Hundreds of villagers have flocked to a remote Indian village to see a baby girl who was saved by stray dogs after she was abandoned in a mound of mud by her mother, officials said on Tuesday.

Villagers in the eastern state of Bihar saved the newborn on the weekend after they saw three dogs barking near a baby covered with mud.

"The dogs removed the soil around and began to bark and the baby started crying which drew attention of the local villagers," Ram Narayan Sahani, a senior government official, said on Tuesday from Bihar's Samastipur district.

"The girl is crying but is safe in the lap of a childless couple who have adopted her." Police said they were looking for the girl's mother, who they think had left the girl to die.  (Read more!)

A Japanese high school pleaded for a regional game to be abandoned after surrendering 66 runs in less than two innings, local media reported on Thursday.

The coach of Kawamoto technical high school threw in the towel to spare his pitcher's arm with his team losing 66-0 with just one batter out in the bottom of the second.

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Stoil Panayotov, a Bulgarian farmer who was luckless in love and had divorced his third wife, got married to a goat last March at a market in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, according to the Sun online newspaper.

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Car cleaners at a Russian firm got a surprise when they cleaned out a vacuum cleaner this week: a diamond pendant worth up to 300,000 euros
($475,400).

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Harry's Bar, the famed Venice watering hole where Ernest Hemingway held court over hearty food and stiff martinis, is offering a discount to "poor" Americans suffering from a weak dollar and subprime blues.

The decision by the owner of the restaurant, one of the most expensive even when the U.S. currency is strong, underscores the growing concern about the weak dollar among tourism operators in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.

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A Serb farmer used a grinding machine to cut in half his farm tools and machines to comply with a court ruling that he must share all his property with his ex-wife, local media reported.

Branko Zivkov, 76, told Belgrade daily Kurir he had been ready to give his wife Vukadinka her equal share of everything earned during their 45-year marriage, but was furious at being asked to give away half his farming equipment.

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Thailand's health chiefs barred hospitals and clinics on Wednesday from castrating would-be "ladyboys" amid growing concern about the operation being seen as a cheap and quick alternative to a full sex-change.

In a letter to 16,000 private health units, the Public Health Ministry said doctors performing the operation outside formal sex-change therapy -- which requires rigorous physical and mental evaluation of the patient -- faced up to six months in jail.

However, senior health official Tara Chinakarn admitted that policing the temporary ban might be difficult as cosmetic removal of the testicles was such a quick operation and easy to conduct in secret.

"It's hard to track them down as it takes only 15-20 minutes to have the surgery," Tara told Reuters.

Thailand is home to a large number of "ladyboys," or "katoey" in Thai, a term that covers anything from a transvestite to a man who has undergone a full sex change.




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A burglar who broke into a funeral home tried to fool police by playing dead, but two things gave him away.

First, he breathed. Plus, he wore grungy clothes rather than the Sunday best of those dressed for eternal rest.

Police and the Crespo Funeral Home said Wednesday they have no idea what the 23-year-old Spanish man was trying to steal in the break-in March 17 in Burjassot, a small town just outside Valencia.

Neighbors alerted police when they heard the front door of the business being forced open in the middle of the night.

Police officers arrived with the owner, and eventually found the suspect lying on a table in a glassed-in chamber used for viewings of deceased people during wakes, a local police official said from Burjassot.

“The custom here is for dead people to be dressed in suits, in nice clothes that look presentable. This guy was in everyday clothes that were wrinkled and dirty,” the police official said. Department rules barred her from giving her name.

“He was trying to fake being dead, but he was breathing,” she said.

The suspect's name was not released. Police said he had served jail time in the past for robbery.

The funeral home said it was mystified as to what the man wanted. There were no valuables or cash in the funeral parlor.

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Pay-per-view funerals go live online in Britain on Tuesday, allowing mourners who cannot attend services in person to pay their last respects via the Internet.

Despite criticism of the scheme as macabre, the company who launched the service, Wesley Music, is planning to offer it to crematoria across the country who will charge a one-off payment of around 75 pounds ($150) for access to a funeral webcast.

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A thief walked unnoticed out of a Norwegian aquarium carrying a crocodile at the weekend and now risks losing a finger or two, the head of the aquarium said on Monday.

"I think whoever did this knew what they were doing," Bergen aquarium director Kees Oscar Ekeli told Reuters, suggesting the young crocodile was smuggled out in a bag during the busiest hours on Saturday.

The stolen reptile, named "Taggen" (Spike), is a 70 centimeters (2.3 feet) long smooth-fronted caiman also known as Schneider's dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus Trigonatus).

Taggen eats "a good mix of fish and meat" and can grow to be about 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long. "It has a solid bite. Considering it is not bigger than it is, you could lose a few fingers, but no vital organs," Ekeli said.

It is normally found in much warmer habitats in South America and is one of the world's smallest species of crocodile.

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