French police on Saturday said they have recovered a pet lynx that escaped from its Russian owners while they were vacationing in the jet-set haven of Saint-Tropez.

"There's a lot of extravagance here and you have to be innovative. Before, it was just a question of beautiful cars," an officer told Agence France Presse.

Transport operators in northern Japan are sprinkling wolf urine near roads and broadcasting the roar of lions near train tracks in a bid to keep deer away and reduce accidents, officials said Monday.

Nexco East, an expressway operator, imports wolf urine from the United States to spray on the highways it operates in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands.

Dutch police on Saturday briefly detained two brothers aged five and seven who crashed a car after a mile-long joyride.

"A police patrol this morning saw a car with the doors open and two young boys stood next to it," in Bloemendael, west of Amsterdam, police spokeswoman Lenny Beijerbergen told Agence France Presse.

A huge-headed, duck-footed mix of beagle, boxer and basset hound was the upset winner Friday at the 25th annual World's Ugliest Dog Contest.

Walle (WAHL-ee), a 4-year-old mutt from Chico, California who was entered at the last minute, was judged most unsightly of 30 dogs at the Northern California competition.

Most criminals would give anything to get out of jail, but two armed robbers in Switzerland decided Friday to turn that on its head, barging into a Geneva jail in broad daylight to steal cash.

The two black-clad men, one of them with a handgun, got into the Montfleury remand center and made off with an undisclosed sum, said a Geneva police statement that did not provide further details.

Thousands of New Yorkers took some time off Friday to celebrate the first day of summer by taking part in mass outdoor yoga classes in Times Square, the Big Apple's busiest crossroads.

The summer solstice yoga festival -- for everyone from beginners to the most experienced practitioners -- started early in the morning and was expected to continue until sundown.

Britain's defense ministry shut down its UFO unit four years ago after concluding that extra-terrestrials likely did not exist, and in any case did not pose a threat, previously secret files released Friday showed.

The Ministry of Defense (MoD) closed its hotline in 2009 despite a trebling of reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) that year, many of them near national landmarks.

U.S. President Barack Obama repeatedly called British Finance Minister George Osborne "Jeffrey" at the G8 summit, media reported on Thursday.

The U.S. president said three times that he agreed fully with "Jeffrey" during his presentation on G8 host Britain's plans to crack down on tax evasion, leaving Osborne red-faced.

A 52-year-old French woman faces prosecution after being caught trying to sit a baccalaureate English exam in place of her daughter.

Kitted out in typical teenage attire including Converse trainers and low-waisted skinny jeans, the woman made it into the exam hall at a Paris high-school on Wednesday.

Police on Friday charged a drunk man after pulling over a car on Australia's Gold Coast to allegedly find a seven-year-old boy driving him home at 3:00 am.

A patrol car stopped the vehicle after it went by without its headlights on early Friday, to find the boy at the wheel and the man in the passenger seat.