School officials say dozens of human brains reported missing from a University of Texas research lab in Austin were actually destroyed about 12 years ago because they were in poor condition.

The university released a statement Wednesday saying environmental workers disposed of between 40 and 60 jars, some of which contained multiple brains, after faculty members said the specimens weren't suitable for research or teaching purposes.

A Washington state teacher acknowledged ordering an 8-year-old student to unclog a toilet with his bare hands, and the boy's parents say the educator deserves more than a reprimand.

Artie and Lisa Adams told KEPR-TV (http://bit.ly/1vml84o ) that they learned of the Nov. 6 incident at Scootney Springs Elementary School in the small, central Washington city of Othello when they asked their son about his day at school.

A South Korean official said Wednesday that Pyongyang forbids its people from using the same name as the young absolute leader.

The measure appears meant to bolster a personality cult surrounding Kim, who took over after the death of his dictator father Kim Jong Il in late 2011.

Australia's government is taking steps to curb Australian travelers' soaring expectations of what help they can get from their embassies, such as a loan to pay a prostitute in Thailand or assistance to evict a polecat from above a ceiling in the United States.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop on Wednesday announced new measures to underscore consular services as a last resort and to promote "a stronger culture of self-reliance and personal responsibility in the traveling public."

London's nightclubs, where sweaty revelers move and shake to thumping beats, are legendary. But now a quieter, more polite clubbing experience is gaining fans -- the silent disco.

At silent discos, partygoers don headphones and dance noiselessly to the music they are listening to. Thanks to the headphones, there is no thudding bassline to shout over -- those who are not dancing can talk, laugh and clink glasses as if they were in their own home.

Vanilla sugar for Christmas biscuits trickling from an envelope sparked a bioterrorism scare at a German mail distribution center on Monday, local police said.

Police, paramedics and a fire brigade team in full protective suits swarmed the facility after staff spotted the white powder and an employee complained of itching, apparently fearing it was a dangerous chemical or biological agent.

A 57-year-old Frenchwoman who said she was suffering from "devastating loneliness" has been found dead in her freezer in an apparent suicide, police said on Tuesday.

Fire officers made the grisly discovery when they were called to the woman's house in the Paris suburbs on Monday after her daughter said she was "worried because she had not heard from her mother."

A doctor thought it might be funny to crack a joke about a bomb in his luggage. Instead, he partly forced the evacuation of Miami International airport, and earned an almost $90,000 fine.

Manuel Alvarado, 60, will pay out $89,172 for his "momentary lapse of reason in making these statements," which prompted costly evacuations and delays for airlines, and brought out a police bomb squad, said his lawyer Brian Bieber.

An Indian student who traveled to Iraq to join the Islamic State group has returned home disillusioned after jihadists made him clean toilets and do other menial jobs, according to media reports.

Areeb Majeed, 23, left for Iraq with three friends in late May amid fears by authorities that IS militants were attempting to recruit from India's large pool of young Muslim men.

An Indian diamond trader has thrown a mass wedding ceremony for 111 fatherless women and given each one gifts worth thousands of dollars, saying giving a bride away was "sacred".

Mahesh Savani said the women, whose families were all too poor to finance their weddings, saw him as their foster father.