A giant vase installed in Beijing's Tiananmen Square ahead of a national holiday has met with scathing criticism from Chinese internet users after a newspaper revealed its cost on Sunday.

An enormous psychedelic-looking red pot -- 13 meters high and 11 meters in diameter -- topped with huge fake flowers and imitation peaches was installed this week on the square, the symbolic center of the Chinese state.

A Texas police officer ended up playing midwife to a mother in labor.

Gene Kimpton says he entered a home in suburban Dallas with his weapon drawn. All he knew is there was some sort of emergency situation in the house.

A celebrity panda, whose exploits were avidly followed in Thailand on a 24-hour television channel, left the kingdom Saturday in search of a mate in China, her zookeeper said.

Linping, who has drawn around 2.5 million people to Chiang Mai zoo since she was born in 2009, was flown from the northern Thai city for China's Chengdu where she will meet six male giant pandas within her age range.

The surprise first phone contact Friday between presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani was not only a dramatic moment in U.S-Iranian ties, but also in the field of digital diplomacy.

Moments before the U.S. leader announced from the White House podium that he had had a chat with his opposite number, the Iranian president had sent a tweet that may well live on in history.

British Prime Minister David Cameron's office denied Saturday that his family has no love for Larry, the Downing Street cat.

Following claims in a new book that Cameron acquiring the moggy was little more than a public relations stunt, a "savelarry" hashtag began trending on Twitter.

A French mountain climber stumbled upon a case of dozens of cut jewels, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — believed to be debris from one of two Air India crashes decades ago, police said.

Police commander Sylvain Merly of France's Savoie region said the experienced Mont Blanc climber, who asked to stay anonymous, found the box marked "Made in India" while scaling one of the peak's glaciers and turned it in on Sept. 9. Authorities hope to find someone connected with its owner, who is presumed to have been a passenger on one of the two jets that crashed in 1950 or 1966.

A mysterious "forest boy" who turned up in Berlin in 2011 claiming to have lived in the woods for years was sentenced to perform community service Thursday by a German court.

In a tale that captured the world's imagination, the then teenager appeared at Berlin city hall in September two years ago saying that his first name was Ray and that he had lived in the woods with his father for five years.

South African animal welfare officers captured a hyena cub on Thursday that had been roaming the northern Johannesburg suburbs creating panic.

The animal had been spotted running around several leafy suburbs, before it was cornered and darted by veterinarians from the Johannesburg Zoo, where it has been transferred.

Post-it notes, those sticky papers used by pen-and-ink people for reminders and bookmarks, are getting new life for the digital world.

The maker of Post-it, 3M Corp, and the software firm Evernote announced plans Thursday for a partnership "to give new digital life to Post-it products using Evernote's technology," a joint statement said.

A French climber scaling a glacier off Mont Blanc got more than satisfaction for his efforts when he stumbled across a treasure trove of emeralds, rubies and sapphires that had been buried for decades.

The jewels, estimated to be worth up to 246,000 euros ($332,000), lay hidden in a metal box that was on board an Indian plane that crashed in the desolate landscape some 50 years ago.