Chinese President Xi Jinping caused a stir with a weekend visit to a local Beijing restaurant, where he queued and bought his own steamed buns.

In a move apparently aimed at burnishing his everyman credentials, Xi dropped by the popular Qingfeng steamed bun shop on Saturday and paid out of his own pocket for a traditional meal of pork-and-onion buns, green vegetables and fried liver, state media reported.

When you fall asleep in a dumpster, you may wind up at the dump.

Brazilian police say that's what happened to a man discovered at a landfill on Christmas day in the southern city of Caxias do Sul.

A poker player who left $300,000 in the back seat of a Las Vegas taxi made good on his promise this week, handing over a $10,000 reward to the honest cabbie who returned the stash.

Yellow Checker Star Cab Company CEO Bill Shranko confirmed Friday that Gerardo Gamboa had been paid by the poker player. The cab company also honored the driver's good deed by naming him employee of the year, awarding him $1,000 and giving him a gift certificate to a Las Vegas steakhouse.

South Carolina authorities have said a 44-year-old woman angry at a man for returning home without beer on Christmas beat and stabbed him with a ceramic squirrel.

The Charleston County Sheriff's office said in a report that deputies found a man covered with blood when they arrived at Helen Williams' North Charleston home early Wednesday. She told investigators the man fell and cut himself, but couldn't explain why her hands and clothes were also bloody.

Ed Currie holds one of his world-record Carolina Reaper peppers by the stem, which looks like the tail of a scorpion.

On the other end is red fruit with a punch of heat nearly as potent as most pepper sprays used by police.

Four armed men dressed as Santa robbed a jewelry shop in a Tirana mall, police said Thursday while another "Santa gang" injured two people during a robbery in neighboring Kosovo.

The four thieves, armed with automatic weapons, burst into the Tirana shop on Tuesday, threatening the owner at gunpoint as they filled sacks with luxury goods, Interior Ministry spokesman Florion Seriani told Agence France Presse.

Piranhas on a Christmas Day feeding frenzy injured some 60 people in the Argentine city of Rosario, officials said Thursday.

Those injured in the attack Wednesday by the ferocious fish included a girl who lost part of a finger, Health Undersecretary Gabriela Quintanilla told reporters.

More than 210 surfers dressed as Santa Claus, elves and snowmen were surfing the Christmas Eve waves off central Florida's Atlantic coast.

Florida Today reports that when Cocoa Beach Mayor Dave Netterstrom took in the view from the sand Tuesday, he declared the fourth-annual gathering "the largest surfing Santa event on the planet."

Maybe it was getting his first video game, Cosmic Avenger, for Christmas at the age of 12, and then having to wait an entire year for the hard-to-land Colecovision console to play it on that made Michael Thomasson so determined to get his hands on every video game and system he could find.

Now, 31 years and roughly 11,000 games later, Thomasson is the newly crowned world record holder for having the largest collection of video games. He is featured in a two-page spread in the just-released "Guinness World Records 2014 Gamer's Edition."

California hospitals are spreading holiday cheer for new parents by delivering newborns in giant Christmas stockings.

The bright red stockings were provided this week for babies born at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in Redlands, California. The Long Beach Press-Telegram says it's a half-century-old tradition.