The pilot of an Air India passenger plane seated his mother in the cockpit for a domestic flight, refusing to take off without her after he could not get her a free ticket, a report said Sunday.

The pilot allegedly demanded that his mother be issued a "dummy boarding card" at Pune airport in western India and placed her in a jump seat reserved for the crew for the two-hour flight to the capital New Delhi.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service says a stolen Salvador Dali painting has been mailed back to New York from Europe and intercepted at Kennedy International Airport.

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his wife Anne Sinclair said Friday they would sue French celebrity magazine Closer for invading their privacy with a story claiming they had separated.

"Having taken note of the cover and content of celebrity magazine Closer, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Anne Sinclair have decided to sue this publication for invasion of privacy," their lawyers said in a brief statement.

An American research student was in a critical condition in a South African hospital on Friday after he was dragged by chimpanzees into an enclosure at a primate sanctuary and attacked.

The mauled body of the student, identified in local media as Andrew Oberle, was retrieved from the enclosure by paramedics under armed guard at the Jane Goodall Institute Chimp Eden near the eastern town of Nelspruit.

Greeks fed up with stories of austerity and gloom can now turn to a new website aptly named Everything is OK (ola kala, OK in Greek) which aims to bring only happy news stories to the population.

Describing itself as an "online health wellbeing portal", the site www.olakala.gr tells users: "If you want to change your life, come with us."

When an elderly Indian patient came to Dr V. Seetharaman with persistent pain in his eye, what the surgeon found was reminiscent of a far-fetched alien movie plot: a live, 13 centimeter-long worm.

On examining the 75-year-old at Mumbai's Fortis Hospital this week, the eye expert was shocked by the highly unusual sight of the writhing parasite and had to operate speedily to remove it before serious damage was caused.

A nurse came under media fire in Estonia Thursday after she posted a photo of a dying three-month-old baby on her Facebook profile along with the child's confidential medical data.

"I had no idea I can't post the photos I take at the hospital and my comments about my work on Facebook," the woman told Estonia's leading Eesti Paevaleht newspaper.

The United Nations on Thursday declared that March 20 each year will be the International Day of Happiness -- and it wants everyone to join in the fun.

The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution proclaiming the new commemoration that adds to an already packed U.N. calendar of international days -- from world poetry day to world migratory bird day.

An Austrian bishop, possibly shaken by the idea of Suicidal Angels, has called on fellow Catholics to pray for music fans attending a death-metal festival early next month.

Klaus Kueng, diocesan bishop of Sankt Poelten in northern Austria, urged believers Thursday "to pray for the festival's participants" when they gather in his town on July 5-7 for the Extremefest.

Japanese zookeepers who lost 30 squirrels after a typhoon damaged their enclosure said Thursday their recovery efforts had exceeded expectations -- with 38 animals back in captivity.

The bushy-tailed rodents made a break for freedom when a tree felled by a typhoon last week cut through netting at Tokyo's Inokashira Park Zoo.