Elevators in Singapore public-housing blocks are still sometimes being used as toilets, infuriating residents despite a long government campaign to eradicate the dirty habit, a report said Sunday.

A suburban town council has put up notices showing a bare-bottomed woman apparently urinating in a lift and a man smoking in another, the Sunday Times newspaper said.

An Italian couple in their sixties, overwhelmed by crushing financial difficulties and unable to pay their rent, committed suicide by hanging, police told local media on Friday.

Their bodies of Romeo Dionsi, 62, and Anna Sopranzi, 68, were discovered by their neighborliness on Friday morning at their home in Civitanova, a small village in the central Marche region on the Adriatic Sea.

Not content with housing a pair of celebrity pandas that attract hordes of avid onlookers, a zoo in France has decided to put their droppings to good use by recycling them into gas and electricity.

Yuan Zi and Huan Huan -- "Chubby" and "Happy" in Chinese -- arrived at Beauval zoo in central France in January last year, on loan from China for 10 years at a cost of around a million dollars a year.

Uruguay's President Jose Mujica had no apologies Friday after disparaging remarks aimed at Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner and her late husband were picked up by an open microphone.

In a radio presentation, Mujica talked about the close links between the two countries, and emphasized that no event or person "can uproot our common history."

U.S. retailer Target apologized Friday after a labeling gaffe that saw the color of a plus-size dress named after manatees, the blubbery denizens of the deep found off the Florida coast.

While the scale of the outrage caused by the blunder was not clear, Target was clearly not taking any chances by swiftly updating the color label for its "Manatee gray" kimono maxi dress.

Shackles, whips, chains and even a stretching rack will go on sale next week, with the reputable auction house Lawsons charged with selling off the contents of a closed Australian brothel.

About 250 items of furniture, clothing and books and accessories from Salon Kitty go on sale on April 12, after the Sydney establishment closed its doors last month after dominating the city's bondage scene for 27 years.

Their lights blaring in the night, hundreds of taxis lined an unlit airstrip in a jungle region of Peru so an emergency medevac plane with three very sick patients could take off.

All three survived after the 300-odd drivers of motorcycles fashioned into small taxis with compartments for passengers heeded a call Wednesday night from a radio station to race to the 800-meter airstrip in Contamana, in one of Peru's poorest regions, Peruvian media reported Thursday.

A New York City man dressed as a zombie for his job at a haunted house is being credited with rescuing a cat that disappeared from his owner's home two years ago.

Jeremy Zelkowitz says he spotted Disaster the cat crossing 42nd Street in Times Square early Saturday.

Uruguay's President Jose Mujica was left red-faced Thursday after disparaging remarks apparently aimed at Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner and her late husband were picked up by an open microphone.

Buenos Aires swiftly responded with an official protest, calling the comments "unacceptable."

"Top Gear" presenter Jeremy Clarkson is pictured near Sibiu city, 300 km northwest of Bucharest, on September 24, 2009. Dutch police were forced to explain why one of their number announced that …more

Dutch police were forced to explain why one of their number announced that a vital section of motorway would be closed for Britain's "Top Gear" television program, in what turned out to be an April Fool's joke.