Italy's financial police on Thursday said they had discovered 174 pensioners who were picking up poverty benefits while living in the United States and South America and travelling to and from Italy.

Police seized 173 properties, 56 plots of land and 59 bank accounts belonging to the alleged fraudsters, who were all officially registered as residents in seaside villages in the southern region of Calabria.

A South Korean TV channel on Thursday said it had pulled the plug on a newly-launched talk show aimed at the transgender community, following strong objections from viewers.

KBS Joy, an entertainment subsidiary of the national KBS TV, said on its website that it had reached the decision after "taking viewers' opinions into account".

Amsterdam's pot smokers cast a keen, if somewhat hazy eye on Wednesday's election, hoping for a government that will reverse plans to register them in a database and ban sales to foreigners.

"You have to go out and vote, vote for any left-wing party, it doesn't matter who, because they are against the weed-pass," a weedtress who asked not to be named said as she measured out a bag of crumbly brown hash to a client at the "Tweede Kamer" coffee shop.

A woman claiming to be "the husband" of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was overpowered as she tried to force her way into the presidential palace, officials said Wednesday.

The 29-year-old woman, identified as Edileine Celestino da Silva and sporting men's clothes and haircut, showed at the palace late Tuesday and tried to enter through a restricted entrance, the Correio Braziliense daily reported.

A Great Dane who towers 2.2 metres (7 feet 4 inches) on his hind legs is named the tallest dog ever recorded in the latest Guinness Book of World Records launched on Thursday.

The giant canine from Michigan in the United States eats an entire 14-kilogram (30-pound) bag of food every day and weighs in at 70.3 kilograms, the 57th edition of the global records book says.

What can you create for people who have it all, in a morose economic climate? Avant-garde designers showcased in Paris this week are looking to minimalism for an answer, and taking their craft back to basics.

Identify 100 things you really need in life, and lose the clutter: downsizing pioneers in the United States have been doing just that these past few years, driven by a mix of hard times, an urge to live more healthily and slash their environmental footprint.

The father of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard donated his body to science and did not want to be buried or remembered at a funeral but privately mourned, his death notice said Wednesday.

John Gillard, 83, died suddenly on Saturday morning in the South Australian city of Adelaide, prompting the prime minister to rush home from an Asia-Pacific summit in Russia to be with her family.

A rotten egg smell which had Californians turning up their noses was caused by dead fish or algae in a nearby lake, and nothing more sinister, experts said Tuesday.

More than 200 people called authorities Monday after the sulphurous odor was detected over a 150 mile area, leading to online speculation including that it was some kind of geo-thermic event preceding a long-feared mega earthquake experts believe will shake California.

A Chinese man accused of swallowing a diamond worth $13,600 at a gem show in Sri Lanka actually ingested a fake stone in an elaborate bluff to allow the real thief to escape, police said Tuesday.

Detectives discovered the ruse after waiting until the man, 32, passed the fake stone that he had swallowed at the Facets Sri Lanka annual jewelry exhibition in Colombo last week.

With exorcism booming in Poland, Roman Catholic priests here have joined forces with a publisher to launch what they claim is the world's first monthly magazine focused exclusively on chasing out the devil.

"The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling," Father Aleksander Posacki, a professor of philosophy, theology and leading demonologist and exorcist told reporters in Warsaw at the Monday launch of the Egzorcysta monthly.