California-based discount travel site VirtualTourist.com released its list of the top five eating competitions, including contests in New York and England. Giampiero Ambrosi, general manager of the Web site, said eating contests have grown in popularity and seriousness in recent years. There's actually an international association for competitive eaters which not only announces big eating events, but encourages safety regulations and fields media inquiries, he said. The Web site chose the top eating contest as the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, which has taken place on New York's Coney Island since 1916.

AP - An iguana named Ivana has been having a tough time of it in Des Moines. First she was abandoned in an apartment building, and now she's been stolen from the group that rescued her.

A British school has banned swimming class students from wearing goggles because the protective eyewear could cause injuries. St.

AP - Police arrested a man they said tried to rob a hotel around 6 p.m. on Sunday with a butter knife. The clerk refused to give the man any money, and he left the hotel on foot. Police said about an hour later they spotted a man matching the description given by the clerk.

A 90-year-old California woman has donated her 200th pint of blood -- that's 25 gallons -- since she got her start as a donor in 1954. Margaret Delfino of Bakersfield, a great-grandmother, said she briefly stopped donating in 2001 when she had ovarian cancer, but she starting giving blood again five years later when her doctors declared her cancer-free, CNN reported Monday. Delfino said she brings her family to donate with her and she would like to increase the number of people in her area who give blood. To think in Kern County that there are only 3 percent who give blood when there are so many who are able to donate, she said.

Reuters - Radio hams and amateur astronomers around the world spent the weekend bouncing radio conversations off the Moon to one another in commemoration of the Apollo 11 landings 40 years ago, organisers in Australia said on Sunday.

Authorities in Washington state say a young motorist repeatedly drove through flocks of shore birds on a beach, killing dozens of them. State Fish and Wildlife Sgt. Dan L. Chadwick says he has the bodies of 34 birds killed near the coastal town of Ocean Park....

A spokeswoman for the city of Suffolk, Va., says a burglar accidentally took his own picture with a victim's cell phone while robbing an area home.

A prominent under-bite, scrunched face and floppy ears are the hallmarks of a winner.

A former University of Vermont fraternity president who helped run a cocaine ring from the organization's house was spared a prison term Monday by a judge who called him naive and a bit player. Christopher Duncan, 25, of Copiague, N.Y., was sentenced to two...

A prominent under-bite, scrunched face and floppy ears are the hallmarks of a winner. The winner of the World's Ugliest Dog contest, that is. Pabst, a boxer-mix rescued from a shelter by Miles Egstad of Citrus Heights, Calif., won the annual contest on Friday...

An ambitious director might look at Mitch Halligan's property and see an instant B-movie classic: "Invasion of the Grasshoppers." The place is overrun with the greasy little bugs. With each step you take on his property, the squirmy inch-long grasshoppers...

Police in a seaside town were hunting an underwear thief today.

Naked time got a little too public for a former Georgia mayor.

Deputies say a bear with an apparent sweet-tooth busted into a San Bernardino County home and gobbled up a box of chocolates from a couple's refrigerator.

A Saudi anti-smoking campaign targets young grooms with an unusual incentive: kick the habit for a free wedding.

Archaeologists believe that bones discovered at Stirling Castle may have belonged to a knight killed in battle or during a siege.

Thousands of 20p coins wrongly issued without a date are said to be worth up to £50 each.

Lions form prides to defend territory against other lions, not to improve their hunting success, new research reveals.

Arts grant awarded for buttocks sculptures SWANSEA, Wales, June 29 (UPI) -- A Welsh artist says she has gotten $33,000 to create plaster casts of women's buttocks in a bid to get to bottom of cultural attitudes about female fannies. Sue Williams, of Swansea, Wales, will use the money from the Arts Council of Wales to mould a series of plaster casts of women's bottoms, starting with her own, to examine the racial fetishism of the backside in African and European societies, The Times of London reported. The project is taking on the issues around the bottom and how it is viewed in contemporary culture and viewed by the male, she said.