A 15-tonne ball of congealed fat -- dubbed Britain's biggest ever "fatberg" -- has been dredged up from a London sewer, utility company Thames Water said Tuesday.

It took 10 days to remove the double-decker bus-sized lump of festering food fat mixed with sanitary wipes which formed in drains under a major road in Kingston, southwest London.

They appeared out of nowhere, making a mess, operating without a permit and disrupting the football season by luring gawkers. But who can resist 10 tons of buried gold?

That's what a team of 20 men say they have been digging for since Friday in the middle of a suburb of Paraguaay's capital.

Photos posted on Chinese news websites purportedly showing a woman being executed by lethal injection instead appear to have come from a fetish site, in the latest embarrassment for state media.

The websites of the state-run Xinhua news agency and the Global Times newspaper, which is affiliated to the ruling Communist Party, carried the series of about 40 images.

Learned and serious like the ancient Greeks or casual like 1950s "Beats"; the full beard is back in fashion in France to the delight of the nation's barbers.

After years in the style wilderness, the sort of bushy beard that takes weeks rather than days to grow -- from the plain old full beard to mutton chops or a chin curtain -- has finally displaced designer stubble and other barely-there styles of recent years.

Austria's Catholic Church is trying a new strategy to attract the faithful: advertising its churches as places to cool off in a record heatwave.

As Austrians sweltered in temperatures close to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), Catholic news agency Kathpress surveyed the country's houses of worship Tuesday to find the coolest one.

Taiwan's second largest city has announced plans to display a larger version of the giant inflatable yellow duck that captivated Hong Kong -- upstaging similar plans by another city on the island.

In a surprise announcement, the southern city of Kaohsiung said an 18-meter-tall (59-foot) version of the duck created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman will go on show for a month, beginning in September.

A Chinese vendor's plan to fake his own death at the hands of social enforcers failed when he could not play dead long enough in scorching heat, state media reported Monday.

More than 10 men claimed the soft drinks vendor had been beaten to death in the central city of Wuhan by chengguan, who are tasked with enforcing non-criminal regulations in towns and cities.

Twenty-five luxury villas built on top of a Chinese shopping mall have become migrant workers' residences after authorities declared them illegal, state media said Tuesday.

The houses, covering an area about the size of three football pitches, were built in 2009 on the roof of a multi-storey construction materials and furniture mall in Hengyang, the China Daily said.

The secrets of Russian President Vladimir Putin's buff physique and youthful appearance are the result of herbal health remedies and swimming regularly to combat stress, his doctor revealed Monday.

Putin "doesn't look his age", the Kremlin's top doctor Sergei Mironov told Russian weekly Itogui, chiefly because the 60-year-old is "skeptical about medication".

Reigning champion Josephine Reitzel of Switzerland won her third title on Sunday on home streets at the Cycle Messenger World Championships, while Austin Horse of the United States took the men's honor.

Reitzel, who also took the honors at the 2010 and 2012 editions in Guatemala and Chicago, shone on the hilly, cobbled Lausanne roads that she plies as a professional courier.