Cigarette butts could be a thing of the past on one Italian beach near Venice where the local mayor introduced a test ban on smoking Saturday.

Swimmers and sunbathers are being encouraged to put out their cigarettes on part of Bibione beach, in the municipality of San Michele al Tagliamento.

Tens of thousands people from all walks of life, including government ministers and uniform-clad gay police officers and army personnel, marched in Stockholm's gay pride parade Saturday.

Police said 35,000 to 50,000 people paraded through the Swedish capital's centre and that the event took place with no incidents.

Mark Twain jokingly recommended crime as a way of learning morals, so the great American writer might not have been shocked at the woman who on Friday admitted to stealing $1 million from his museum-home.

Donna Gregor, 58, pleaded guilty in Bridgeport, Connecticut to wire fraud and filing a false tax return as part of schemes to embezzle the Mark Twain House and Museum, federal prosecutors said.

A Taiwanese court has ordered a runaway bride to pay Tw$250,000 ($8,620) in emotional damage to her groom-to-have-been for not showing up at their wedding, local media reported Friday.

The woman, who was five-months pregnant at the time, failed to show up at the wedding ceremony in November after she and her intended had fought over the number of guests to be invited, said the TVBS cable news channel.

A coat worn by Bruce Lee for his last film "Game of Death" sold for $77,000 at a rare auction of the late kung fu icon's items in Hong Kong Saturday, far above pre-sale estimates.

Thirteen items went under the hammer at the sale, believed to be the largest-scale auction of Lee memorabilia in the southern Chinese city, where the martial arts star was raised before moving to the United States in his late teens.

Two young women stripped down to bikinis in central Moscow on Thursday to express support for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in the latest exposure of bare flesh ahead of 2012 polls.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has already inspired an apparently rival group of women to similar acts of naked daring but this was the first time the incumbent Russian president has prompted an erotic frisson.

A Swedish man police detained two weeks ago for trying to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen said Thursday he had started the experiment "just for fun".

Richard Handl, 31, from Aengelholm municipality in southwestern Sweden, said police had briefly detained him at the end of July for attempting to build a nuclear reactor in the kitchen of his flat.

A heartbroken 15-year-old German boy stole his parents' car to drive 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) from Austria to northern Germany in a bid to make up with his girlfriend, German police said Thursday.

The boy, who was on holiday in Austria with his family, had an argument with his girlfriend in Flensburg near the Danish border while chatting on a social network.

An Australian woman said Thursday she was horrified after finding a live rat nestled inside a loaf of bread she bought at a supermarket.

The woman, who had been shopping in Aitkenvale, in Queensland's tropical north, noticed there were holes in the sliced bread as she was packing her bags into the car.

Sick of illegal parking in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, mayor Arturas Zuokas has taken radical steps to warn wrongdoers by crushing a car with an armored vehicle.

Zuokas told Agence France Presse on Wednesday that his stunt, which has made him an overnight Internet star, was a novel way to call to account those who believe they are above the law.