Police are searching for four or five people they believe scaled to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge's two towers in the dead of night, disabled lights illuminating two large American flags and then replaced the flags with bleached-white ones.

The security breach at one of the city's most secured landmarks didn't appear to be the work of terrorists or even a political statement, said the police department's deputy commissioner for counter terrorism and intelligence, but was likely done by people familiar with climbing or bridgework who may even have scaled the bridge before.

Fathers often see their daughters as royalty. But a few months ago, when Emily Heaton said she wanted to be a princess, her father Jeremiah quickly found her a kingdom.

Many little girls would have been satisfied with the wooden turrets and ramparts of the castle in the community playground of rural Abingdon, Virginia, where the Heatons live. But Jeremiah was thinking bigger.

A tree planted in a Los Angeles park in memory of the late George Harrison of the Beatles has been killed by beetles, a city councilor said Tuesday.

Tom LaBonge, whose district includes Griffith Park, told Agence France Presse that the Japanese black pine tree, planted about 12 years ago, would be replaced at a community planting that is due to take place in November.

Chinese reports about a giant inflatable toad have been deleted from the Internet after social media users compared the puffed-up animal to a former Communist Party chief.

The installation of a giant inflatable duck in Hong Kong's harbor last year sparked a national craze for oversized blow-up wildlife, with several Chinese cities launching their own imitations.

A Michigan sheriff says he's trading his inmates' orange jumpsuits for black-and-white stripes, in part due to pop culture.

Saginaw County Sheriff William Federspiel tells The Saginaw News (http://bit.ljaily/1p7egTU ) that all-orange jumpsuits are increasingly viewed as fashionable, especially because they're seen on popular TV shows such as the Netflix smash hit "Orange Is the New Black."

There's mischief afoot in one suburban Portland neighborhood, but police say it doesn't involve the typical spray paint or broken windows. No, we're talking pastry here — maple bars smeared on cars, doughnuts left atop windshield wipers, pastries littering a yard.

One woman told officers she's seen more than a dozen incidents of food smeared on cars. Not just pastry, but yogurt, cakes and eggs. She alerted police July 11.

A letter by the late Karl Marx, the German philosopher who offered an alternative to capitalism, has failed to sell in Communist-ruled China because the auctioneer set too high a price.

The Shanghai-based Hosane auction house set a starting price of 8.0 million yuan ($1.3 million) but failed to find a single bidder on Monday, the Global Times newspaper reported.

An Australian senator who told breakfast radio she would only date men who were rich and "well-hung" apologized Tuesday, saying she had tried to hide her embarrassment with a joke. 

Jacqui Lambie, who took her seat in the national parliament's upper house earlier this month, told Tasmania's Heart 107.3 that she had not been in a relationship for more than a decade.

Tantric massages provide sexual pleasure and are subject to the same tax levied on brothels and swinger clubs in a German city, a state court said Monday.

The decision by an administrative court in Baden-Wuerttemberg state followed a complaint by the owner of a massage parlor who had been billed a total of 840 euros ($1,140) for January and February 2012 under a local "amusement tax" targeting the sex trade in the state capital Stuttgart.

A nonprofit group is taking a novel approach to helping the homeless in San Francisco with a new bus that allows them to take a shower.

The former public transit bus has been outfitted with two full private bathrooms and offers hot showers, clean toilets, shampoo, soap and towels free of charge. The founder of the nonprofit Lava Mae mobile shower bus said she wanted to return a sense of dignity to those living on the streets.