An Italian hip hop artist has released a song entitled "Letter to the Pope" urging the Catholic world's new leader to reform the Church, allow people to divorce, accept gays and put an end to abuses.

Dino Dispenza or "Dydo" for short said just-elected Pope Francis seemed "nice" but the singer said he still wanted to "try and understand what he is going to do", speaking to the Italian news agency ANSA on Thursday.

Many parents would be delighted to have their son become pope -- not so Eleonore Schoenborn, mother of Austrian candidate Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.

"Being pope would be too much for Christoph, it would be much too difficult for him," the 92-year-old told Austrian daily Kronen-Zeitung in an interview. "He is too good for the job."

Venezuela's acting president Nicolas Maduro joked on Wednesday that late leftist president Hugo Chavez's recent death must have played into the selection of the first Latin American pope.

"We know that our commander has risen up there and is face to face with Christ," Maduro said, to an outburst of laughter at a political event, just over a week after Chavez died following 14 years in charge of Venezuela.

A "shagging diploma" given to youths at a Swedish Lutheran Church confirmation camp proved too much for parents who complained Wednesday that their 14-year-olds were too young for sex.

After attending a course entitled "Love and Sexuality", the teenagers in the southeastern town of Ronneby were given a certificate stating they were "qualified for sex".

An Estonian man has returned a library book 69 years late, partly blaming a World War II aerial bombing that damaged the library for the late return.

Ivika Turkson of the Tallinn Central Library says that last week the man in his mid-80s returned the overdue book — which was checked out on March 7, 1944, while Estonia was occupied by Nazi Germany — along with an apology and an offer to pay a late fee.

A British man hailed as a hero for wrestling a shark away from an Australian beach said Tuesday he had been sacked after it emerged that he was on sick leave at the time.

Paul Marshallsea, a 62-year-old charity worker from Wales, won praise in January when he ran into the sea near Brisbane to grapple with the 1.8 meter (6-foot) shark, fearing it would attack paddling children.

This gives new meaning to punching in at work: doctors at a Brazilian hospital covered for absentee colleagues by using fake silicone fingers with their prints to fool biometric machines.

Globo television showed footage of a doctor touching her finger to the device, then using two fake digits to do the same for colleagues, and taking delivery of slips of paper indicating they had in fact clocked in to work.

The son of Australia's richest person, Gina Rinehart, sought a Aus$15 million (U.S.$15.4 million) "sorry payment" from his mother for how had she treated him over the years, a report said Wednesday.

Iron ore billionaire Rinehart is embroiled in a legal battle with two of her four children, including son John Hancock, over control of a family trust reportedly worth Aus$4 billion.

The cardinals locked away to choose the next pope will be served plain but wholesome food -- and nothing so delicious that they will want to drag out their deliberations, an Italian newspaper reported on its website on Tuesday.

The nuns who will cook for the 115 cardinals during the papal conclave at their Casa Santa Marta residence "are already preparing meals of soup, spaghetti, small meat kebabs and boiled vegetables", the Corriere della Sera reported.

A mating pair of pandas have wasted no time in getting intimate, a Japanese zoo said Tuesday, coupling on their first evening together and then again the next morning.

The female Shin Shin and her companion Ri Ri were put in a private enclosure on Monday evening after keepers at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo noticed they were ready to mate.