A British Father Christmas has been suspended after allegedly telling children that Santa was not real and mentioning the recent U.S. school massacre, it was reported on Thursday.

The man was working at Notcutts Garden Center in Oxford, south England, when he reportedly told siblings Ryan Kennett, 10, Amy, seven, and Katie, six, that he was not the real Santa.

The United Nations has denied distributing tickets for an ark to save people from the apocalypse, it said on a Chinese social networking site Friday.

"The United Nations sincerely has not issued any boat tickets," said a post on the U.N.'s verified account on Sina Weibo -- a website similar to Twitter -- above pictures of passes onto the ark which sport the organisation's name and logo.

A woman whose pet monkey was found wandering in an Ikea parking lot protested Wednesday with some 15 other people at a Toronto Animal Services office Wednesday in an effort to get him back.

Yasmin Nakhuda alleges the Japanese macaque, named Darwin, was illegally taken from her by animal control officials and moved to a sanctuary in Sunderland, Ontario, where he now lives.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ruled out that the world will end this week, as predicted by Mayans, saying he did not expect the end for another 4.5 billion years.

Giving his first major news conference since his return to the Kremlin, Putin was asked why he picked a date one day before the end of the world, according to a Mayan prophecy that has caused global hysteria.

Moolah from heaven or a devilish scam? That is a question Jerusalem police are asking on Wednesday after signed cheques worth around half a billion dollars were found at the Western Wall.

The 507 cheques were discovered in an envelope at the Jewish holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem and handed in to police by a good Samaritan, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation said in a statement.

A video of a golden eagle swooping down in Montreal and briefly snatching a toddler off the ground sparked an online buzz, but turned out on Wednesday to be a hoax that some said harms wildlife.

Coming just a week after a monkey wearing a sheepskin coat was found wandering around a parking lot in Toronto, the video purported to show the massive eagle -- which typically has a six-foot (two-meter) or more wingspan -- circling a public park.

A Syrian merchant in his 40s shot dead his Russian wife in the embattled northern city of Aleppo because she supported President Bashar Assad's regime, the killer's cousin told AFP on Wednesday.

Clothes shop owner Mohammed on Tuesday evening used a pistol to shoot his wife dead after an argument in their home in the rebel-held district of Maysar in southwestern Aleppo, said Ahmed, a 30-year-old government employee.

Truffles, oysters, an aged side of beef or a three-star dinner by a top French chef: a mouthwatering line-up of festive delicacies were the star lots of an offbeat charity auction in Paris.

Dubbed "Fine Food", and held for the second year running by the auctioneer Artcurial for the benefit of the French Red Cross, the sale Tuesday night raised 57,015 euros ($75,714) for the charity's Paris soup kitchens and aid missions.

An 11-year-old boy has been charged with possessing a deadly weapon after bringing a gun to school, claiming he was worried about a massacre like Connecticut's, a schools' spokesman said Tuesday.

The boy brought a .22 caliber handgun into class Monday at the West Kearns Elementary School in the Salt Lake City suburb of Kearns, Utah, and allegedly threatened classmates with it before being reported.

A YouTube video of a golden eagle swooping down and lifting a toddler off the ground in Montreal could soar to Internet stardom as the latest episode of animals behaving strangely in Canada.

Coming just a week after a monkey wearing a sheepskin coat was found wandering around an IKEA parking lot in Toronto, the video shows the massive eagle -- with a roughly six-foot (two-meter) wing span, circling a public park.