Maintenance and cleaning workers rushed to the Halba Serail in the northern province of Akkar on Friday to spray pesticides to get rid of an outbreak of fleas, rats and cats.

The “invasion” forced the employees of the Serail to quit the building, news reports said.

Grasshoppers who die frightened leave their mark in the Earth in a way that more mellow ones do not, U.S. and Israeli researchers said Thursday.

"So, indeed this sounds a little bit weird," lead author Dror Hawlena said in an audio interview posted on the journal Science's website.

A local Swedish politician wants to require all men to sit down whenever they use the toilets in a county council building, to keep them clean and promote good health, a counselor said Thursday.

Viggo Hansen, a member of the Left Party, submitted the proposal to the Soermland County Council in central Sweden earlier this week.

A looming foie gras ban in California is pitting animal rights protestors against high-end chefs. Squeezed in the middle is Guillermo Gonzalez, lamenting the end of his "American dream".

Gonzalez, the only foie gras producer in the famously liberal U.S. state, claims ignorant activists and "special interests" are unfairly throttling the livelihood he has built since arriving from El Salvador in 1986.

A Polish priest was sentenced to 30 hours of community service for disturbing the peace after villagers near his church complained the night-long chiming of the clock was losing them sleep.

"He was sentenced to 30 hours community service for disturbing the peace at night," Zbigniew Mierzejewski, a court official in Rawa Mazowiecka, central Poland, told Agence France Presse Wednesday, adding the verdict was subject to appeal.

A Polish football fan was so devastated when Russia scored against Poland at Tuesday's Euro 2012 match that he threw his television set out his third-storey window, police said Wednesday.

They took the man into custody, prompting him to miss the second half of the game, when Poland scored an equalizer, making the final score a 1-1 draw.

As he does every time he climbs on a tightrope, Nik Wallenda will say a little prayer Friday as he mounts the thin steel wire for what could be his greatest aerial triumph.

Perched on an impossibly narrow steel cable some 60 meters (200 feet) in the air, this scion of one of America's first families of acrobats is aiming to do something untried in more than a century: crossing the treacherous Niagara Falls on a highwire.

A Florida tour boat operator had his hand bitten off as he was feeding an alligator marshmallows to entertain passengers, officials said Wednesday.

The boat was carrying about six tourists late Tuesday when the alligator leapt up and devoured the sweets along with the captain's hand, according to Jorge Pino, a spokesman for the state Fish and Wildlife authority.

Another centuries-old skeleton of a man who was subjected to a ritual to stop him from turning into a vampire was unearthed in central Bulgaria Tuesday, archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov said.

"The skeleton was tied to the ground with four iron clamps, while burning ambers were placed on top of his grave," Ovcharov told Agence France Presse.

Mr Bean fans in Indonesia have been warned to beware of a locally made spoof horror film called "Mr. Bean Possessed by D.P." that stars an unknown actor that bears a resemblance to the popular character.

The official Facebook page for Mr Bean, a comedy about a socially awkward man played by the British comedian Rowan Atkinson, said: "We have just heard that there is a new film out in Indonesia with 'Mr Bean' in the title.