A man poured water onto a freezing road to try to fool police officers into thinking the cause of his drunken car crash was black ice, authorities said.

Bryan Byers hit a guardrail after running a stop sign in a BMW early Saturday morning, police said. Shortly after the crash, they said, a friend, Alexander Zambenedetti, showed up in his own car and they then dumped 5-gallon buckets of water onto the road to create black ice, a thin film of ice that's transparent enough for the roadway to be seen through it.

A former Romanian tourism minister in detention on corruption charges has asked to be allowed to wallpaper and paint her cell walls.

Marius Stribulea, lawyer to Elena Udrea, said his client, one of the most influential Romanian politicians in the past decade, wanted to renovate her current accommodation.

It may stand as the dizziest dozen minutes in first lady Michelle Obama's reign. But she appeared to be having a ball while she put the word out: Kids and parents should eat healthier by adding fruits and vegetables to their daily menu.

To raise awareness for her "Eat Brighter" campaign, Mrs. Obama joined zany quizmaster Billy Eichner for a special edition of his "Billy on the Street" comedy game show, posted on the Funny or Die website.

A Indian baby survived a shocking birth when he slipped down a train toilet and landed on railway tracks just moments after his mother delivered him, police said Tuesday.

The 22-year-old woman fainted in the tiny toilet cubicle on Monday after giving birth on the train, which had briefly halted before reaching Hanumangarh station in western Rajasthan state. 

A campaign has forced British police to scrap plans to give one of their horses a more heroic-sounding name than "Brian" -- a humdrum moniker which has won hearts and celebrity endorsements.

Brian is being trained for use in riot control by Thames Valley police in southeast England and would usually have been given a new name "as it is tradition in the force if he passes the test," a police spokesman told Agence France Presse. 

Authorities in Brazil have got hold of a valuable Twitter account to publicize next year's Rio Olympics, after a humble Spanish shoeshine man surrendered the rights to it for free.

Javier Castano, 50, handed over the password for the Twitter name @riodejaneiro to Rio de Janeiro city hall -- and said Monday he now wants to do the same with the handle @japan for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

A small Japanese city has claimed a new snowman-building world record, an official said Monday, after a winter storm dumped tonnes of the white stuff.

More than 600 people raced to complete a whopping 1,585 snowmen -- each at least three-feet (90 centimeters) tall -- in an hour, smashing the previous Guinness World Record.

Trustworthy Tokyo-ites handed in $28 million of lost cash last year, police said Monday, with three quarters of it returned to its rightful owner, in the latest example of Japan's startling honesty.

Upstanding citizens who had chanced upon wallets full of money took a total 3.34 billion yen to their local police officers, a spokeswoman for Tokyo Metropolitan Police told Agence France Presse.

Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has conducted what is reportedly the world's first political emoji interview, using an angry red face to describe Russia's Vladimir Putin and a running man to depict her boss Tony Abbott.

Buzzfeed, which on Thursday released a video with U.S. President Barack Obama doing "things everyone does but doesn't talk about" such as posing in front of a mirror, interviewed Bishop by sending her text messages.

A family says a dog who ran away from home turned up at an Iowa hospital, where her owner was recovering from surgery.

The dog, Sissy, went missing from home last Saturday. The miniature schnauzer traveled almost 2 miles to get to Mercy Medical Center. That's where the dog's owner, Nancy Franck, was.