A Filipino blacksmith's son who stopped growing when he was a toddler was declared the world's shortest man Sunday as he celebrated his 18th birthday.

Measuring just 59.93 centimeters, or 23.5 inches, Junrey Balawing is the oldest of four siblings -- the rest all of normal stature -- born in the rural town of Sindangan on southern Mindanao island.

Russia's federal guard service, in charge of protecting President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, may soon sport black leather overcoats harking back to the era of Stalin's purges. The elite service known by its Russian acronym FSO has launched a tender to purchase 60 leather trenchcoats on the official site for government purchases, instantly drawing tongue-in-cheek criticism from Russian bloggers.

Long leather trenchcoats are infamously associated with uniforms of Soviet NKVD secret police, worn by its low-ranking officers at the height of Stalin's pre-war purges in the late 1930s.

A German passenger stripped naked on an Iberia flight from Madrid to Frankfurt, forcing the pilot to turn the plane around so he could be removed, the airline said Friday.

"A German passenger took all his clothes off on the plane," on Thursday night, an Iberia spokeswoman said.

Two young animal rights activists in auto racing outfits served up vegetarian sausages to racing fans gathering Thursday for the weekend's Grand Prix, saying it was better than taking sex drugs.

"We're distributing vegetarian sausages made without meat, without cholesterol, and without harm to animals, in the spirit of Formula 1 racing to get people's 'engines revving,'" Melissa Galianos of People of the Ethical Treatment of Animals told Agence France Presse.

An Argentine laboratory announced that it had created the world's first transgenic cow, using human genes that will allow the animal to produce the equivalent of mothers' milk.

"The cloned cow, named Rosita ISA, is the first bovine born in the world that incorporates human genes that contain the proteins present in human milk," Argentina's National Institute of Agrobusiness Technology said in a statement on Thursday.

Officials say a moose burst through the dining room window of a retirement home in southwestern Sweden, knocking over furniture and flower pots before taking off into the wild again.

Police say aside from the moose, which was scratched by the broken window, no one was injured in Thursday's surprise visit at the Brunnsgarden retirement home in the small town of Alingsas.

"Trouble," the pooch who inherited $12 million from hotel mogul Leona Helmsley, has died, heading to the hunting grounds in the sky and leaving a trail of money and legal disputes behind.

The pampered Maltese bitch with a curly off-white coat died December 13, spokeswoman Eileen Sullivan said, but news only emerged Thursday.

The existence of a blogger who claimed to be a Syrian-American lesbian came into question on Wednesday after a woman in Britain said photographs circulating on the Internet were of her, not the blogger supposedly in Damascus.

A representative for Jelena Lecic said the London woman first learned her likeness was being used on the Facebook account of a blogger known as Amina Arraf when her photo was linked to article about Arraf in the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.

A "benevolent burglar" hailed as a modern-day Robin Hood for donating his ill-gotten gains to local orphanages has been arrested in southeastern Bangladesh, police said Thursday.

Badiul Haq Nasir, 45, who had earned millions in well-planned heists, was revered in dozens of villages for making large donations to orphanages and mosques, local police chief Babul Akhter told Agence France Presse.

Australia is considering awarding carbon credits for killing feral camels as a way to tackle climate change.

The suggestion is included in Canberra's "Carbon Farming Initiative", a consultation paper by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, seen Thursday.