Staff at a Japanese zoo chased a keeper in a gorilla costume on Thursday as part of an annual escape drill to brush up their skills in the event of a real breakout.

Visitors to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo watched as the pretend primate was coralled by dozens of staff wielding nets, before being subdued with a mock stun gun and bundled onto a nearby pick-up truck.

Amsterdam's red-light district opened its first "prostitution museum" on Thursday, hoping to lure tourists who always wondered what life was like for those on the other side of the infamous glass windows -- but were too afraid to ask.

"How do they live? What happens in their world?" said Melcher de Wind, a founder of the "Red Light Secrets Museum of Prostitution" which showcases one of the Dutch capital's most famous attractions.

A Harley-Davidson motorbike that briefly belonged to Pope Francis was sold to a mystery European buyer for 210,000 euros ($285,800) at a high-profile auction in Paris on Thursday.

"It's a record for a post-vintage motorbike, from the 21st century," said Bonhams France, the auction house. Including fees, the unidentified buyer paid a total of 241,500 euros to obtain the bike.

Bayern Munich share their Allianz Arena stadium with second-division 1860 Munich, but with Valentines day looming, a tiff has emerged between the neighboring clubs -- over who is the sexiest.

The bragging over which Munich club has the most sex appeal started when 1860's new CEO Markus Rejek boasted "1860 has much more sex than Bayern!" at his club's training camp in Turkey last month.

The Taliban say they have captured a dog belonging to the U.S. military following a raid in eastern Afghanistan late last year.

A video posted on the insurgents' website on Wednesday and later on Facebook shows the animal, named by the Taliban as "Colonel", being held on a leash in a small, well-lit courtyard surrounded by five men holding guns and grenades.

Israel on Thursday set a Guinness record for the largest online civics class, with President Shimon Peres simultaneously teaching a lesson to more than 9,500 students.

And in an unexpected twist, Peres himself was also presented with a personal award -- that of being the oldest serving head of state in the world, presidential spokesman Yair Zivan said.

A remarkably lifelike sculpture of a man sleepwalking in nothing but his underpants has some students at a U.S. women's college protesting, but the school president says it's part of the intellectual process.

The sculpture is part of an exhibit by sculptor Tony Matelli at Wellesley College. Its placement at a busy area of campus on Monday prompted an online student petition to have it removed.

A Spanish senior citizen has earned the dubious distinction of becoming the oldest drug mule ever busted in Colombia.

Barcelona native Jose Molla apparently decided that being on the wrong side of the law was worth the risk -- until he was busted last week at El Dorado international loaded with 27 capsules of cocaine, police said Wednesday.

Microsoft's movement-recognition Kinect software has morphed from virtual shooter gaming to the real-life challenge of guarding the world's last Cold War border.

The sensor allowing hands-free play on the Xbox is the basis for a security device now deployed along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea, after being adapted by a South Korean programmer.

The man who was the musical brains behind a supposedly deaf composer dubbed "Japan's Beethoven" claimed Thursday that the mock maestro was not hearing-impaired -- and couldn't even write sheet music.

The startling allegations come a day after composer Mamoru Samuragochi, 50, confessed to hiring another man to write his best-known works, as he shot to fame in the mid-1990s with classical compositions that provided the soundtrack to video games including Resident Evil.