An Iranian man condemned to the gallows for murdering a policeman was pardoned by the victim's family and his life saved only moments after he was hanged, the Mehr news agency reported on Thursday.

Relatives "cried out their pardon after the murderer had already been hanging for a few seconds" the agency said, publishing a photo of people grab the man and holding him until they could remove the noose from around his neck.

A team of smokejumpers parachuting into a fire in the mountains of Southern Oregon landed in an illegal marijuana garden being prepared for growing season.

The six smokejumpers found the site Monday evening, when there was a rash of lightning strikes.

The head of Mexico's consumer protection agency has avoided the ax despite a scandal over his daughter's attempt to get a restaurant shut down for denying her the table she wanted.

After a probe ordered by President Enrique Pena Nieto, the government announced Thursday that four officials from the Profeco agency would be temporarily suspended over the incident, but that there was no cause to punish its chief, Humberto Benitez.

A Chinese court ordered a controversial professor who claims descent from the ancient sage Confucius to apologize and pay a fine after a heated online row over poetry, local media reported Friday.

Kong Qingdong, a professor at the elite Peking University who sparked an outcry in 2012 by calling Hong Kong people "dogs", said online that a student was a "dog-like traitor" for criticizing a poem he wrote, the Beijing News reported.

A 22-year-old Austrian had the shock of his life when he received a tax bill for more than 29 million euros ($38 million), a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Agadir B. told the Heute daily he got the bill after filing his tax return for 2008, when he earned around 600 euros a month as a trainee, with the demand that he paid one percent -- 290,420.13 euros -- immediately.

The colorful handmade giraffes, elephants and warthogs made in a Nairobi workshop were once only dirty pieces of rubber cruising the Indian Ocean's currents.

Kenya's Ocean Sole sandal recycling company is cleaning the East African country's beaches of used, washed-up flip-flops and other sandals.

A 28-year-old woman miraculously survived after her husband accidentally shot her in the mouth with a harpoon, Brazilian officials said Wednesday.

The Rio de Janeiro State Health Department said in a statement that the woman's husband was cleaning his spear gun when it went off, firing a harpoon that hit her cervical spine.

Investigations were under way Thursday into who lobbed Vegemite sandwiches at the Australian prime minister as she toured a Queensland school.

Julia Gillard tried to play down the prank on Wednesday at Brisbane's Marsden state high school. "One kid thought he might just be a little bit naughty," the prime minister said.

The Philippines on Wednesday banned people from carrying large amounts of cash and buying alcohol in controversial efforts to curb rampant vote-buying and violence before elections next week.

The shock money ban means banks are not allowed to hand over more than 100,000 pesos ($2,400) to customers until after Monday's mid-term elections, the Commission on Elections announced.

A heat wave is threatening to take the bloom off one of the world's largest garden festivals, as more than one million colorful tulips in Canada's capital began wilting Tuesday.

More than 100 heat records were broken across the country, according the weather office, while Ottawa posted a near-record 27 degrees Celsius (80.6 Fahrenheit) just as the Canadian Tulip Festival was getting underway.