A deeply unpopular money-saving measure was relaxed on Friday when the British government promised councils new funding to restore weekly rubbish collections in England.

A £250 million ($390 million, 290 million euro) fund will allow local authorities to switch from fortnightly to weekly bin rounds.

In the ultimate accolade for the world's mad scientists, spoof Nobel prizes were awarded Thursday for studies into beetle sex, turtles yawning, the desperation of people dying to urinate and other daffy investigations.

The annual Ig Nobel prizes, now in their 21st year, were given at Harvard University in front of 1,200 spectators, with real Nobel Prize winners handing out the honors.

Bloggers in the United States are seizing upon a couple of exploding toilets in a federal building to make light of Washington's many political woes.

Two federal employees were hurt when a backup of air pressure caused by faulty plumbing caused two toilets to blow up at the General Services Administration's regional headquarters on Monday.

While holiday-makers sought shelter from sweltering summer heat in the Italian southern city of Palermo, one man was claiming overtime for shifting snow, the Repubblica newspaper said Thursday.

Salvatore Di Grazia claimed, and received, overtime payment for shifting snow off the streets of the island's sunny capital throughout the summer.

A Chinese fugitive has been discovered working as a prison warden a decade after he went on the run to escape assault charges, the Beijing News reported on Thursday.

Wang Zhijia, 37, was accused of attacking his wife with a brick 10 years ago after the pair argued about a domestic issue.

An anonymous donor has left a wad of cash worth $131,000 in a public toilet in Japan, with instructions it be used to help victims of the March earthquake and tsunami, an official said Thursday.

A plastic shopping bag, containing 10 million yen, was found on September 22 in a toilet for disabled people in the city hall of Sakado, a commuter town north of Tokyo, a city official told Agence France Presse.

Frank and Louie the cat was born with two faces, two mouths, three eyes, and lots of doubts about his future.

Twelve years after Marty Stevens rescued him from being put to sleep because of his condition, the exotic blue-eyed rag doll cat is not only thriving but has made it into the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records.

Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found less than an ounce of pot on one passenger: A chatty 72-year-old woman blind in one eye.

She insisted the weed was legal and was approved by the U.S. government.

A German zoo says Heidi, the cross-eyed opossum who became an unlikely international celebrity, has died.

The Leipzig zoo said Wednesday that Heidi's keepers decided to put the three-and-a-half-year-old animal to sleep after trying unsuccessfully for weeks to treat her for arthritis and other symptoms of old age.

A man who scrubbed his pickup truck in the nude at a U.S. car wash has been sentenced to a year of probation.

Robert E. Bailey pleaded guilty on Monday to open and gross conduct for being naked at Economy Car Wash in North Attleborough on May 31.