If some workplace problems happen because employees are only human, one New York City government worker got in trouble for virtually the opposite.

He was suspended for 20 days without pay partly for answering an information-technology help line "in a robotic voice." The city Civil Service Commission upheld the suspension this month.

Bloody zombies lumbered alongside superheroes, cowboys shared the road with villains and marchers in hazardous-materials garb evoked the Ebola crisis as the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade made its freewheeling way through downtown Manhattan on Friday.

Creativity was on display and current events were on marchers' minds as a costumed crowd of thousands flowed up Sixth Avenue on a windy Halloween night.

For a Hungarian animal shelter, Halloween is less about pumpkins, witches and ghosts, but keeping black cats out of the hands of Satanists.

"Unfortunately cats here are prized by Satanists who want to use them in seances and sacrifical rituals around Halloween," Kinga Schneider, head of the Noah's Ark Foundation in Budapest, told AFP.

An Irish court on Friday ordered an Italian man arrested at Dublin airport after "a sick joke" about Ebola during a flight to pay a 2,500-euro ($3,126) fine for charity.

Roberto Binaschi, 56, wrote the words "Attenzione Ebola" on the lid of a disposable coffee cup as a prank on his daughter during an Aer Lingus flight from Milan to Dublin on Thursday.

A Denver radio station that sponsored a heavy-metal Halloween ball is pleading for the return of a bust of John Denver that went missing during the party.

Someone at KBPI-FM's Saints and Sinners ball Tuesday night pried the bronze bust off its base at the 1st Bank Center in the Denver suburb of Broomfield. The station is asking whoever took the bust to return it undamaged to its studios, no questions asked.

There are halls of fame for everything from baseball to rock 'n' roll, so why shouldn't those with a hairy upper lip get their just rewards?

The tongue-in-cheek American Mustache Institute says it will unveil its inaugural class for the International Mustache Hall of Fame on Feb. 11 — the birthday of Burt Reynolds.

Animal control officers have removed 69 cats from a Rhode Island apartment.

Police say they were called to the house in Providence on Thursday morning. The animal control department had received a complaint about a tenant on the second floor hoarding cats.

Dare ya, double dare ya, to tickle a lion's belly. Or touch his menacing claws.

A zoo in Chile gives thrill seekers a chance to do just that, albeit while comfy and snug in the safety of a cage mounted on a safari truck.

A western Michigan couple with 12 sons is expecting baby No. 13, and even though they're sticking to their tradition of not finding out in advance whether they're having a boy or girl, they said they'd be shocked if their streak is broken.

Jay and Kateri Schwandt's baby is due May 9, The Grand Rapids Press reported (http://bit.ly/1wLt00x ). Even though they expect it will be another boy, the couple said they would welcome either into the family.

One small cheque to a businessman, one giant leap for a meteorite: after journeys of millions of kilometers, rocks formed from the primordial soup of the solar system have landed on the walls of a Chinese showroom.

For some of China's wealthy, the terrestrial trappings of fast cars, designer bags and deluxe apartments are worthless compared to bounty from outer space.