Marta Beatriz Roque, the 67 year-old "Iron Lady" of Cuban dissidents, began a hunger strike Monday to protest conditions that opponents to the Communist regime face on the island.

"I have declared a hunger strike" against the government's "intolerable and untenable" treatment of the opposition, Roque told Agence France Presse.

Paris police have deployed a team of officers to try and catch "class warriors" who have been vandalizing bikes from the city's cycle rental scheme, officials said Monday.

Fifty of the sturdy Velib bicycles have had their back tyres slashed in recent days in various bike docks in two separate areas of the capital.

It wasn't exactly Prince Charming but one of Ukraine's "Sleeping Beauties" finally got a kiss on the lips as she dozed on a dais filmed by cameras -- though unlike the fairy tale she never woke up.

"I'm not sure I would marry precisely this girl, I just was curious whether she would open her eyes," said the young woman who dared the embrace while male visitors shied away.

Snakes, scorpions and swirling dust didn't deter a Syrian couple from getting married at Jordan's tent city for refugees.

A carpenter, Hodasa al-Hariri, 23, married his 20-year-old cousin, Hanan al-Hariri, in a simple ceremony on Sunday at the Zaatari camp.

Pradeep Kumar, a muscular man in shades and tattoos, pulls up on a motorcycle, ready for his job as a bouncer. Not at a nightclub, but at another workplace where violence is common in India: a hospital.

He and his burly colleagues keep the emergency and labor rooms from filling up with patients' often agitated relatives and friends. The bouncers are polite, yet so tough-looking that people think twice about ignoring their orders.

President Barack Obama reputedly loves nothing more than a good old campaign trail hug -- but he may have got more than he bargained for Sunday.

Obama was lifted at least a foot in the air in an intense bear hug by hulking pizza shop owner Scott Van Duzer, during a bus tour of Florida.

Tracy Reese capitalized on her high-profile sartorial relationship with First Lady Michelle Obama with a sparkling New York fashion week show Sunday that paid homage to every woman's inner nerd.

Rubbishing the old adage about girls who wear glasses, Reese accessorized her ethereal and colorful spring-summer 2013 with the kind of old-school, oversized spectacles typically sported by bad-boy photographer Terry Richardson.

A hospital in Japan is checking the qualifications of all of its doctors after a man believed to have no medical licence examined more than 2,300 of its patients.

The man conducted medical interviews, examined electrocardiograms and explained check-up results to people in 2010-2011 at Takashimadaira Chuo General Hospital in Tokyo, weekend media reports said.

Emily and Mike Jordan couldn't help but feel anxious.

More than two years before, at age 29, Emily had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. But just before she was to undergo a radical hysterectomy, she was told that she was pregnant. Faced with saving her life or their unborn child's, the young couple made the excruciating decision to go forward with her surgery. It meant losing the baby and forfeiting any chance at having children.

President Barack Obama can beat rival Mitt Romney as a television draw, but can't eclipse his old self.

The Nielsen Company said 35.7 million people watched the final night of the Democratic convention on Thursday between 10 and 11 p.m. Eastern time. That's when the president delivered his nomination acceptance speech.