Does your laptop clash with your Empire-style interior? No problem. A French entrepreneur has signed up a team of traditional craftsmen to turn out PCs fit for a royal home.

Out with dull office-grey plastic -- even the slick lines of an iPad: Georges Chirita's workshop outside Paris turns out one-of-a-kind computers in polished brass and gold leaf, mounted on marble with leather-clad keyboards and mice.

Police in Japan have arrested a man who allegedly stole nearly 900 books from different libraries, a spokesman said Thursday.

Unemployed Mitsuka Suizu, 61, reportedly told officers: "I wanted to keep the books I read" after they discovered 896 volumes at his home in Ube, western Japan.

His approval rating may be under 50 percent but some Americans are still willing to pay good money to hear President Barack Obama speak.

With the 2012 election campaign in full swing, Obama will make a high-profile pitch to voters Thursday in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Democrats' are holding their party convention.

Economic hard times are well and truly over if you're losing your baby teeth.

Credit card brand Visa said Tuesday that, according to a national survey, the Tooth Fairy -- or parents acting discreetly in her name -- left an average of $3 (2.40 euros) under the pillow per tooth this year.

France's Socialist President Francois Hollande hoped he could keep his love life private and distinguish himself from his showy predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. But his feisty first lady appears to have dashed those plans.

Valerie Trierweiler has been quiet since launching an explosive tweet in June that rocked French politics and made headlines across the world, but her alleged feud with the president's ex-partner -- the mother of his four children -- continues to fascinate.

Four years ago, Michelle Obama told skeptical voters that despite her husband's funny name, he was just like them. On Tuesday, she tried to convince them he was also an exceptional president.

More popular than her husband, the First Lady kick-started the Democrats' 2012 convention with a prime-time address in Charlotte, North Carolina that marked another step on her path from reluctant campaigner to political heavy hitter.

Police who broke into a locked home in Japan after neighbors complained of a foul smell found three partially mummified and almost naked bodies, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The bodies, which were partly decomposed and partly desiccated, were wearing only underwear in the living room of the two-storey house in Namerikawa, 250 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Tokyo.

A court in the Maldives has ordered a public flogging for a 16-year-old girl who confessed to having pre-marital sex, defying U.N. pressure to drop corporal punishment of women, officials said Tuesday.

The unnamed teenager was convicted on her confession under sharia law after her family complained that she has had sex with a 29-year-old man in July.

India on Monday took possession of a bag of "historic" diplomatic mail 46 years after a plane crash in the French Alps that killed all 117 on board, including the architect of its nuclear program.

The jute bag, stamped "Diplomatic mail" and "Ministry of External Affairs", was recovered by mountain rescue worker Arnaud Christmann and his neighbor Jules Berger on August 21 close to where the Air India plane crashed in January 1966.

A delegate from California has been turfed out of the Democratic convention for allegedly lying to police and claiming to be a member of Congress after a late-night drunken incident.

The delegate reportedly returned to his hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina after partying hard on Saturday night with another man who had to be carried in and was placed unconscious on the floor of the lobby.