A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

It's an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.

Police in Nepal said they had cracked down on members of the public using cannabis at a major Hindu festival where the drug is smoked legally by thousands of holy men to honour a Hindu god.

The wandering mystics -- known as sadhus -- use an ancient legal loophole to smoke marijuana during a night of celebrations in honor of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, but ordinary Nepalis are not permitted to join them.

A court in Zimbabwe has sentenced a 17-year-old boy to be caned after he posted a picture of a woman on Facebook with a caption that called her a prostitute, state media said Monday.

The Herald newspaper said magistrate Tinashe Ndokera found the boy guilty of criminal insult, and ordered that he be caned twice.

John Fairfax, a self-proclaimed "professional adventurer" who became famous in 1969 as the first person to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, has died near Las Vegas at the age of 74.

Fairfax was born in Italy to a British father and a Bulgarian mother, grew up in Argentina, and led a colorful life that included stretches as a big-game hunter and even a cigarette smuggler.

It's classic parent-teenager strife, revamped for the Internet age: A 15-year-old takes to Facebook to curse her parents and complain about chores and the pressures of youth. Her disgusted father videotapes and posts a lengthy rebuttal punctuated by nine gunshots as he empties his pistol into her laptop.

The bizarre incident in North Carolina has garnered more than 26 million views on YouTube and tens of thousands more on Facebook, touching a nerve with others tired of their kids' attitudes but also drawing backlash from parents who have kept such desires in check, people who believe the father is the one being childish.

Under a shower of confetti and pulsating samba beats, legendary King Momo on Friday officially launched Rio's famed Carnival, a dazzling extravaganza broadcast to a worldwide television audience.

Flanked by his queen and two princesses, the blue-crowned king, 160-kilogram (352 pounds) Milton Junior, symbolically received a giant key to the city from Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes.

Catholics and conservatives have denounced as blasphemous two recent exhibitions in Madrid featuring kinky nuns in lingerie and tattooed and near-naked Christs, demonstrating outside one gallery.

Catholic group AES called a demonstration for Friday evening outside the Fresh Gallery in Madrid against its latest exhibition: "Obscenity", a collection of photographs by Canadian artist Bruce LaBruce.

A mob burned alive a 40-year-old woman on Friday after accusing her of casting black magic spells in a remote village in southern Nepal, police said.

Dengani Mahato died after she was severely beaten, doused in kerosene and set alight for allegedly practicing witchcraft, Gopal Bhandari, a superintendent of police in Chitwan district, told Agence France Presse.

What to do when burglaries get out of hand?

In Denmark, police think they might have the answer: Turn to the experts themselves, the housebreakers.

Forget the three little pigs hiding from the big bad wolf. These six little pigs have found a new friend in a maternal French bulldog named Baby.

The Lehnitz animal sanctuary outside Berlin said Baby took straight to the wild boar piglets when they were brought in Saturday, three days old and shivering from cold.