Mexico's Grand Warlock predicted U.S. President Barack Obama would fail to win re-election and two more Latin American leaders would be diagnosed with cancer, in a traditional New Year's forecast Tuesday.

The Grand Warlock, or "Brujo Mayor" in Spanish, leads a Mexican tradition of "brujeria" or sorcery centered in the southeastern city of Catemaco.

France's top diet guru Pierre Dukan is urging the government to grade students on their weight in a bid to curb growing obesity.

In a book to be published Thursday, Dukan suggests that students in their last two years of high school be awarded extra marks if they manage to maintain an acceptable Body Mass Index (BMI), a measure of body fat based on height and weight.

Indonesians have found a new symbol for their growing frustration at uneven justice in this young, democratic nation: cheap, worn-out flip-flops.

They have been dropping them off at police stations throughout the country to express outrage over the arrest and trial of a 15-year-old boy for lifting an old pair of white sandals from outside a boarding house used by police in northern Indonesia.

Do you have change for a million-dollar bill?

Police say a North Carolina man insisted his million-dollar note was real when he was buying $476 worth of items at a Walmart.

Representatives of England captain John Terry have lodged a complaint over the apparent use of his image for a tobacco warning printed on cigarette packets in India, a report said on Tuesday.

The blurry image featuring the head and shoulders of a man resembling Terry above a warning that "Smoking Kills" was created by the government's Directorate of Visual Publicity, the Indian Express reported.

A Swedish woman who lost her wedding ring 16 years ago was flabbergasted when she found it again, around a carrot growing in her garden, media reported Saturday.

Lena Paahlsson had taken off the white gold ring before a Christmas baking session with her daughters in 1995, but it had disappeared from the kitchen counter where she placed it.

New Year's guests at a Denver Marriott were locked out of their rooms when the clock struck midnight and their room keys stopped working.

The 628-room Denver Tech Center Marriott says a room key malfunction kept guests out of their rooms from midnight until about 3 a.m.

Thousands of hardy swimmers took a plunge into the icy waters of the North Sea off the Netherlands on Sunday for the traditional "New Year's Dip".

"It's true that it's crazy to do this, but once out of the water, it feels really good," Tjerk Drouen, 38, told AFP after his swim off Scheveningen, his cheeks reddened by the cold.

Samoans celebrated in the streets at midnight Thursday when, with a song, a prayer and the ringing of bells, they wiped Friday off the calendar this week in a historic leap across the dateline.

The midnight switch from Thursday, December 29 to Saturday, December 31 brought the Pacific island nation in line with its main trading partners Australia and New Zealand who had been a day ahead.

Keepers at a Dutch zoo have found an unorthodox solution to calm down skittish giraffes spooked by the sound of thousands of end-of-year fireworks going off: playing them pop music.

"We have tried a few things to calm the giraffes down over the years," Amersfoort Animal Park spokeswoman Josien van Eijk told Agence France Presse.