Dutch actress and adventurer Manon "Tractor Girl" Ossevoort arrived at the South Pole Tuesday after driving a tractor from Europe through Africa and across the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

"It's quite emotional, I'm very happy," Ossevoort told AFP by satellite telephone shortly after arriving at the Pole and fulfilling a decade-long dream.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies have issued a call for immigrants to speak German at home, touching off a hailstorm of protest and ridicule on social media Sunday.

Amid a national debate on integration, the Christian Social Union, one of three parties in Merkel's ruling coalition, drafted a motion saying that foreigners seeking permanent residency "should be encouraged to speak German in public and in private with their families".

The daughter of the CEO of Korean Air forced the chief purser off a New York-bound plane after she was incorrectly served some nuts -- delaying the flight and triggering a government probe, officials said Monday.

Cho Hyun-Ah, who is an executive vice president of the family-run flag carrier, insisted the chief flight attendant leave the plane just minutes before take-off on Friday, Korean Air said.

When naturalist Paul Rosolie wanted to focus attention on the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, he decided he needed a stunt guaranteed to get people looking.

So the staunch environmentalist offered himself as dinner to an anaconda -- and was prepared to be swallowed alive, filming every moment.

A Michigan man says his family's 5,000-pound footbridge has been recovered after being stolen from his property in suburban Detroit.

Robert Cortis filed a police report Wednesday saying that a 40-foot bridge made of steel and wood was stolen from his property in Farmington Hills.

Lounging by a roaring fire on a cold winter evening may be one of life's simplest forms of pleasure for homebodies but this will soon be a distant memory in Paris as authorities ban wood burning.

The Ile-de-France region, which includes the French capital and seven other districts, has issued an order stating that residents in Paris will no longer be allowed to use their fireplaces from January 1 next year to fight against air pollution.

A woman in southern Colorado was surprised when she gave birth to a baby girl who tipped the scales at almost 14 pounds.

Mia Yasmin Hernandez was born by cesarean section Monday in Alamosa, weighing 13 pounds, 13 ounces. She was flown to a hospital outside Denver because she had low glucose levels and trouble breathing. Her father says she's doing well and the family hopes to take her home soon.

This cat had two faces — but only nine lives.

A feline named Frank and Louie after he was born with two faces, two mouths, two noses and three blue eyes has died at the age of 15.

Vienna's famous Fiaker carriages are popular with tourists

A runaway horse sparked mayhem in evening rush-hour traffic in Vienna, galloping along a busy road pursued by nine police cars and the animal's distraught owner, police said Thursday.

A for-profit Florida college used exotic dancers as admissions officers, falsified documents and coached students to lie on financial forms as it fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in federal money, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Miami.

On at least one of its seven campuses, FastTrain College "purposely hired attractive women and sometimes exotic dancers and encouraged them to dress provocatively while they recruited young men in neighborhoods to attend FastTrain," according to an ongoing civil lawsuit. The Florida attorney general and the U.S. attorney in Miami announced Wednesday that they were joining the lawsuit against the now-defunct FastTrain and former owner Alejandro Amor, 56.