Dogs, cats, rabbits and even turtles, many dressed in their finest, trooped into churches across Spain on Tuesday in search of blessing on Saint Anthony's Day, for the patron saint of animals.

Pet owners lined up around the block of the Church of San Anton in central Madrid behind blue metal barriers to wait for a priest to sprinkle holy water on their animals.

An Austrian high school principal narrowly escaped legal action after going after potential exam cheaters with a high-tech — but illegal — idea.

Gerhard Klampfer reportedly bought and mounted a jamming device strong enough to prevent graduating classes from doing Internet research on their smartphones during final exams last summer.

Sales of condoms and birth control in Poland shrank by 10 percent and 3.2 percent respectively over a year as of October 2011, the first such drop on record, fresh market surveys showed Tuesday.

Further studies of the data compiled by the Nielsen and IMS Health pharmaceutical market analysts due out in February are expected to pinpoint the causes behind this unprecedented contraction in the contraceptives sector.

The New Zealand Farmers Federation has called for sheep shearing to become an Olympic sport, hailing top wool-clippers as world-class athletes.

With the World Shearing Championships set to be held in the North Island town of Masterton in March, federation spokeswoman Jeanette Maxwell said shearing was now a bona fide sport that deserved international recognition.

A group of Nepal police officers are being investigated for operating a butcher's shop from their station and slaughtering goats when they should have been fighting crime, according to the force.

The officers in the station on the outskirts of the capital Kathmandu are accused of taking livestock from members of the public and killing and carving up the animals to be sold.

South Korean customs officials say they have arrested eight men over a scheme to allegedly smuggle gold out of the country by hiding it in their rectums.

The Korea Customs Service said Monday the men allegedly transformed $260,000 in gold bars into small beads and smuggled them in their rectums to Japan two times in 2010 to avoid import taxes.

Officials at Cairo's international airport confiscated 420 pounds (190 kilograms) of frozen cow brains Friday from three Sudanese travelers who planned to sell them to Egyptian restaurants, authorities said.

An airport official said it was the fourth time this week that customs officers there had foiled an attempt to smuggle cow brains into the country, reflecting the growth of a moneymaking scheme made possible by some realities of international supply and demand: Cow brains are cheap in Sudan, and Egyptians like to eat them.

A North Carolina man says 30 pairs of Nike Air Jordan sneakers still in their boxes that he's been collecting since middle school have been stolen.

WCNC-TV reports that 22-year-old Bryant Toala told police that someone broke into a home Monday night and took the shoes that he says could be worth more than $10,000. The burglars came in through a bedroom window and made off with the boxes that Toala says were hidden.

An elderly woman in Argentina was left fighting for her life Saturday after a cat thrown out of a fourth-floor apartment during a heated argument landed on her head, local media reported.

The incident occurred in the Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires when, during the dispute, a man grabbed the family cat and threw it at his wife. She managed to dodge the feline, which then sailed through an open window plunging toward the ground and striking the woman, an 85-year-old neighbor.

A man who fled prison in just his underwear in Japan's first jailbreak for more than 20 years was back behind bars Friday, police said.

The escape of Chinese national Li Guolin had led television news bulletins for much of Thursday in a country where crime is low but fear of criminals is widespread.