Hollywood star and weather seer Punxsutawney Phil used to be the only groundhog that mattered in weather predicting, but Phil's shock decision Thursday that spring is still six weeks away put him out on a limb.

As the eastern United States enjoys an exceptionally mild winter, most would have guessed that spring is around the corner. But when Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow Thursday, his handlers announced he was able to see his shadow. According to tradition, that signals six more weeks of winter.

French presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande was targeted in a flour-throwing attack Wednesday as he wrapped up a speech about housing problems.

The Socialist candidate, tipped by opinion polls to win the April-May two-round election, was unharmed but left covered in white powder after the attack by a woman who was swiftly removed from the room in Paris.

Guinness World Records experts said Thursday they are to travel to a remote valley in southwestern Nepal to measure a 72-year-old claiming to be the world's shortest man.

Chandra Bahadur Dangi is 56 centimeters tall and weighs 12 kilos he told a media conference broadcast by Nepali state television.

Twins born in Indonesia and put up separately for adoption, have been reunited after finding each other living just 40 kilometers (25 miles) apart, in southern Sweden, three decades later.

Non-identical twins Emilie Falk and Lin Backman -- strangers until last year -- were separated nearly 29 years ago.

Many points of contention were aired at a high-stakes U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria's bloodshed on Tuesday, but at least one came straight from another era -- Lawrence of Arabia.

Syria's U.N. representative brought up the famous British soldier from World War I as he defiantly rejected a draft resolution backed by other Arab states calling on President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

Slovak lawmakers have stripped naked in support of a campaign to strip legislators of their immunity from prosecution, a motion which parliament was set to debate on Tuesday.

A picture featuring 17 lawmakers from the liberal Freedom and Solidarity party (SaS) wearing nothing but a banner saying "let's strip lawmakers of their immunity" was posted on the party's Facebook page and published in country's biggest tabloid Novy Cas this week.

A newsreader who slipped up and said bloggers were debating whether Prime Minister Vladimir Putin should be buried has become an Internet sensation and received thousands of grateful posts in Russia.

Maria Bukhtuyeva, a newsreader from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, made the mistake when wanting to say presidential hopeful Mikhail Prokhorov had proposed holding a referendum on whether Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin should be removed from a Red Square Mausoleum and buried.

After decades of male taunts over their driving skills, women can take heart from a new study Monday revealing that they are actually the better sex when it comes to parking.

A review of CCTV footage from 700 British car parks and interviews with 2,000 drivers found that when a range of factors are considered, including the method used and the time taken, women come out on top.

For decades, archenemies Pakistan and India have engaged in a dangerous nuclear arms race. Now they're also competing in a more cheerful forum. The outcome will be mouthwatering curries and soothing Sufi ballads, not violent conflict.

The fractious neighbors are going head-to-head in a pair of reality TV shows that pit chefs and musicians against each other. Producers hope the contests will help bridge the gulf between two nations that were born from the same womb and have been at each other's throats ever since.

Police were investigating a criminal gang that allegedly stole blocks of ice from the Jorge Montt Glacier in southern Chile.

Agents with Chile's National Forest Service (CONAF) filed a legal complaint claiming that ice was being stolen from the glacier, located in the Chilean Patagonia region some 1,700 kilometers (1,056 miles) south of Santiago.