A suburban Chicago woman has been given a $25,000 diamond and emerald ring three months after she found the jewelry and turned it in to police. Karen Wonders of Aurora said she gave the man's pinkie ring to police after discovering it in a Naperville, Ill., parking garage Aug. 5.

Officials in Hamlin, Germany -- the city known as the setting of the Pied Piper legend -- said life is imitating myth as the town is being invaded by rats. Hamlin town spokesman Thomas Wahmes said a makeshift trash dump at the edge of town has become a real refuge for the vermin ahead of planned festivities for the 725th anniversary of the town's founding, The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday. He said the trash heap is serving as a takeaway food center for the rats. The town's rat problem echoes the infestation of The Pied Piper of Hamlin legend, which postulates a pipe-playing man rid the town of rats by playing a song that led them out of Hamlin in 1284.

D'Zhana Simmons says she felt like a "fake person" for 118 days when she had no heart beating in her chest. "But I know that I really was here," the 14-year-old said, "and I did live without a heart." As she was being released Wednesday from a Miami hospital,...

British iPhone users said a Google voice recognition program developed for the smart phone in the United States does not understand their accents. The free program, which was designed to translate voice commands into Google searches, was perplexed when users with accents from across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales attempted a simple search for iPhone, The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday. The newspaper said a man with a Scottish accent was given Google results for sex when he first spoke the word iPhone while running the program and received results for sledding during his second attempt. A user from England's County of Kent was given results for my sister and Einstein during the test while a speaker with a Welsh accent caused the phone to search for gorillas and kitchen sink by speaking the word iPhone. Google's Web site for the application stipulates that it is currently available only in U.S.

AP - He shot a man twice and felt so good about it, police said, a rapper wrote a song describing the shooting and calling out the victim by name. A judge sentenced 25-year-old Rico Todriquez Wright Monday to spend the next 20 years in prison after his victim mentioned the hip hop confession to police.

Reuters - The Paris City Hall launched a manual on forced marriages on Wednesday to help officials spot and prevent cases of young women being coerced into matrimony.

Reuters - A member of parliament who got a court order blocking online encyclopedia Wikipedia in Germany for two days because of entries linking him to communist-era security police apologized on Tuesday for overreacting.

Reuters - German police searching nationwide for a convicted drug dealer who escaped from jail by hiding in a cardboard box to be taken away for recycling plan to issue an international arrest warrant for him.

A former Sunday school teacher was arrested on charges of distributing harmful material to a minor after the parents of a 14-year-old boy found a topless photo of her on his cell phone. Victoria Ann Chacon, 27, also a former middle school teacher, allegedly...

AP - A North Carolina sheriff's official has apologized for plunging a funeral into chaos when undercover agents tried to arrest the dead man's son — and used a Taser on him in the process.

AP - Three male and three female inmates at a southern Indiana jail face charges that they devised a way to sneak between cell blocks to help pass their time behind bars by having sex.

AP - Police are looking for an irate pet lover so intent on liberating his lost cat that he wielded a bat to fend off animal shelter employees. Dallas Animal Shelter manager Kent Robertson said the man found his missing gray and blue short-haired cat at the shelter, where it had been brought by someone who thought it was a stray.

Activists in Washington used the occasion of National Toilet Day to call for increased access to proper bathrooms for everyone. Organizers delivered lunch-hour speeches Wednesday on the west lawn of the U.S.

A North Carolina sheriff's official has apologized for plunging a funeral into chaos when undercover agents tried to arrest the dead man's son _ and used a Taser on him in the process. It happened as the coffin was being loaded into a hearse. The officers...

Why does a Yugo have a defroster on the rear window?

Why does a Yugo have a defroster on the rear window? To keep your hands warm while you push it. That's just one of the "Yugo jokes" about the cheap and much-maligned subcompact that won notoriety for being one of the worst cars ever exported to the United...

Swedish health officials say they will remove transvestism, fetishism and sadomasochism from the country's official list of diseases and mental disorders. The National Board of Welfare says labeling those aspects of sexual behavior and gender identity as...

A University of Delaware student is defending her honor in court

Call it a case of assault with a luncheon weapon

We all know about the dangers of drinking and driving -- but how about driving while sneezing?