Catholics in this Paraguayan town paid homage to St. Francis Solano on Friday in a peculiar religious festival that involves dressing up in bird-feather suits.

The celebration was held at the chapel that bears the name of the saint, who was born in Spain in 1549 and died in Peru 1610. Solano was canonized in 1726.

Pluto is hazier than scientists expected and appears to be covered with flowing ice.

The team responsible for the New Horizons flyby of Pluto last week released new pictures Friday of the previously unexplored world on the edge of the solar system.

Five Roma players have been denied entry to Indonesia during the club's preseason tour and have been forced to fly back to Italy.

The squad traveled from Australia, where it had played friendlies against Real Madrid and Manchester City, and was in Indonesia on Saturday for its final stop on a preseason tour.

World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. has severed ties with Hulk Hogan amid a report that one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling history used racial slurs in a conversation caught on a sex tape.

The company deleted most references to Hogan on its website and issued a statement Friday saying it had terminated its contract with him.

Even as TV watchers increasingly go online, AT&T has become the country's biggest traditional TV provider with its $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV.

It got its regulatory approval Friday from the Federal Communications Commission after more than a year. The Justice Department had already cleared the deal on Tuesday.

The deep oceans span more than half the globe and their frigid depths have long been known to contain vast, untapped deposits of prized minerals. These treasures of the abyss, however, have always been out of reach to miners.

But now, the era of deep seabed mining appears to be dawning fueled by technological advances in robotics and dwindling land-based deposits. Rising demand for copper, cobalt, gold and the rare-earth elements vital in manufacturing smartphones and other high-tech products is causing a prospecting rush to the dark seafloor thousands of meters (yards) beneath the waves.

Authorities say a cyclist started a 73-acre wildfire in southwest Idaho by lighting his toilet paper on fire after taking a comfort break.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials say the cyclist stopped to defecate in a ravine in the Boise foothills on Wednesday afternoon. The man then lit the toilet paper on fire but lost control of the embers in the dry grass while trying to extinguishing the waste.

Exercise may do more than keep a healthy brain fit: New research suggests working up a good sweat may also offer some help once memory starts to slide— and even improve life for people with Alzheimer's.

The effects were modest, but a series of studies reported Thursday found vigorous workouts by people with mild memory impairment decreased levels of a warped protein linked to risk of later Alzheimer's — and improved quality of life for people who already were in early stages of the disease.

Swedish driver Marcus Ericsson and Brazilian Felipe Nasr can build on a promising first season together with both drivers handed new contracts with Sauber for next year.

Nasr impressed from the outset in his first Formula One campaign, securing fifth place at the Australian Grand Prix in his first race.

The road snaked back and forth like spaghetti stuck to a wall, 18 hairpin bends, climbed for the first time in the 112-year history of the Tour de France.

Curiously, there were no crowds on this spectacular vista just perfect for the television age. Police decided that the three-kilometer (two-mile) stretch of bends piled one on top of each other up an Alpine cliff, was simply too narrow to let in spectators who line pretty much every other inch of cycling's toughest race.