It might not be the most flattering accolade for the "bootylicious" American pop star, but new mother Beyonce now has a fly named after her.

Just days after the singer and actress gave birth to a baby girl, Australian scientists said Friday they had named a rare horse fly from far northern Queensland in her honour because of its impressive golden lower abdomen.

Italian shock photographer Oliviero Toscani has done it again -- this time with a calendar featuring 12 penis close-ups in an ad for a group of companies that make naturally-tanned leather.

The flamboyant photographer launched the calendar at an event in Florence also attended by famously well-endowed Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi, who said that people should "de-dramatize" sex and put an end to "bigotry".

Men may find it the ultimate turn-on, but the G-string is on its way out in France, ditched by droves of women who have found comfier -- and more flattering -- ways to look sexy, a study showed Thursday.

"Back in the 1990s, the G-string was the key lingerie item for French women, but its star has faded," said Cecile Guerin, exhibition director for the International Lingerie Fair taking place in Paris next week.

A court in France on Thursday rejected a prosecutors' request for a couple to be barred from naming their son Daemon after a character in television series "The Vampire Diaries".

Prosecutors had brought Lionel and Blandine Defontaine, from Busigny in northern France, to court under a French law that prevents parents from giving names that would be "contrary to the interests of a child".

Tired of walking? An American inventor has designed a pair of motorized shoes.

The battery powered high-tech footwear called "spnKiX" resemble a cross between a ski boot and a roller skate with oversized wheels and are among the gadgets on display at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

When 45,000 euros ($57,180) mysteriously landed in their joint bank account last year, an Austrian couple wasted no time asking questions, deciding instead to spend it quick and pay off their debts.

But their luck ran out on Wednesday as a court in Graz, southern Austria, handed them both a five-month suspended jail sentence for fraud after the firm that made the erroneous transfer claimed its money back.

A New York store was told by a city politician Wednesday to stop selling swastika earrings, although the shop manager said they were an ancient Indian symbol, not the Nazi emblem.

Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president in New York, said on his website that swastikas could not be a "fashion statement. It is the most hateful symbol in our culture and an insult to any civilized person."

A prisoner serving 23 years for attempted murder was on the run Thursday after escaping from a penitentiary in Hiroshima clad only in white underwear, Japan's first jailbreak in more than two decades.

Li Guolin was exercising in a prison yard when he stripped off his convict's uniform and used scaffolding erected by builders to climb over a five-meter (16-foot) perimeter fence Wednesday, Kyodo news agency said, citing officials.

Smoking drivers will have to watch their butts in South Africa's tourist draw card Cape Town after a new hotline was launched for motorists to report those who throw cigarette ends out the window.

"We are getting quite a lot of calls on the butt line," said an operator who answered the hotline on Wednesday.

A rare Cuban crocodile met a bemused Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican on Wednesday, as Rome's Bio Park zoo celebrated its centenary with the eco-friendly pontiff.

A staff member from the zoo -- which has 1,200 animals and is visited by 700,000 people a year -- presented the 60-centimetre (23.6-inch) long crocodylus rhombifer crocodile to the pope, who smiled bravely.