U.S. clothing chain American Apparel has sparked controversy by putting mannequins sprouting pubic hair in the windows of their shop in New York's boho Lower East Side.

Passersby stopped to gawk, take photographs, chuckle or raise a horrified eyebrow at the stick-thin plastic models decked out in see-through bras and panties, with bushy bikini lines.

The iconic statue of Jesus overlooking Rio de Janeiro, one of the city's most recognizable landmarks, has lost a thumb tip to lightening, a report said Friday.

Christ the Redeemer, the giant monument and tourist magnet that looms atop nearby Mount Corcovado, was damaged in a huge storm Thursday night, O Globo newspaper reported on its website.

Call it the attack of the zombie refrigerators.

Computer security researchers said this week they discovered a large "botnet" which infected Internet-connected home appliances and then delivered more than 750,000 malicious emails.

A Salvadorean nun who said she had no idea she was pregnant gave birth in Italy this week after she felt stomach cramps in her convent and was rushed to hospital, Italian media reported on Friday.

The 31-year-old mother and her baby boy, who weighs 3.5 kilograms (nine pounds), are doing well and other new mothers in Rieti hospital have begun collecting clothes and donations for her, the reports said.

A truck dumped a huge pile of manure outside France's National Assembly on Thursday in a protest against the French political elite.

The driver of the truck -- which was marked with the slogan "Out with Hollande and the whole political class!" -- was apprehended by police shortly after releasing his smelly load outside the front gates of the grand Palais Bourbon that hosts the lower house Assembly.

Radical Jewish settlers from a West Bank outpost with a reputation for violence have set up a sushi business in a bid to revamp their image, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

The culinary venture is being run out of Esh Kodesh, a small unauthorized outpost in the northern West Bank populated by settlers who have frequently attacked local Palestinians.

A garden gnome, a chocolate royal coach and a falconry glove were among the gifts presented to Britain's royal household last year, it was revealed on Wednesday.

Queen Elizabeth II was the lucky recipient of a gold jewelled photo frame set on a jeweled ostrich egg when Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, president of the United Arab Emirates, made a state visit last April, according to an official list released by officials at Buckingham Palace and Clarence House.

A drunken man has been arrested for trying to douse the eternal flame at the landmark Arc de Triomphe monument in Paris, police said Wednesday.

The man parked his car on Tuesday evening near the famed monument on the Champs Elysees, the city's emblematic avenue, and rushed towards the flame with a fire extinguisher in hand.

Farmers in one of the poorest counties in a Chinese province built a wall of cash from more than $2 million paid out in year-end bonuses, a report said Wednesday.

The farmers, members of a co-operative in Liangshan county in the southwestern province of Sichuan, stacked bundles of 100-yuan banknotes into a wall two meters (seven feet) long and half a meter high before handing out the dividends, the semi-official China News Service reported.

Nepal's former Kumaris, girls worshiped as living goddesses in a centuries-old tradition, are to be awarded a pension to help them re-adjust to normal life, an official said Tuesday.

Ten former Kumaris will receive the monthly allowance of 10,000 Nepalese rupees ($101) from July for the next 10 years, Kathmandu Metropolitan City chief executive officer Laxman Aryal said.