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.

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.

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.

Standing on the side of a road in a hectic north African capital may not be what most people would consider the ideal place to eat boiled snails.

Diners inclined to try 'escargots' may think of it as a dish best prepared by an expert chef and reserved for special occasions, like a visit to a French restaurant.

An airport official smuggled a hive of bees on to a plane, panicking passengers when they escaped mid-flight in one of a series of lapses at the provincial Blagoveshchensk facility, reports said Thursday.

The bees made a break for freedom during a flight to Moscow from the far eastern city after they were illegally stashed in a box in a coat locker in business class, a spokesman for the Yakutia airline told AFP.

British airline Virgin Atlantic said Wednesday it is putting warnings on weepy films shown during flights because of concerns that emotional passengers might burst into tears.

The "weepy warnings" will initially appear on the Hollywood romantic dramas "Water for Elephants" and "Just Go With It", flashing up at the start to advise passengers that the movie has the potential to prompt tears.

Jurors on Wednesday saw a videotape of a woman squirting hot sauce in the mouth of her adopted son and then making him stand in a cold shower in a case that caused a public uproar in Russia after the video aired on the "Dr. Phil" show.

Jessica Beagley is charged with misdemeanor child abuse. Beagley's lawyer said she was punishing the 7-year-old boy from Russia because he misbehaved in school and then lied about it.

A Swedish real estate agent has an unusual piece of property up for sale: a five-bedroom house, complete with medieval tomb and skeleton in the cellar.

The central Visby town house on the Baltic island of Gotland was built in 1750 on the foundations of a Russian church. The kitchen lies on the presbytery, and the tomb containing the skeleton — visible through a glass pane — is in the cellar.

Spanish gays and lesbians say they will hold a protest "kiss-in" Thursday in front of Pope Benedict XVI when he joins huge Catholic youth festivities in Madrid.

The kiss-in is being organized on Facebook by gay groups including Asamblea Transmaricabollo de Sol, which was set up during popular "indignant" protests that erupted May 15 over Spain's economies woes.

Swedish air operator SAS on Tuesday cancelled a flight from Stockholm to Chicago because of an unruly passenger -- a mouse.

The rodent was spotted ahead of boarding on the 0815 GMT flight but evaded the many mousetraps laid to catch it, SAS said.