local residents of Monreale near Palermo -- a popular tourist destination because of its famous Norman cathedral -- have been forced to use flashlights in the evenings and some are warning of the risk of a spike in crime.

A woman accused of stabbing her 6-year-old daughter to death with scissors told police she had been taking a weight-loss product, had trouble sleeping for several days and felt an "evil" presence before the attack.

"Did I kill my daughter? Is she dead?'" Danielle Yvonne Slaughter asked police after police found her on Sunday, naked, bloody and running barefoot through Las Vegas, according to court documents released Tuesday.

Police recently cited a city club for allowing violent mosh pit dancing and vowed a crackdown on what they called "dangerous behavior" and a "public safety hazard."

The Boston Herald (http://bit.ly/wNguyU) reports that police cited the House of Blues for a license violation because of a mosh pit that broke out during a Feb. 21 show by Flogging Molly.