"Xena: Warrior Princess" actress Lucy Lawless and a group of Greenpeace activists boarded an oil-drilling ship in New Zealand Friday in a bid to disrupt plans to search for oil off Alaska.

Lawless and six other protesters boarded the ship Noble Discoverer early Friday in a bid to prevent it sailing to the Arctic, where it has been contracted by Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell to conduct exploratory drilling.

The Unidos da Tijuca samba school was Wednesday declared the winner of the 2012 Rio Carnival, with its tribute to the late singer and composer Louis Gonzaga, the "king of Baiao", a popular music style from Brazil's northeast.

In an eagerly awaited verdict, Carnival judges gave the title to Unidos da Tijuca, sporting blue and yellow colors and renowned for its creative and innovative artistic work, for the third time in its 81-year history.

A Chinese student is hoping to become a heroine for women around the world by launching an occupy movement of her own -- in the men's toilets.

Fed up with long queues for ladies', Li Tingting made headlines when she and 20 women marched into a men's public toilet in the southern city of Guangzhou carrying colorful placards calling for equal waiting times for both sexes.

A Japanese construction firm claimed Wednesday it could execute an out-of-this-world plan to put tourists in space within 40 years by building an elevator that stretches a quarter of the way to the moon.

Obayashi Corp claims it could use carbon nanotube technology, which is more than 20 times stronger than steel, to build a lift shaft 96,000 kilometers (roughly 60,000 miles) above the Earth.

A former U.S. teacher pleaded not guilty to lewd acts with children Tuesday for allegedly photographing blindfolded students with roaches on their faces, and spoons of semen to their mouths.

And a lawyer for Mark Berndt the 61-year-old was at risk of harm in prison, with "a bull's eye on his head" after fellow inmates were told his alleged crimes and his location.

Mining giant Rio Tinto said it has unearthed a "remarkable" 12.76 carat pink diamond in Australia, the largest of the rare and precious stones ever found in the resources-rich nation.

Named the Argyle Pink Jubilee, the huge rough stone was found at Rio's pink diamond operations in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and would take 10 days to cut and polish, the miner said on Wednesday.

"Miss" is officially out in France. The office of French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday the term would be struck from official documents, along with that of "maiden name" or "married name" for women.

The prime minister's office said it would be writing to all ministries and regional senior officials to ask them to ban such wording.

The vice president is hitting the road — to what the White House wrote as "Road Island," mistakenly spelled R-O-A-D instead of R-H-O-D-E.

A release outlining Joe Biden's plans for the week showed him traveling to Providence in misspelled "Road Island" on Thursday for a campaign event. The vice president is scheduled to visit Boston and Manchester, N.H., on the same day. No misspellings there.

Seven people have been arrested in southern Taiwan for allegedly kidnapping dozens of race pigeons for ransom, police said Wednesday.

The suspects were accused of setting traps along the racing routes to capture the pigeons and demanding up to Tw$5,000 ($165) in ransom per bird from the owners, said the Criminal Investigation Bureau.

Carnivorous fish attacked bathers in a river in southern Brazil, leaving about 20 of them with bite wounds on their hands and feet, a news website said Monday, citing lifeguards.

The unusual attack occurred Sunday when a school of palometas, a species of piranhas, surprised hundreds of tourists bathing at a beach in Toropi, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.