Oddly Enough - Reuters UK

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Herman Van Rompuy, the European Union's new president, may not be very well known around the world but he's already winning fans in Japan -- as a poet rather than a politician.

ROME (Reuters) - An art collector has found a tooth, thumb and finger of the renowned Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who died in the 17th century, Florence's History of Science museum announced on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New fossils unearthed in what is now the Sahara desert reveal a once-swampy world divided up among a half-dozen species of unusual and perhaps intelligent crocodiles, researchers reported on Thursday.

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.

LONDON (Reuters) - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes might have thought twice about naming their daughter Suri if they'd known that it means "pickpocket" in Japanese, "turned sour" in French, and "horse mackerels" in Italian.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's football chief has joined in the chorus of protestors wanting the noisy vuvuzela trumpet to be banned from next year's World Cup in South Africa.

ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported on Monday.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's former Olympic marathon gold medallist Naoko Takahashi has decided to become a vegetable farmer.

PARIS (Reuters) - A French Internet company that planned to throw envelopes of cash to passers-by from a bus stop had to cancel the publicity stunt for security reasons after thousands of people turned up, police said on Saturday.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A plant that converts cow dung into energy for homes opened in the Netherlands on Friday.

MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's "Brother Metal," a 63-year-old monk who became famous for singing in a heavy metal band -- habit and all -- is hanging up his microphone, saying the devil made him too much of a celebrity for his own good.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 19-year-old New York man who was arrested for armed robbery has been exonerated thanks to a status update he posted on social networking site Facebook.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Kawasaki Frontale have been told to keep the $5.5 million (3.3 million pounds) prize money the Japanese club offered to return after its players were given a public dressing down for unsporting behaviour following their J-League Cup final defeat.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China will give Singapore two giant pandas to mark 20 years of friendly ties between the two countries, Chinese President Hu Jintao said Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The designer of the Kalashnikov, sometimes called the world's most lethal weapon, was named a "Hero of Russia" Tuesday by President Dmitry Medvedev who lauded him for creating "the brand every Russian is proud of."

BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of poor Hindu villagers in eastern India have refused to hand over a rare turtle to authorities, saying it is an incarnation of God, officials said on Tuesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - A man on the run from police sent a picture of himself to his local paper because he disliked the mugshot they had printed of him as part of a public appeal to track him down.

LONDON (Reuters) - East Midlands Airport will try to run a bus with a fuel produced from decomposing organic waste, the fuel producer Gasrec said on Monday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Beauty pageant winner Miss England gave up her title on Friday after reports she had been involved in a nightclub brawl with another beauty queen.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A 16-week pregnant athlete faces sanction from Malaysian sports authorities for pulling out of December's Southeast Asian Games, local media reported Friday.

Houston, we have a baby

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Shuttle Atlantis astronaut Randy Bresnik awoke early on Sunday to a much-anticipated call that his new daughter had been born. Bresnik's wife, Rebecca, gave birth to Abigail Mae Bresnik just after midnight. At the time, Bresnik was in orbit 220 miles above Earth with 11 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police arrested Monday a heavily-armed fugitive, Alket Rijai, who embarrassed authorities by twice escaping from prison in a helicopter.