Try as we might, there's no escaping death. Art collector Richard Harris has decided to embrace that fact and wants the rest of us to do the same.

The retired Chicago print dealer has spent years acquiring works imbued with mortality, from 18th-century anatomical drawings to Tibetan skull masks and papier-mache skeletons from Mexico.

A popular New Year's celebration that draws thousands of tourists to the tiny North Carolina town of Brasstown for a party that ends in a "possum drop" may no longer be held there, a judge ruled.

The 18-year tradition in the town of 240 consisted of lowering the animal to the ground at midnight in a see-through cage decked out in Christmas garlands, like the ball that is dropped in New York's Times Square -- except the possum is alive.

Smugglers transported millions of contraband cigarettes around Bulgaria in coffins and even hired hearses to throw investigators off the scent, the country's customs chief said on Tuesday.

Head of the Bulgarian customs agency Vanyo Tanov told state BNT television the smugglers also disguised some vehicles as ambulances.

Baboons in Cape Town are being paintballed to drive them out of residential suburbs and stop them from pillaging homes and cars on brazen food raids, an official said Tuesday.

The animals are shot by monitors who shadow the city's several primate troops, which are notorious for causing havoc in areas bordering their natural mountain habitat.

Britain's media are in a meltdown and its government is gaffe-prone, so Oxford Dictionaries has chosen an apt Word of the Year: "omnishambles."

Oxford University Press on Tuesday crowned the word — defined as "a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations" — its top term of 2012.

Some of the locks at the Tower of London -- home to Queen Elizabeth II's crown jewels -- have had to be changed after two sets of keys were stolen from the grounds, red-faced officials said on Monday.

Police have launched an investigation after an intruder gained access to the site of the historic castle in the early hours of November 6 before stealing the keys.

A Dutch man died of a heart attack at a sex party after he apparently took a mix of recreational drugs and Viagra, a popular Dutch daily reported on Monday.

The man, only identified as Luc W., 43, was attending a "swingers party" in Belgium when he suffered a heart attack and collapsed, the Algemeen Dagblad reported.

Underpants which are claimed to neutralize the smell of flatulence are proving a hit in Japan, whose hard-working businessmen seem to like the idea of breaking wind without getting rumbled.

A Japanese textile company has developed a range of underwear which it says prevent unwelcome odors.

A South African man has spent three months locked up in a police station in neighboring Mozambique over an unpaid hotel bill, Pretoria's foreign ministry said Saturday.

"He has been in detention for three months now," said ministry spokesman Nelson Kgwete.

A Japanese maitre d' was crowned world's best on Friday in an international competition to find the top high-end server.

Shin Miyazaki, 35, who works at Chateau Restaurant Joel Robuchon in Tokyo, proved his mettle through nine rounds that tested his ability to dress a salad, flambe a pineapple and identify which wine works well with certain flavors.