A 61-year-old U.S. man says he lost his job as a lifeguard when he refused to wear skimpy swim trunks for the annual swim test.

Roy Lester tells the New York Daily News (http://nydn.us/oFL3E0 ) he was forced out of the job after 40 years in 2007 when he wanted to take the swim test in biking shorts instead of the tiny swim trunks.

An Indian activist on a hunger strike that sparked a popular campaign against corruption said Saturday that he was feeling physically weak but resolved in his demand that the government adopt his version of a bill setting up an anti-graft watchdog.

Hundreds surrounded Anna Hazare on his fifth day of a fast that began Tuesday in jail after his arrest for planning a protest without police approval. He was released within hours but refused to leave the jailhouse until police eventually granted him permission for a 15-day public fast — a protest he has called a "revolution" and "new freedom struggle."

The start of the Spanish league season will be delayed by a strike after Spanish league officials and player representatives failed on a last-minute deal.

The Association of Spanish Football Players said the strike will go ahead after talks failed Friday for improved salary guarantees in a new collective bargaining agreement.

A runaway cow named Yvonne is on the loose in Germany and the manhunt — or moohunt — for the Bavarian bovine has captivated the country.

The freedom-loving cow ran away from a small farm in May and has managed to hide successfully in the forests of southern Germany ever since.

A bomb exploded in a mosque in a Pakistani tribal region as hundreds were gathered for prayers Friday, killing at least 40 people and wounding 85 others in the first major attack in the country during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The attack came despite a period of relative calm in Pakistan, which has suffered numerous Taliban-led insurgent attacks in recent years. No group immediately claimed responsibility, but the Taliban and other Islamist militants have previously attacked mosques.

Twenty young opera singers from the West are in Beijing to learn to perform in a new language: Chinese.

Their monthlong training culminated in a performance this week at the National Center for Performing Arts.

Every Friday night for 23 years, Zeli Rossi has traded his bed in Brazil's southeastern state of Minas Gerais for a coffin.

Rossi tells the G1 news website that his weekly sleeping habit became public last month when his 14-year-old grandson wrote a story about him for his school's newspaper.

World stock markets plummeted Friday amid signs of a possible U.S. recession and renewed worries over the health of Europe's banks.

Oil prices fell to near $79 a barrel in Asia, extending a major sell-off fueled by investor fears that slowing global growth will undermine demand for crude. The dollar was higher against the euro but down against the yen.

Stores are trying everything they can think of to disguise the fact that you're going to pay more for clothes this fall.

Some are using less fabric and calling it the new look. Others are adding cheap stitching and trumpeting it as a redesign. And the buttons on that blouse? Chances are you're not going to think it's worth paying several dollars more for the shirt just to have them.

Orange-colored goo that streaked the shore of a remote Alaska village turned out to be fungal spores, not millions of microscopic eggs as indicated by preliminary analysis, scientists said Thursday.

Further tests with more advanced equipment showed the substance is consistent with spores from fungi that create "rust," a plant disease that accounts for the color, said officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The gunk appeared Aug. 3 at the edge of Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo community at the tip of a barrier reef on Alaska's northwest coast.