A troupe of Hungarian shadow dancers won the television show "Britain's Got Talent" on Saturday -- outshining a slew of homegrown performers and leaving viewers wondering if the program's name could do with a change.

The eight-member dance group, named Attraction, beat ten British acts to win the public vote on the primetime ITV show and walked away from the final with a £250,000 ($380,000, 290,000 euro) prize.

Male staff on Stockholm's commuter trains have begun wearing skirts to circumvent a ban on shorts as sweltering heat hit the Swedish capital this week.

Around 15 male train drivers and other staff wore skirts this week on the suburban Roslagsbanan train service, where temperatures inside the carriages can reach 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), transport company Arriva said Sunday.

Thousands of Mexican cyclists rode naked Saturday to protest aggressive drivers and carbon emissions from cars -- and the conservativeness of central Mexico's Jalisco state -- organizers said.

Some 3,000 demonstrators -- some bare head to toe, others in bathing suits or underwear -- braved catcalls and embarrassed smiles from residents as they biked some 12 miles (20 kilometers) to end up in Guadalajara, the biggest city in Jalisco state.

Thousands said farewell Sunday to a giant inflatable yellow rubber duck which has captivated Hong Kong, on its final day in the city's harbor before it heads to the United States.

The southern Chinese city has taken the 16.5 meter-tall (54-feet) duck, conceived by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, to its heart since it arrived under tow on May 2 to cheering crowds.

For Kabul's wealthy elite some things are de rigueur: armed guards, a marble-clad mansion, a blacked-out SUV. But one man has taken the flamboyant lifestyle a step further and bought a lion.

Mohammad Shafiq, a 42-year-old businessman, is very proud of his growling pet, which spends its days prowling a roof terrace at his sprawling home in a posh residential area of central Kabul.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is looking for a few good cybersnoops.

This week's furor over top-secret collection of phone records and online data isn't deterring the U.S. government's electronic intelligence-gathering service from placing help-wanted posts on its @NSACareers Twitter feed.

Pope Francis joked about the difficulties of being head of the world's Catholics saying he never wanted the job on Friday in unscripted comments in which he also said he had turned down luxury Vatican housing because it would be "boring".

"Someone who wants to be pope does not really like themselves," the pontiff said laughing, in answer to a child's query during a question-and-answer session with Jesuit school students in the Vatican.

France's Francois Hollande was left red-faced in Tokyo on Friday after a slip of the tongue that saw him confuse his Japanese hosts with the Chinese.

During a press conference Hollande, speaking in French, referred to the Algerian hostage crisis in January in which 10 Japanese nationals died, saying he had "expressed the condolences of the French people to the Chinese people."

As pets go, they are low maintenance. No muss, no fuss, nice and quiet, and even a bit furry. So, how about snuggling up with a giant, non-biting tarantula?

A farm in Chile exports the palm-sized critters to Asia, Europe and the United States for sale as exotic household companions.

More than nine million students packed exam halls across China for the opening day of the country's university entrance exam on Friday -- with attempts to stop cheating even leading to bans on metal bra clasps.

Students in the northeastern province of Jilin were banned from wearing clothing with metal parts and education authorities installed metal detectors in exam centres to clamp down on "wireless cheating devices", the state-run Global Times reported.