A court ruling in Italy this week has put an end to a 39-year legal dispute between Oscar-winning film star Sophia Loren and Italian tax authorities, Italian media reported on Thursday.

The 79-year-old Loren, who lives in Switzerland, was quoted as saying she was happy with a ruling by the supreme court that said her 1974 tax return was indeed covered by a 1982 tax amnesty.

Creepy crawlies, in the form of a venomous spider infestation, has forced a school in Britain to close a week before Halloween.

The Dean Academy, a secondary school in southwest England's Gloucestershire, said it was closing Wednesday to get rid of the false widow spiders. The spiders are commonly mistaken for their relative, the black widow spider, whose bite can be fatal.

A restaurant billed as America's first toilet-themed eatery has just opened in Los Angeles -- and is packing in diners after a wave of free publicity for the concept, said to be imported from Asia.

The Magic Restroom restaurant, where customers sit on ceramic bathroom bowls and eat from toilet-shaped tableware, did brisk business on its first fully open weekend.

A Prague artist has given Czech President Milos Zeman the finger -- a huge purple one floating on the river -- to protest against his soft spot for old-school Communists just days before a snap election.

"It's a middle-fingered salute at the fucking Communist shits in (Prague) Castle," outspoken artist David Cerny told local media on Tuesday.

A Romanian man who has admitted to stealing masterpieces by Gauguin, Monet and Picasso on Tuesday threatened to sue the Dutch museum he took them from for making his robbery too easy.

Radu Dogaru is among six Romanians on trial for last year's spectacular three-minute heist from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam which stunned the art world.

Australian researchers have found tiny particles of gold hidden inside the leaves of eucalyptus trees, in a discovery they say could help prospectors discover new deposits of the precious metal.

Scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) made the find in the resource-rich Kalgoorlie region of Western Australia, which was the site of a major gold rush in the late 1800s.

The Vatican served up tea and cucumber sandwiches on Tuesday as it launched its own cricket club, and challenged the Church of England to a match.

With the coat of arms of St. Peter's as its symbol, the club will give priests and seminarians -- and eventually nuns -- a new outlet for their sporting passions, said officials at the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Robot researchers in Japan have proved what entertainers from Elvis Presley to Miley Cyrus knew all along: the secret is in the hips.

But where Elvis "The Pelvis" gyrated his way to 1950s fame and one-time child star Cyrus attained instant Internet notoriety with her recent awards show "twerking", the engineers just wanted to make their robots walk more naturally.

A University of Central Missouri graphic design professor has knitted his way into the record books while running the Kansas City Marathon.

The Kansas City Star (http://is.gd/mUstzF ) reports that David Babcock finished the marathon in 5 hours, 48 minutes and 27 seconds.

A cat has been busted for smuggling pot into a prison in Moldova.

Guards became suspicious about the feline, which routinely entered and left the prison through a hole in a fence, when they noticed its odd collar. On closer inspection, they found two packets of marijuana attached to it.