Polish software specialist Tomek Wawrzyczek was pleasantly surprised when he received a 50-centimetre (20-inch) tree seedling in the post.

He promptly planted it in his garden but still has no clue who sent it.

Five leading U.S. global companies, including Coca-Cola and Ford, unveiled Tuesday a joint effort to develop 100 percent plant-based plastics in their products, cutting the use of fossil fuels.

Coca-Cola, Ford, Heinz, Nike and Procter & Gamble said they were launching a working group focused on speeding up the development and use of 100 percent plant-based PET plastic.

The United States has cut funding to a popular Pakistani version of the children's program "Sesame Street" amid allegations of fraud and abuse, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

The program, run under the umbrella of the U.S.-based Sesame Workshop by a local theater group, had been awarded some $20 million in funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

A government-backed nuclear research agency has apologized for comparing radioactive material on its website to an "angry wife" in a quarrel with her husband, news reports said Tuesday.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency has already dropped the link from its homepage after the comparison triggered an outpouring of criticism, Kyodo News and other media reported.

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed two skeletons from the Middle Ages pierced through the chest with iron rods to keep them from turning into vampires, the head of the history museum said.

"These two skeletons stabbed with rods illustrate a practice which was common in some Bulgarian villages up until the first decade of the 20th century," said national history museum chief Bozhidar Dimitrov after the recent find in the Black Sea town of Sozopol.

Panicked villagers in a remote Indian state complained Monday of an invasion of giant venomous spiders that resemble tarantulas but are unknown to local specialists.

Indian media said that a dozen people had been bitten and treated in hospital, with two unconfirmed deaths reported.

Open an app. See a flash. Get arrested!

Police in U.S. Michigan say a stolen laptop took a picture of the thief and sent it to a security website, leading to his arrest.

A wild black bear attacked a man relaxing in a hot tub at the Whistler ski resort in western Canada, with a swift whack to the head, police said Monday.

The 55-year-old man from Coquitlam, British Columbia, "felt a heavy blow to the back of his head which propelled him forward in the hot tub" on Saturday, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sergeant Steve LeClair said in a statement.

One of the five judges in the trial against Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in twin attacks in Norway last year, was caught on camera playing solitaire online during proceedings on Monday.

In a screen capture published on the website of newspaper Verdens Gang, one of the three lay judges hearing the case, Ernst Henning Eielsen, can be seen playing the card game on his computer as a Swedish professor testifies to the court.

Getting trapped in a boring conversation with a fellow passenger aboard a plane could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a world-first flight buddy system developed by Latvia's national airline.

Baltic flag-carrier airBaltic's new "SeatBuddy" scheme aims to sit like-minded fliers next to each other.