Bonn, the former West German capital, has introduced a parking meter for prostitutes, a first in Germany, in order to tax those who just work the streets, a city spokeswoman said Wednesday.

"We expect to get some 200,000 Euros ($288,000) per year from the meter," Isabelle Klotz told Agence France Presse.

Tens of thousands of revelers splattered each other with 120 tons of squashed tomatoes Wednesday in a gigantic annual food fight known in Spain as the Tomatina.

The streets ran red with slippery juice as nearly 40,000 people, many stripped to the waist and drunk with sangria, pelted each other in the Plaza Mayor square and nearby streets of Bunol, eastern Spain.

The impoverished ex-Soviet republic of Tajikistan on Tuesday unveiled what is being billed as the world's tallest flagpole in a ceremony marking its 20th anniversary of independence.

"A thousand years on, the Tajik people have regained the independence and statehood they had sought all these years," Tajik President Emomali Rahmon said in a grand ceremony broadcast on all four state television channels.

American actress Daryl Hannah has been arrested in front of the White House along with other environmental protesters who oppose a planned oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The sit-in Tuesday involved dozens protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. It would go through six states to refineries in Texas.

Honduras President Porfirio Lobo has had it with his Cabinet ministers' cellphones.

Lobo calls it "a lack of courtesy" that the phones are ringing and beeping during the weekly two-hour Cabinet meeting. So he is banning cellphones from the meeting rooms at the presidential residence starting next week.

Melbourne has edged out long-time front-runner Vancouver to be rated the world's most livable city, a worldwide survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit said Tuesday.

The Australian metropolis topped the Global Livability Survey's ranking of 140 cities worldwide, ahead of Canada's Vancouver which dominated the rankings for almost a decade but is now third behind the Austrian capital, Vienna.

An uncle of President Barack Obama was arrested last week near Boston on a charge of drunk driving, police said Monday.

Onyango Obama was arrested in Framingham, Massachusetts, on August 24 and charged in Framingham District Court with operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol.

A hand-made olive-wood chair, fashioned to look like the blue seats at the United Nations, is set to tour Europe to raise support for a Palestinian bid to join the world body.

The chair was commissioned by a Palestinian NGO which is hoping to rally support for the campaign to secure full U.N. membership for a Palestinian state when the General Assembly meets in New York next month.

An Australian man has pleaded with his local council to sift through their rubbish tips Tuesday after accidentally throwing out $50,000 (US$53,000) of his wife's jewelry.

The man, who only wanted to be known as Geoff, said the uninsured haul was stored in plastic bags to fool potential robbers but they were mistakenly tossed into wheelie bins outside his house last week in a pre-move clean-up.

The fantasy of seeing banknotes fluttering down from the sky came true for Dutch motorists after a package containing cash apparently fell from a bank transport truck and broke open.

The incident triggered a dangerous scramble for the euro bills Monday on the busy A2 highway near Maastricht, as people parked cars on the road's shoulder and ran to scoop up loose notes.