They already endure staggering levels of street crime. Now, Venezuelans have something new to fear -- muggers who chop off their hair.

Members of the scissor-wielding street gangs are called piranas, after the flesh-eating fish.

A giant steel and mesh "birdcage" that caps the uppermost level of a building in China has been ordered dismantled, state media reported, in the latest rooftop architectural oddity in the country.

The structure wraps around the fourth storey of the building in the southern city of Guangzhou, complete with a giant hook coming out of the top, and with what appears to be a rock cliff to one side.

Five New Zealand motorcyclists made a rare crossing of the world's last Cold War frontier Thursday, riding their bikes over the heavily militarised border from North to South Korea.

The crossing was part of a 9,000 kilometre (5,500 mile) journey that began in the Russian city of Magadan and aimed to traverse the mountain "spine" of the Korean peninsula, from Mount Paektu in the North to Mount Halla in the South.

A Vietnamese man's attempt to smuggle tropical fish into New Zealand in his pants floundered when he tried to get through customs with his pockets dripping water, officials said Friday.

The man arrived at Auckland airport from Australia this week and officials suspected something was fishy because liquid was seeping from the bulging pockets of his cargo pants, the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) said.

A Chinese farmer who was twice jailed for illegally entering Taiwan "to pursue democracy" has been arrested again after a four-hour swim to the island, officials said Thursday.

The 38-year-old from Sichuan province in southwest China was caught Wednesday as he came ashore on Taiwanese-controlled Kinmen island, a few kilometers from China, the local county government said in a statement.

A priest in northeastern Brazil stunned his parishioners by announcing during mass that he would soon become the father of a little girl and leave the priesthood.

Father Geronimo Moreira, from the small town of Gaviao in Bahia state, said he fell in love with a local girl and got her pregnant.

Russian police said Wednesday they had raided an exhibition and confiscated a painting that portrayed President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev lounging together in women's lingerie.

Police said they confiscated four paintings by artist Konstantin Altunin and closed down the exhibition of his work in Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg, which is set to host world leaders for the G20 summit next month.

A Chinese government news portal has claimed that a woman in China's remote far west is 127 years old, making her the oldest person ever to have lived -- but experts raised questions over the supposed record Wednesday.

Alimihan Seyiti from Kashgar, near the border with Kyrgyzstan, was born on June 25, 1886, said ts.cn, a government website in Xinjiang -- when Grover Cleveland was president of the United States and William Gladstone the British prime minister.

The hunt was on Tuesday for a couple of amorous Danish fans pictured having sex on the football pitch where their team had just played out a tedious 0-0 draw.

A photograph of the daring pair, who remain unidentified, has gone viral on the internet.

A Vancouver woman earned widespread notoriety Tuesday for stealing back her bicycle from a thief after seeing it advertised online.

Kayla Smith, 33, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that her Can$1,000 (U.S.$950) bicycle was taken from a rack in Vancouver's oceanfront Olympic Village -- constructed to host athletes during the 2010 Winter Games and now a bustling neighborhood.