Police in Canada have seized more than 600 barrels of maple syrup in New Brunswick as part of an investigation into the theft of millions worth of syrup in Quebec and are transporting it back to Quebec under police protection, officials said.

The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers reported large quantities of syrup missing last month during a routine inventory, finding empty barrels at a site of the province's global strategic reserve at St-Louis-de-Blandford.

Police say they arrested a U.S. man after he showed up at a crime scene wearing a Batman outfit because he wouldn't leave them alone.

"He wouldn't clear the scene, and we had a canine out there, and he kept screwing up the scent," State Police Sgt. Jeff Gorno told the Petoskey News-Review. "He said he wanted to help us look for the driver."

Three men who barbecued and curried the remains of their victim were being held by authorities in Japan, police and reports said Thursday.

The trio used a hammer to dismember Kazuyuki Kobayashi, before grilling parts of his body and getting rid of it in mountains in rural Japan, a police spokesman told AFP.

In a campaign dominated by talk of high unemployment and soaring deficits, Mitt Romney's threat to sack one particular government employee -- Sesame Street's Big Bird -- has ruffled feathers.

In an otherwise strong performance in the first presidential debate on Wednesday, Romney vowed to cut support for public television, saying he liked the tall yellow muppet but felt he should try his luck in the private sector.

French President Francois Hollande's partner Valerie Trierweiler admitted Wednesday she had made a mistake in firing off a tweet snubbing Hollande's ex-companion and said she regretted it.

"It was a mistake that I regret. I must have been clumsy because this was badly interpreted," Trierweiler told newspaper Ouest-France. "I had not yet realised that I was no longer a simple citizen. It won't happen again."

A dog who survived an 11-mile (17-kilometer) ride from Massachusetts to Rhode Island after being hit by a car and wedged into the grille has been reunited with its owners.

The owners, who weren't identified, told WPRI-TV it's a "miracle."

Brazil's upcoming municipal elections are being overshadowed by the Miss Bum Bum pageant, a nationwide online contest to find the cutest female behind.

Young ladies representing the country's 26 states and the federal district Brasilia are vying to qualify for the grand finale scheduled to take place in Sao Paulo on November 30.

For all their visibility along the campaign trail, A-list celebrities hold little sway over the way Americans vote, an omnibus poll for CBS News and Vanity Fair magazine suggested Monday.

Eighty-nine percent of respondents said celebrity endorsements of a particular candidate made no difference to them when it came to putting an X beside a name in the voting booth.

In Washington DC, everyone expects talk-radio-glued taxi drivers to know the ins and outs of foreign policy and bartenders to fine-pick legislative tactics in Congress.

But Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has just found out that the U.S. capital's pervasive policy wonkishness extends even to the city's league-leading baseball team, the Nationals.

Your honor, you're late. Again. And you're fired.

A judge in Costa Rica has been sacked for serial tardiness, the newspaper La Nacion reported Monday.