Microsoft's movement-recognition Kinect software has morphed from virtual shooter gaming to the real-life challenge of guarding the world's last Cold War border.

The sensor allowing hands-free play on the Xbox is the basis for a security device now deployed along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea, after being adapted by a South Korean programmer.

The man who was the musical brains behind a supposedly deaf composer dubbed "Japan's Beethoven" claimed Thursday that the mock maestro was not hearing-impaired -- and couldn't even write sheet music.

The startling allegations come a day after composer Mamoru Samuragochi, 50, confessed to hiring another man to write his best-known works, as he shot to fame in the mid-1990s with classical compositions that provided the soundtrack to video games including Resident Evil.

Faced with searing heat, no air conditioning and a ban on wearing shorts to work, a male civil servant in Rio swapped his trousers for his wife's skirt.

Andre Amaral Silva, 41, decided to take sartorial action as the thermometer Tuesday hit 40.8 (105.4 Fahrenheit) and picked out a long black skirt from his wife's wardrobe.

Jamaica's beloved bobsled team had to raise money just to get to Russia.

Now they've arrived at the Sochi Games — but without their equipment.

Police responding to reports of screaming coming from a home in Maine didn't find a victim of domestic violence as they feared. Instead, they found an amorous pig.

State police say a woman called last week after hearing what she believed to be a fight coming from a neighbor's home in the town of China. The caller said she heard screaming and thought there was a domestic assault.

You never know what might fall out of some old albums that cost 50 cents each at a yard sale. Like Marvin Gaye's passport -- which could be worth $20,000 to collectors today.

Issued in October 1964, the expired US passport depicts a smiling Gaye -- then 25, born in Washington on April 2, 1939, six feet (1.8 meters) tall, with brown hair and brown eyes -- along with his authentic signature.

Three waitresses at an Illinois restaurant say they could only stare in disbelief when a woman over the weekend handed them each a $5,000 check.

The owner of the Boone County Family Restaurant in Caledonia, Matt Nebiu, said business was slow Saturday when the customer handed checks to 25-year-old Amy Sabani, 23-year-old Sarah Seckinger and 28-year-old Amber Kariolich.

British football fans: Your cups runneth over.

Prime Minister David Cameron has stepped in to overrule a government department that said bars couldn't stay open late during England's opening match against Italy at the World Cup in Brazil.

Wearing a helmet, balaclava and bullet-proof jacket, a Ukrainian anti-government protester professed his love through a megaphone, got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend as his comrades lit smoke flares.

"Fighting changes people. I see it in myself and I see it in my comrades," the young man said near the Ukrainian opposition's barricaded tent city in the capital Kiev.

Two Iowa couples decided to tie the knot at this weekend's bacon festival at the state fairgrounds in Des Moines.

Tricia Snider and Tom Watson were the first to wed Saturday at the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, the Des Moines Register reported (http://dmreg.co/1gEc994 ). Craig and April Rouch got married a short while later.