Singapore on Tuesday unveiled plans to offer free train rides during morning peak-hours to ease severe congestion on its metro rail network.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said it would launch a one-year trial on June 24 to provide free travel to commuters who arrive at 16 designated metro stations in the city center before 7:45 am on weekdays.

Around 40 protesters took to the streets of New York on Saturday to demonstrate against a U.S. ban on mimolette that has angered lovers of the distinctive French cheese.

Since March, several hundred pounds of the bright orange cheese have been held up by U.S. customs because of a warning by the Food and Drug Administration that it contained microscopic cheese mites.

Japanese exhibitionists took the Harlem Shake into a bathhouse and a centuries old shrine on Sunday as they brought the YouTube phenomenon to Tokyo.

Even as the meme appeared to be all but played out elsewhere on the Internet, dozens of people came to show off their gyrating and humping.

Indian security forces have found a dead falcon fitted with a small camera which has sparked alarm near the country's highly militarized border with Pakistan, an official said Monday.

The carcass was discovered near the ancient fort city of Jaisalmer in the far west of the desert state of Rajasthan where the Indian armed forces regularly conduct drills and war games.

Hong Kong's highest court on Monday began hearing the final appeal of a transsexual woman who is seeking to wed her boyfriend, in a potentially groundbreaking case for the Chinese city.

A Belgian ex-policeman masquerading as a doctor in France was charged and jailed Friday for allegedly sexually assaulting at least eight female patients, prosecutors said.

The 57-year-old man, who was not named pending trial, was also charged with illegally practicing medicine as an alternative "energy therapist" without a licence, the head prosecutor in the northeastern town of Verdun, Yves Le Clair, told Agence France Presse.

A Japanese official mistakenly announced the launch of a North Korean missile instead of sending an alert about a strong earthquake that hit western Japan on Saturday morning.

An official at the transport ministry's western Osaka aviation bureau mistakenly e-mailed 87 airport offices that a North Korean missile had been launched, the ministry said.

A newly discovered species of orange-coloured mould has been named after soon-to-be Dutch king Willem-Alexander and his family, the scientists behind the move said Friday.

The mould was named after the Prince of Orange, the title given to the Dutch crown prince, "because what distinguishes this penicillin is its orange color, a very rare phenomenon," Pedro Crous, head of the Dutch CBS-KNAW fungal research center said in a statement.

The body of Hugo Chavez may not have been embalmed and put on display for eternity but on the arms, legs and breasts of devoted Venezuelans, "el Comandante" will live on forever.

As Venezuela prepares to elect Chavez's successor on Sunday, the booming personality cult surrounding the late former president is best reflected in the roaring trade of the country's tattoo parlors.

Strands from baby's first haircut. The first tooth. Tiny footprints sunk into clay. Some parents even tuck away the dried stump of the umbilical cord or the stick pregnancy test as a touching memento marking the milestones of their kids.

The latest? Breast milk jewelry.