Fake election posters encouraging cardinals to vote for Ghanaian prelate Peter Turkson to be the next pope went up around central Rome on Friday in a provocation by an anonymous group of artists.

"At The Conclave Vote Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson" said the posters with a large picture of the African cardinal in his scarlet beretta looking up at the sky.

On a visit to Paris Wednesday, new U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wowed reporters by speaking in French, the language of his childhood summers in Brittany.

"We just finished one of those wonderful French lunches that have been drawing Americans to Paris for centuries," Kerry said en francais at a joint press conference with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

Police in Russia's northwestern city of Saint Petersburg have launched a probe after a video of an eight-year-old girl driving 100 kilometres per hour (60mph) through snowy scenery went viral on the Internet.

The clip of Karina Mikulchik driving was shot by her mother Yelena, who was sitting in the back seat. The footage has been viewed nearly 500,000 times on YouTube.

A Chinese boss ordered nine employees to do his 12-year-old daughter's homework, a report said, as office tyranny meshed with a parent's desire to see his child score well in the competitive school system.

"The leader said, 'Do some homework, it will be like practising'," one of the suffering subordinates told the Qianjiang Evening News.

An Indonesian woman drowned her nine-year-old son in the bath, claiming she was worried that his "small penis" would affect his prospects for the future, a police spokesman said Thursday.

The 38-year-old woman from the capital Jakarta told police her son had had a small penis prior to being circumcised, but that it appeared to shrink further after the operation, police spokesman Rikwanto, who goes by one name, told Agence France Presse.

A man known as Nutzu the Pawnbroker has been indicted for leading a fearsome criminal gang, but the public seems to be more interested in his pets: four lions and two bears.

Ion Balint — his real name — had long been known to have an affinity for wild beasts in his home.

Like anywhere, dozing off behind the wheel in Austria can be deadly. But for one teen-ager it will likely result in a charge of attempted car theft.

State broadcaster ORF cites police saying they are have identified a 17-year-old male as the likely suspect after a woman found her vehicle partially hot-wired, a door forced open and a youth apparently drunk and fast asleep inside.

A 114-year-old Japanese woman was recognized on Wednesday as the world's oldest female, making the Asian nation home to the longest-living woman and man on the planet.

Misao Okawa, a descendant of kimono merchants in the city Osaka, said she was "very happy" at receiving the honor -- and a certificate to prove her longevity -- from Guinness World Records.

A top Bulgarian cleric accused of leading a privileged lifestyle, has offered his luxurious Rolex watch to pay his cash-strapped church's electricity bills.

"Plovdiv Metropolitan Nikolay has offered one of his few personal objects, a Rolex watch, to the Saint Marina church, requesting that it be sold so that the electricity bill can be paid," said the church, one of the main ones in the central Bulgarian city of Plovdiv.

The first elephant born in Budapest's zoo since 1961 has been named Asha following a public vote in which over 200,000 people took part, the zoo said Tuesday.

Since her birth on February 14, Valentine's Day, Asha's progress at the 147-year-old zoo has been closely followed by a star-struck Hungarian public.