Pentagon chief Leon Panetta will bring in the New Year with a $10,000 bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild from 1870, courtesy of a bet with a friend over tracking down Osama bin Laden.

The wager was struck last New Year's Eve in California, when restaurateur Ted Balestreri pledged to uncork the oldest bottle in his collection if Panetta -- then the CIA director -- found the Al-Qaeda mastermind.

The machine used by the late Dr Jack Kevorkian, popularly dubbed "Doctor Death," in his campaign to help people commit suicide will go on sale in New York on Friday.

The deceptively simple device, essentially consisting of three syringes and an electric switch, is expected to sell for between $200,000 and $300,000 when it goes under the hammer at the New York Institute of Technology.

Police say a man's girlfriend unexpectedly came home just before another woman was due to visit, so he called police to report his new acquaintance as a burglar.

The Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/vfcH8c ) that 24-year-old Kevin Gaylor was cited with a misdemeanor of false reporting to authorities.

There's something new to see at the Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn: a newborn baby called Ajax whose mother made her pregnancy the subject of her latest exhibition.

Performance artist Marni Kotak literally took up residence in the gallery last month, recreating a small apartment -- complete with birthing pool -- in anticipation of the arrival of her child, which came Tuesday.

Unlike many sportsmen who avoid sex the night before a match to ensure they have enough strength, Chinese crickets are encouraged to enjoy as much hanky-panky as possible on the eve of a fight.

"Crickets need lots of sex," said Guo Junxiong, 60, after watching one of his long-antennaed insects overpower an opponent in a bloodless battle held in Beijing during the annual cricket fighting season.

A Czech bank clerk went on a banknote-ripping spree to take advantage of a change in the law that allowed her to easily earn a 25-percent bonus on her deposit, the police said Thursday.

"The woman first withdrew 440,000 koruna (17,700 Euros, $24,800) from her account. She asked for 88 used 5,000-koruna banknotes," Prague police spokeswoman Eva Kropacova told Agence France Presse.

A South African retailer has pulled off the shelves T-shirts printed with sexual slogans such as "how to get laid", after complaints that they were sexist, reports said Wednesday.

Three shirts were withdrawn after complaints over the designs which offered suggestions of "how to get laid", spelled out the word "single" as "Stay Intoxicated Nightly Get Laid Everyday", and read "I put the STD in stud. All I need is u".

A Zimbabwean man has told a court that he hired a prostitute who during the night transformed into a donkey, and that he is now "seriously in love" with the animal, state media said Wednesday.

"I think I am also a donkey. I do not know what happened when I left the bar, but I am seriously in love with (the) donkey," Sunday Moyo told the court, according to The Herald newspaper.

Police in Sicily issued a whopping 32,000 Euros ($44,500) fine for an illegally parked car after totting up 2,000 years of interest by mistake, Italy's Repubblica newspaper said Wednesday.

The interest due was calculated from the year 208 A.D. after a policeman dated the fine back to the year 208 instead of 2008.

When Sylvester Barasa, whose legs have been withered by polio, is not begging at the side of a highway in the Kenyan capital he is part of a contemporary dance troupe.

"It's a way of surmounting my handicap. It means I don't see the polio as something important any more. I don't pay attention to it anymore," he said.