Offbeat
Latest stories
Green-Tinged Clouds over Moscow Spark Fear

Russia's weather and emergency officials soothed fears of Moscow residents Thursday with statements that green-tinged clouds over the capital were not an alien invasion, but tree pollen.

"Today Muscovites felt like characters in a disaster film about an alien invasion: people living in the southwest of the city saw that the sky had been colored green," said Russia's weather service on its website.

W140 Full Story
China Pulls T-Shirts Featuring Premier's Quotes

A Chinese fashion retailer has been forced to pull a line of T-shirts featuring quotes by Premier Wen Jiabao because they violated rules on depicting government leaders, state media said Thursday.

The shirts were marketed by the designer Vancl and emblazoned with what the official Xinhua news agency called "signature" down-to-earth phrases of Wen's.

W140 Full Story
Woman Gives Birth on Trolleybus in Bratislava

A woman gave birth to a baby girl on a trolleybus in Bratislava, the Slovakian capital's transport authority said Wednesday.

"The woman was taking the 204 trolleybus to the Kramare teaching hospital on Tuesday evening when her labour began," spokeswoman Agata Stanekova told AFP.

W140 Full Story
Scottish Village Dull to Twin with U.S. Town Boring

There's nothing boring about Boring, Oregon, especially when it comes to building bridges with the good folks of little Dull, Scotland.

Boring, a rural suburb of Portland named after its early 20th century founding family, is poised to formally declare itself Dull's sister community on June 5 when its community planning organization convenes.

W140 Full Story
Woman Trapped By ATM

Australian firefighters Thursday performed one of their most unusual rescues -- freeing an elderly woman whose fingers got stuck in a bank ATM.

The fire service was called to a hospital in Sydney after security guards found the women distressed with three of her fingers jammed in the slot that dispenses cash, ABC radio reported.

W140 Full Story
Zookeeper Crushed to Death by Elephant

A New Zealand zookeeper was crushed to death Wednesday when an elephant sat on her, emergency officials and media reports said.

Police confirmed they were called to an incident involving an elephant and its keeper late in the afternoon at Franklin Zoo, near Auckland, but said no further information would be released until the woman's family were informed.

W140 Full Story
In Search of Parking, Parisian Drives Car Down Metro Stairs

A man drove his car down the steps of a Metro station in central Paris on Tuesday, mistaking the entrance for that of a parking garage.

"There's a sign saying 'Haussmann Parking' right in front (of the Metro entrance), and ... I made a mistake," the distraught driver told Agence France Presse, noting that the entrance was nearly level with the street.

W140 Full Story
Zipper Inventor Honored With Google Doodle

Google dedicated a doodle Tuesday to the Swedish-American inventor of the modern zipper, Gideon Sundback, on what would have been his 132nd birthday.

It featured an interactive zipper that a visitor to Google's otherwise famously spartan home page could pull down with a computer mouse to reveal search results about the Scandinavian-born engineer and the doodle itself.

W140 Full Story
Latvia's Disappearing Bear, Made, on the Loose Again

Latvian authorities were hot on the trail of a crafty brown bear named Made on Monday after she made her second breakout from captivity in less than a year.

Made escaped from the Ligatne Nature Park early Sunday evening, police spokeswoman Dace Jukama told the Baltic News Service.

W140 Full Story
Six Men Climb into Volcano Crater in Job Loss Protest

Six men climbed down into the crater of a volcano in Italy on Monday, in protest at the closure of the organization they worked for which maintained trekking paths on Mount Vesuvius, near Naples.

The men have said they will stay as long as it takes and have positioned themselves on a projection of rock about 10 meters (32 feet) below the crater's entrance, where they risk being crushed by a rock-fall.

W140 Full Story