In some cultures, dressing a dog in the Argentine team jersey with the number 10 on its back could be seen as an insult to Lionel Messi.

But in Buenos Aires, the "Amores Perros" doggy boutique is celebrating the Argentine star by outfitting pets in official blue and white, just in time for the World Cup.

A bribes scandal in Venice started when investigators found corrupt accounts written out on edible paper to be consumed in case of a police raid, Italian media reported on Friday.

The documents were found hidden in the home of the parents of an official from the Venezia Nuova consortium overseeing the construction of a 5.5-billion-euro ($7.5 billion) flood barrier to save the canal city from rising sea levels.

A French murderer who escaped from a Swiss prison this week, leaving a letter vowing to turn himself back in after taking a few days off, has kept his promise, authorities said Friday.

The 38-year-old man, who had been serving part of a 15-year sentence for the brutal murder of a prostitute at a semi-open Geneva penal institution, sparked an international manhunt when he failed to return on Sunday after spending the day working outside the prison.

Police in Georgia say they used a GPS device hidden inside a teddy bear to track down the toy and apprehend a suspect in the theft.

Athens-Clarke County police say Mid-Atlantic Clothing Recycling had been experiencing thefts of clothing from its collection bin at Georgia Square Mall.

Authorities say a customer at a Massachusetts restaurant became sick when an employee mistakenly sprinkled a chemical cleaner on food instead of grated cheese.

Easthampton health agent Jackie Duda says the teenager fell ill immediately after eating the food Sunday at Riff's Joint and was driven to an emergency room. She says the teen is recovering and no one else is believed to have eaten the cleaner.

Cult television saga "Game of Thrones" may be best known for killing off its leading characters, but a U.S. academic is trying to salvage a living language from all the death and destruction.

Like Star Trek's Klingon before it, the invented language of the Dothraki poeple -- an imaginary race of horse-borne warriors from the steppes of Essos -- now has a grammar and a vocabulary.

More than two thousand people including lawmakers and students hugged trees in a park outside Nepal's capital Kathmandu on Thursday to claim a new record on World Environment Day.

After organizers sounded a horn, eager students, many wearing their school uniforms, clasped tree trunks and held tight for two minutes as Nepalese musicians beat traditional drums.

Holidaymakers annoyed by tourists from a certain northern European nation nabbing the best sunbathing spots may finally have some solace: the Germans hate that too.  

According to a new poll, one of the things that most irritates Germans on holiday is when their compatriots reserve the best sun-beds. 

Though slightly uncertain, Erin Kolski pronounced the unusual fare on her plate -- a burger made from ground-up grasshoppers -- to be surprisingly tasty.

"It's a little crunchy. It tastes fine," Kolski said, sounding somewhat surprised as she favorably appraised the dish at Washington's Occidental Restaurant, a popular establishment a stone's throw from the White House. 

Exporters of reptiles and amphibians in Nicaragua are venturing into a promising new side business -- raising exotic spiders.

They are diversifying in anticipation of a coming drought that is expected to make it more difficult to raise snakes, toads, lizards and other critters dependent on water for their survival.