Rolf Buchholz, the world's most pierced man, has been barred from Dubai, where he was turned back at the airport on his way to a hotel appearance, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Airport officials gave no reason for refusing entry to the 53-year-old German, who sports 453 piercings plus two horns on his forehead, local daily Al-Emarat Al-Youm said.

Is there a doctor of chocolate in the house?

Cambridge University in England is seeking a doctoral student to pursue what sounds like the sweetest job in the world: studying the fundamentals of chocolate.

The organizer of a nudist sports festival has apologized for holding the event, which triggered outrage in Muslim-majority Malaysia and led to the arrest of eight people.

A video of the May gathering, called the "Nude Sport Games 2014", first appeared on social media earlier this month and went viral. 

Police say a California woman was cited after climbing into the giraffe exhibit at a Madison zoo and getting kicked in the face.

A police report says 24-year-old Amanda Hall, of San Luis Obispo, California, climbed over one fence and almost got over the second fence of the giraffe enclosure at the Henry Vilas Zoo about 5:30 p.m. Saturday.

A cat named Gizmo has only minor injuries after a 12-story fall at a Manhattan apartment building.

Owner Samuel Jacobs says Gizmo fell off his penthouse terrace on Tuesday. He crashed onto a third-floor landing and became wedged between a skylight and a wall.

A mother in the advanced stages of labor thought she had just enough time to stop off and register her 4-year-old son at a Houston-area school en route to the hospital. But she was mistaken.

A school nurse and police officer helped Vanessa DeLeon deliver her baby Thursday at the campus clinic of Fisher Elementary School in Pasadena. The boy, named Geovanni, weighed 6 pounds, 3 ounces.

French customs officials destroyed 14,000 inflatable crocodiles shipped from Hong Kong because they did not conform to EU safety regulations.

The blow-up crocs had a host of problems, officials at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport explained on Thursday.

Los Angeles is considering turning voting ballots into lottery tickets.

With fewer than a fourth of voters showing up for recent local elections, the city's Ethics Commission voted to recommend that the City Council consider a cash-prize drawing as an incentive to vote.

The San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/1Bm6coH ) reports that someone has dropped off more than 100 tuxedo cats, which are named for their distinctive black and white markings, at an animal shelter.

Marin Humane Society spokeswoman Lisa Bloch says that on Monday, a car pulled up to the Marin Humane Society in Novato, leaving behind three boxes.

Hello Kitty has been sent on her first space mission, as Japan's global icon of cute celebrates its 40th birthday in extraterrestrial fashion.

A Kitty figure is now circling the Earth aboard a small satellite equipped with a digital message board, part of government-funded project to attract private companies into the space business.