A lawyer in Austria said Thursday he has written directly to Pope Francis seeking his intervention in a legal battle over the ringing of bells by Linz Cathedral every 15 minutes, even at night.

"Holy Father!" lawyer Wolfgang List's letter, seen by AFP, begins. "The bells in the Linz Cathedral clock tower ring every quarter of an hour at night. Between 10:00 pm and 6:00 am... they ring 222 times."

A Pentagon study from 2008 claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has Asperger's syndrome, giving him a need to exert "extreme control" when faced with crises, according to the report released Thursday.

Experts studying his movements and facial expressions in video footage theorized Putin's neurological development was disrupted in infancy, giving him a sense of physical imbalance and a discomfort with social interaction, according to the report by the Pentagon's internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment.

Dogs aren't the only animals that vie for best in show. Hundreds of breeds of pigeons compete in their own version of the Westminster show, strutting on long, thick legs or fluttering curly, lacy feathers in their bid to be best bird.

These pigeons aren't the nuisance flocks that swarm food scraps at outdoor restaurants. They are genetically rich birds, including variations bred to look like turkeys or sound like trumpets, that drew thousands of enthusiasts — including ex-boxer and pigeon lover Mike Tyson — to the National Pigeon Association's 93rd annual Grand National Pigeon Show.

Firefighters have rescued a man who was trapped for about 18 hours upside down in a parked rail car in Seattle.

The fire department says the man apparently crawled into a chute on the car, which is designed to carry dry bulk materials.

A man who sometimes held his coat together with safety pins and had a long-time habit of foraging for firewood also had a knack for picking stocks — a talent that became public after his death when he bequeathed $6 million to his local library and hospital.

The investments made by Ronald Read, a former gas station employee and janitor who died in June at age 92, "grew substantially" over the years, said his attorney Laurie Rowell.

An Australian woman won the annual race up the Empire State Building's stairs for the sixth time, a record for the women's event.

Suzy Walsham dashed up 1,576 steps to the 86th-floor observatory in the Empire State Building Run-Up on Wednesday night in 12 minutes and 30 seconds.

There's a new sheriff in town -- and his deputies had better watch out.

That's because Stephen Haskell, who took over as sheriff of Sublette County in Wyoming last month, has banned cowboy hats and boots, leading one veteran law enforcement officer to quit.

Echoing U.S. online retailer Amazon, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Wednesday tested a drone delivery service, promising to whisk ginger tea to customers within an hour despite close controls on airspace.

Alibaba's flagship consumer-to-consumer platform Taobao, estimated to hold more than 90 percent of the Chinese market, showed off a photo of a black and silver drone with helicopter-like propellors carrying a white box to launch the service.

The story of a Detroit man who walked 33 kilometers (21 miles) to work each day sparked a flood of donations to a crowdfunding campaign, raising more than $200,000.

The donations from over 8,000 people will be more than enough to buy a car for 56-year-old James Robertson, the subject of a Detroit Free Press article Sunday about his arduous daily commute in the U.S. state of Michigan.

Guys, if you want to get the girl, try bringing flowers — to her mother.

With Valentine's Day coming up, it's something to think about: Winning over mom may sound old-fashioned, but it's still a smart strategy in today's fast-changing, app-tapping, hookup-happy world of dating.