Burglars have stolen a fully-functional 18-carat gold toilet from Britain's Blenheim Palace, where it had been installed as an art exhibit, police said on Saturday.

It may not match the feeling of winning a world championship but Polish climber Marcin Dzienski's feat of racing and defeating an elevator up 23 meters will certainly have given him a lift.

An Australian cricket journalist in Britain for the Ashes test series is claiming to have drunk "the most expensive beer in history" after being charged nearly A$100,000 ($68,120) for the tipple.

The number of parents in Britain calling their baby girls Alexa dropped by more than half last year, statistics showed on Thursday, possibly due to the link with Amazon Echo voice-controlled gadgets.

Two octopuses in Obira, on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, have predicted the hosts of the Rugby World Cup will not progress from their pool when the tournament begins later this month.

A commercial flight with 326 people on board was forced to make an emergency landing when hot coffee was accidentally spilled over the cockpit control panel over the Atlantic ocean, according to a report on Thursday.

The "Storm Area 51" event came and went with little fanfare on Friday, with only a few dozen people showing up at the remote, secret Nevada test site, reports. (A conflicting report from says that the number was closer to 1,500). And despite the fact that no one saw any [real] aliens, and despite the fact that there wasn't a mass effort to storm a military base, it seems as if the few who showed up had a good time.
A few months ago, an internet jokester created the "Storm Area 51" event on Facebook, suggesting that thousands of people show up to the military facility where alien spacecraft and indeed, even actual aliens, are rumored to be held, and then try to breach it en masse. The guards couldn't possibly shoot all of them, the jokester said, and once the survivors got past the guards, the attendees would see "some of them aliens."

Scores of UFO enthusiasts converged on rural Nevada on Thursday for a pilgrimage of sorts to the U.S. installation known as Area 51, long rumored to house government secrets about alien life, as law enforcement officials beefed up security around the military base.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte just keeps getting bugged during his public speeches.

An Egyptian masseur plays with fire to relieve his clients' muscle pain at his spa in the Nile Delta governorate of Gharbeya.

French literary types aghast at the political turmoil engulfing Britain as it seeks to leave the European Union launched a tongue-in-cheek Twitter campaign on Wednesday to add 'Brexit' to the national lexicon.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, revealed on Monday that they had adopted a rescued Jack Russell puppy.

When a helicopter rushed an unconscious Czech woman who had suffered a severe stroke to hospital in April, her chances of survival were slim - and those of the fetus she had carried in her womb for 15 weeks little better.

The sporting expression "caught fire" took on a literal meaning on Sunday as several players at the BMW Championship, including Phil Mickelson, were affected by a fire at their hotel.

UFO enthusiasts began descending on rural Nevada on Thursday near the secret U.S. military installation known as Area 51, long rumored to house government secrets about alien life, with local authorities hoping the visitors were coming in peace.

A white couple from New Jersey has filed a lawsuit against a fertility clinic after an IVF mishap led to the wife giving birth to a girl with "Asian features" - which eventually contributed to their divorce.
Kristina Koedderich and Drew Wasilewski are suing the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science after they welcomed a daughter through IVF in 2013 and came to realize that she looked nothing like the husband. As reported, the couple took a DNA test that showed Drew was not the girl's biological parent.
As the report noted, the child also inherited a genetic blood disorder that is associated with Southeast Asian heritage, which neither parent carried. The couple claimed in a lawsuit that after spending close to $500,000 in fertility treatments, they were left with a "nightmare scenario" and said the stress was a major factor in their divorce.

Be careful if you're pointing your fingers in the shape of a gun in Pennsylvania because a court just ruled that the hand gesture is a crime. According to , Stephen Kirchner pointed gun fingers at his neighbor and an appeals court has found that the misdemeanor offense could have provoked "a dangerous altercation."
Kirchner was outside walking with Elaine Natore when they passed a neighbor, Josh Klingseisen. Natore had a "no contact" order against Klingseisen and the exchange quickly turned south. Kirchner made eye contact with Klingseisen and then raised his arm and "made a recoil motion as if to suggest he had shot him."
Kirchner was charged with criminal disorderly conduct after a neighbor reported the event, saying the exchange made her uncomfortable. Kirchner has been fighting the conviction for more than a year. This week, a Pennsylvania state appeals court ruled that the 64-year-old's hand motion "served no legitimate purpose, and recklessly risked provoking a dangerous altercation."

A married engineer whose company sent him on a business trip to France ended up suffering a fatal heart attack while having sex with a stranger during the trip - a death that has been officially ruled a "workplace accident."
The case is making headlines this week after being featured in a report from . The report noted that the man's 2013 death was followed by a long legal battle as the family of the deceased man sought compensation and lawyers at the railroad construction company where he worked argued that his death had nothing to do with the work trip.
The man was named only as Xavier X, with his surname not reported.

A U.S. Navy official confirmed on Wednesday that video footage of naval pilots supposedly capturing UFOs on their cameras is real, reports. And at least one former military analyst is suggesting that these sightings are evidence that "we may not be alone."
At this point it bears noting that the word "UFO" probably doesn't mean what you think it means. Colloquially, "UFO" has come to be synonymous with "alien spacecraft." But what it literally means is "Unidentified Flying Object." And indeed, military and commercial pilots all over the world spot "UFOs" every day. However, the vast majority of those UFOs are later identified.

Samoan players will wear their hearts on their sleeves - but keep traditional Pacific islander tattoos under wraps with skin suits during the World Cup in Japan to avoid offending their hosts.