A cryptocurrency entrepreneur who bought a piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, for $6.2 million last week ate the fruit in Hong Kong on Friday.

Chinese-born Justin Sun peeled off the duct tape and enjoyed the banana in a press conference held in The Peninsula Hong Kong, one of the city's priciest hotels, in the popular shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui.

Ryan Wesley Routh portrayed himself online as a man who built housing for homeless people in Hawaii, tried to recruit fighters for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia, and described his support and then disdain for Donald Trump — even urging Iran to kill him.

"You are free to assassinate Trump," Routh wrote of Iran in an apparently self-published book in 2023, "Ukraine's Unwinnable War," which described the former president as a "fool" and "buffoon" for both the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the "tremendous blunder" of leaving the Iran nuclear deal.

Donald Trump shared doctored images showing Taylor Swift and her fans supporting his presidential campaign, in an apparent effort to tap into the pop singer's mega star power in the U.S. election.

Swift has not yet publicly thrown her weight behind any presidential candidate in the November 5 election, but she backed President Joe Biden in 2020 and has previously been critical of Trump.

Italian researchers have noted the first case of "virgin birth", or reproduction without fertilization, in an endangered shark species, a scientific journal reported this week.

The findings published in Scientific Reports concern the first case of the phenomenon in the common smooth-hound shark, Mustelus mustelus, a species threatened by illegal fishing that inhabits the Mediterranean and other warm waters.

They were billed as artworks by Pablo Picasso, paintings so valuable that an Australian art museum's decision to display them in an exhibition restricted to women visitors provoked a gender discrimination lawsuit. The paintings again prompted international headlines when the gallery re-hung them in a women's restroom to sidestep a legal ruling that said men could not be barred from viewing them.

But the artworks at the center of the uproar were not really by Picasso or the other famed artists billed as their creators, it emerged this week when the curator of the women-only exhibition admitted she had painted them herself.

Police in the Maldives have arrested a state environment minister, officers said Thursday, with media in the Indian Ocean nation reporting she was accused of performing "black magic" on the president.

State Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Energy, Fathimath Shamnaz Ali Saleem, was arrested on Sunday along with two others in the capital Male, police said.

A sonic boom heard in Tuscany and on the French island of Corsica, initially mistaken by holidaymakers, locals and officials for an earthquake, may have been a meteorite, experts said.

The town of Campo nell'Elba, on the Italian tourist island of Elba, said on its Facebook page that a nearby tracking station had "captured a seismic, acoustic event felt by everyone" at 4:30pm (1430gmt).

A top Dutch official said Friday that he was weighing a ban on so-called "puppy yoga" in which participants use infant dogs during practice sessions, saying the animals were suffering.

North Korea flew hundreds of trash-carrying balloons toward South Korea in one of its most bizarre provocations against its rival in years, prompting the South's military to mobilize chemical and explosive response teams to recover objects and debris in different parts of the country.

The ballooning campaign came as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged his military scientists to overcome a failed satellite launch and continue developing space-based reconnaissance capabilities, which he described as crucial for countering U.S. and South Korean military activities, state media said Wednesday.

Several military horses bolted during routine exercises near King Charles III's main residence in London on Wednesday and ran loose through the center of the city, injuring at least four people and colliding with vehicles during the morning rush hour.

Chaos erupted when about seven horses from the Household Cavalry became spooked by noise caused by nearby construction workers while the animals were taking exercise in Belgravia, a swanky neighborhood just to the west of Buckingham Palace, British media reported.