Holiday makers arriving on the white sands of Pianosa Island off western Italy are welcomed by hosts unlike any others; five prisoners still serving time who help manage a local hotel.

At first sight, there is little to set apart the island, one of seven in the Tuscan Archipelago, with its quaint port, schools of fish and waters as turquoise as those in the Indian Ocean around the Maldives.

Suddenly, even political foes like Republican vice presidential pick Paul Ryan – gets approval for his looks.

Until being picked as Mitt Romney's running mate, Ryan was almost exclusively mentioned in connection with his conservative ideas on solving America's debt crisis.

Hong Kong's love of Japanese cuisine will help ease tensions over Tokyo's arrest of Hong Kong activists at a disputed island chain, a Japanese minister said Thursday at a food fair in the Chinese city.

Japanese Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Akira Gunji said the relationship between the southern Chinese city and Japan would flourish as long as the culinary binds between them stayed strong.

Hank, a cat running for the U.S. Senate, bared his claws Wednesday with a radical proposal for improving America's unpopular Congress: get rid of the humans.

"It's OK to make a change. It's OK to vote the humans out," a campaign video released by the feline politico says.

Foodies paid tribute Wednesday to celebrity chef Julia Child, marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the woman who introduced Americans to exotic French delicacies like boeuf bourguignon.

Across the United States, 100 restaurants celebrated with Child-inspired menus during the Julia Child Restaurant Week, which runs August 7-15.

Microsoft co-founder turned global philanthropist Bill Gates on Tuesday launched a search for a new toilet better suited to developing countries.

The charitable foundation founded by Gates and his wife kicked off a "Reinvent the Toilet Fair" in Seattle and awarded prizes for promising innovations.

They say you can't beat City Hall, but Paris authorities who once took a dim view of the thousands of "love locks" adorning the bridges of the Seine River have had a change of heart.

"We are letting the phenomenon be, looking at it with benevolence," City Hall spokesman Damien Steffan told Agence France Presse with a Gallic shrug. "It's not a problem for us."

The U.S. population reached a number dear to mathematicians on Tuesday: 314,159,265 or pi times 100 million.

"So go out and celebrate this American pi," quipped the U.S. Census Bureau's chief demographer, Howard Hogan, in a statement marking the milestone.

The largest Burmese python ever found in Florida has been caught in the Everglades, scientists said Tuesday, and it contained 87 eggs -- also thought to be a record.

"This thing is monstrous, it's about a foot wide," Kenneth Krysko, the herpetology collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said of the 17-foot-7-inch (5.35-meter) creature.

Stepping into the vacuum this Friday, a brand new private space venture from the Netherlands called Mars One aims to send four astronauts on a one-way journey to Mars in just 11 years time, NBC reported.

Founded by Dutch entrepreneur and researcher Bas Lansdorp, who previously headed up an alternative energy company, Mars One says it will establish a colony on Mars by 2023, according to the Mars One website.