Three top Dutch medical schools are asking thousands of travellers to tropical countries to donate stool samples on return for a study into the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

The combined study, launched this week by the Academic (AMC), Erasmus and Maastricht medical centres will focus on 2,000 travellers mainly to Asia and Africa, said AMC researcher Jarne van Hattem.

A bizarre spate of young blackbird deaths at a school in England was likely caused by the feathered teens getting drunk on fermented berries, crashing mid-air and falling from the sky, vets said Saturday.

Police and animal experts were called in after more than a dozen birds were found dead at a primary school in Cumbria last August -- many of them sporting serious injuries.

A four-year-old girl caught on camera crying her eyes out in frustration at "Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney" has hit a chord with millions of election-weary Americans.

The video -- posted on YouTube by her mother Tuesday -- has garnered more than 2 million views and countless Twitter comments from Americans brought close to tears by relentless campaigning leading up to Tuesday's presidential vote.

An elephant at a zoo in South Korea has learned to imitate human speech and has a vocabulary of several words, researchers said Friday.

Koshik, a 22-year-old male Asian elephant at Everland zoo in Yongin, a city south of Seoul, greeted visiting journalists by "saying" choah (good) and nuo (lie down).

Britain's foreign ministry has come under fire after it emerged that it paid £10,000 to re-stuff a giant anaconda named Albert.

The 20-foot (six-meter) snake, which has been in the possession of the Foreign Office for at least 120 years, is believed to have been presented to colonial officials in what is now Guyana in the 19th century.

Indonesia's judiciary will be randomly tested for drugs after a judge was arrested at a Jakarta nightclub last month on suspicion of possessing ecstasy and crystal meth, officials said Friday.

The arrest of the judge, who was allegedly accompanied by prostitutes when he was caught at the club called Illigals, sparked uproar and is the latest challenge for what critics say is a corruption-ridden judiciary.

Everyone has a few faults. In Beaky's case, he swears (a lot) and he bites.

Not good qualities for a parrot seeking a new home.

Spare keys to 180 cells in Belgium's Leuven prison went missing a week ago, raising fears one of the inmates may have laid hands on them, the daily Het Laatste Nieuws said Wednesday.

Staff have been quietly on the lookout for the prison chaplain's keys since last Thursday, one being a pass-key to 180 cells and another to the doors separating the jail's 20 sections.

Abracadabra: Hurricane Sandy has done a lot of damage but won't be ruining Halloween in New Jersey, one of the hardest hit U.S. states.

That's thanks to Governor Chris Christie, who on Wednesday ordered the annual celebrations moved to next week in the wake of the powerful storm.

A hotel cleaner in Japan was crushed to death in front of her colleague when she stepped into a moving elevator, police said Thursday.

The 63-year-old woman was trapped between the floor of the elevator and the ceiling of the building.