A Chinese Communist Party official has been suspended after running up unpaid bills of $115,000 at a specialty pig trotter restaurant, reports said Monday.

Han Junhong, the party secretary in Wangluo in the poor central province of Henan, racked up the 700,450 yuan account with a series of banquets over three years, the Global Times said, adding the establishment was the designated venue for official functions in the town.

Americans may insist on the right to pursue happiness, but Venezuela now has a formal government agency in charge of enforcing it.

President Nicolas Maduro says the new Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness will coordinate all the "mission" programs created by the late President Hugo Chavez to alleviate poverty.

An elderly Australian woman lay dead for months in her home as her adult daughter, who apparently used air freshener to mask the smell, fraudulently accessed her bank accounts, police said Friday.

The body of the 83-year-old was found in the bedroom of her Sydney home a week ago, but a post-mortem suggested she had been dead for months.

Nothing is sacred it appears in the high-flying world of pigeon racing in Belgium, where six birds were found to have been doped with drugs such as cocaine and painkillers, Belgian media reported Thursday.

Cycling-mad Belgium is used to hearing of sports stars pumped up on performance-enhancing drugs, but officials are now homing-in on the birds used in a sport which rakes in millions in breeding and prize monies.

Twenty-four elephants lined up for a race Thursday on Sri Lanka's newest expressway, but thousands of spectators were left disappointed when organizers scrapped the event due to safety concerns.

The animals and jockeys were jostling at the start line on the Chinese-built 25.8-kilometer (16 mile) four-lane expressway from the airport to the capital when authorities had a sudden change of heart.

It seemed like a dream come true -- a free holiday to Canada complete with new luggage -- until the Australian couple involved realized they had unwittingly become drug mules.

Australian Federal Police on Friday said the pair, a 72-year-old man and 64-year-old woman, told Customs officials they had some concerns about their bags when they returned to Perth International Airport on October 13.

Seeking to cash in on the space tourism boom, a U.S. firm is offering rides in a helium balloon 30 kilometers (20 miles) up to gaze down on Earth.

The Arizona-based company World View Enterprises said in a statement Tuesday the trip will cost $75,000 (55,000 euros) and travelers will stay aloft for about two hours in an eight-seat "luxuriously appointed space-qualified capsule".

A U.S. man has perhaps the most valuable $10 certificate you'll ever see.

Billy Baeder owns the 1933 silver certificate that an auctioneer says is worth at least a half-million dollars.

A court ruling in Italy this week has put an end to a 39-year legal dispute between Oscar-winning film star Sophia Loren and Italian tax authorities, Italian media reported on Thursday.

The 79-year-old Loren, who lives in Switzerland, was quoted as saying she was happy with a ruling by the supreme court that said her 1974 tax return was indeed covered by a 1982 tax amnesty.

Creepy crawlies, in the form of a venomous spider infestation, has forced a school in Britain to close a week before Halloween.

The Dean Academy, a secondary school in southwest England's Gloucestershire, said it was closing Wednesday to get rid of the false widow spiders. The spiders are commonly mistaken for their relative, the black widow spider, whose bite can be fatal.