Brazil's Maracana football stadium, one of the sport's most hallowed and raucous grounds, has some new rules of etiquette -- remain seated during games and please wear a shirt.

Another bars the use of musical instruments such as drums or bamboo poles to wave flags.

A Russian state service in charge of safeguarding Kremlin communications is looking to purchase an array of old-fashioned typewriters to prevent leaks from computer hardware, sources said Thursday.

The throwback to the paper-strewn days of Soviet bureaucracy has reportedly been prompted by the publication of secret documents by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and the revelations leaked by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Textbooks that were being used in Indonesian elementary schools have been withdrawn after they were found to contain a story about an erotic encounter in a brothel, an official said Thursday.

Outraged parents in the conservative, Muslim-majority country complained their children were being exposed to "porn" after the discovery of the tale entitled "The Shepherd Boy and Wolf Mother".

Thai police say they have rescued about 90 famished cats that they believed had been headed to Vietnam. They declined to say what fate they had rescued the felines from, but cats are considered a delicacy in their intended destination.

Police Col. Sakchai Sadmaroeng said Thursday his men stopped a pickup truck at a checkpoint Thursday and found six plastic cages full of cats in northeastern Nakhon Phanom province. The driver was arrested and faces charges including animal cruelty and illegal transportation of animals.

A man who was allegedly certified as dead almost three years ago has won a race for mayor in the southern state of Oaxaca.

Leninguer Raymundo Carballido Morales won the election in the small town of San Agustin Amatengo by just 11 votes last Sunday as the candidate of a coalition of conservative and leftist parties.

A government minister in Venezuela, which has offered fugitive U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden asylum, is urging her countrymen to cancel their Facebook accounts lest they be targeted by U.S. snooping.

"Fellow Venezuelans: cancel your Facebook accounts, since you unwittingly have worked as CIA informants! Look at the Snowden case!" prisons minister Maria Iris Varela said in a Twitter posting.

Australian police were mystified by a chaotic crime scene including a hole in the ceiling and a smelly pool of vomit-like liquid — until they found the culprit was a 5.7-meter (19-foot) python.

The massive snake weighing in at 17 kilograms (37 pounds) was captured a day after a suspected burglary was reported at a charity store in Queensland in northeastern Australia.

Supporters of the mayor in the tiny Minnesota tourist town of Dorset can stuff the ballot box all they want as he seeks re-election. The mayor — a short guy — is known for his fondness of ice cream and fishing. And he's got the county's top law-enforcement official in his pocket.

Say hello to Mayor Robert "Bobby" Tufts. He's 4 years old and not even in school yet.

Michelle Obama's healthy eating campaign is clearly hitting close to home.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday sung the praises of broccoli, snubbing the cheeseburgers, hot dogs, pork chops and pumpkin pies he has munched to show common man credentials on the campaign trail.

Japan's biggest yakuza organised crime group has published a magazine for its members that includes a poetry page and senior gangsters' fishing diaries, reports said Wednesday.

The eight-page publication has been distributed among the Yamaguchi-gumi, a sprawling syndicate believed to have about 27,700 members, in a bid to strengthen unity in the group, the daily Sankei Shimbun reported.