Locals call them "merchandise" and that is how criminal gangs treat the Central American youths they force into prostitution near Mexico's southern border with Guatemala.

Victims recount being tricked into making the dangerous journey across Central America in the hope of a better life before being stopped en route in southern Mexico and forced to work for nothing.

A Cuban cigar roller began Monday rolling a 70-meter (230-foot) cigar in an attempt to nearly double his previous Guinness world record, a spokesman said.

Working eight hours a day for nine days, 67-year-old Jose "Cueto" Castelar is hoping to break his 2009 record of a 43.38-meter-long (142-foot-long) stogie.

U.S. evangelist Franklin Graham thinks the second coming of Jesus Christ could be a social media event captured by millions of mobile phones.

"The Bible says that every eye is going to see it" and that Christ will "come on the clouds," Graham, the oldest son of preacher Billy Graham, who used the media to make Christian evangelism a global phenomenon, told ABC News presenter Christiane Amanpour, host of "This Week."

More than 800 Belgian bar owners and their supporters demonstrated Saturday against a decision to widen a smoking ban in public spaces to cover all cafes and the kingdom's nine casinos from July 1.

The demonstration in Brussels was organized by the federation of cafe owners and restaurateurs, which claims that 4,000-5,000 of the country's 12,000 cafes are threatened with closure by the new legislation.

Russian or Soviet cosmonauts never had sex in space in the 50 years of human exploration of the cosmos. And that's official, according to a Russian expert. As for Americans, well, you'd better ask them.

"There's no official or unofficial evidence that there were instances of sexual intercourse or the carrying out of sexual experiments in space," Valery Bogomolov, deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute of Biomedical Problems told the Interfax news agency.

Emergency teams of the Sidon municipality found a dead sea turtle on the coast of the southern port city, the National News Agency reported Friday.

NNA said that waves had washed up the huge turtle on the city’s al-Qamleh beach.

A South Korean who cooked his mobile phone in a microwave and then claimed compensation from the maker Samsung Electronics was Friday jailed for one year for extortion.

The 28-year-old surnamed Lee received about five million won ($4,500) in compensation from Samsung after claiming his phone exploded while being charged.

A toddler was saved during a potentially deadly fall from a fourth-floor balcony at an Orlando hotel after landing in the arms of a British tourist, police said Thursday.

Helen Beard, 44, told police she was in the pool of the Econo Lodge Inn & Suites when she saw the small girl dangling from the balcony.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev was shown dancing awkwardly to a pop song in a video spreading across Russian Internet on Wednesday that he said showed a reunion of his university class.

The brief clip uploaded on YouTube by an unidentified person showed the Russian leader in a suit jacket and jeans stepping and waving his hips alongside several other people to a perestroika-era hit song "American Boy" with a concentrated expression on his face.

Green iguana, slider turtles and the world's largest rodent, capybara: it's not a trip to the zoo. It's what's for traditional Easter dinner in Colombia.

"This is the season we have them all coming in," said nutritionist Carolina Rangel, at a center for confiscated animals in the Colombian capital. She showed Agence France Presse about 30 confiscated "outlawed" slider turtles, common here and in Venezuela, as well as a rogue green iguana officials picked up on a bus.