Dalmatians, the ultimate menswear accessory, and a clutch of sporting greats are just some of the national successes that Croatia will bring to the EU when it joins the bloc on July 1.

"At all events, people who deny the influence of Europe's 'smaller nations' should remember that the Croats have the rest of us by the throat," wrote Norman Davies in his book "Europe: A History".

One small rodent is getting the blame for a massive power outage in southern and eastern sections of Wichita.

KAKE-TV reports nearly 10,000 customers of Westar Energy were affected by the outage Monday afternoon.

A plucky pigeon that flew across the Pacific Ocean from Japan will be bred by a bird lover in Canada hoping its progeny will make top long-distance racers, an animal rescue official said.

The pigeon was discovered tired and thin at a Canadian air force base on Vancouver Island in westernmost Canada and taken to an animal rescue center near Comox, British Columbia where it was treated for a common bird parasite and nursed back to health.

U.S. actor and campaigner Arnold Schwarzenegger said people should be free to drive big cars and enjoy all-day jacuzzis without feeling guilty about environmental consequences on his first visit on Monday to the European Commission in Brussels.

The Hollywood star, known for his lavish tastes in his eight years in office as governor of California, defended his own fleet of military-style Hummer vehicles saying he had changed the engines so that they were not "gas-guzzling" any more.

Fiji's national carrier Air Pacific announced Monday it will no longer carry shark fins that come from unsustainable or unverified sources.

The airline said it had carried out a month-long review of its freight policies and decided to only accept shark products from sustainable sources which did not involve threatened species.

French police on Saturday said they have recovered a pet lynx that escaped from its Russian owners while they were vacationing in the jet-set haven of Saint-Tropez.

"There's a lot of extravagance here and you have to be innovative. Before, it was just a question of beautiful cars," an officer told Agence France Presse.

Transport operators in northern Japan are sprinkling wolf urine near roads and broadcasting the roar of lions near train tracks in a bid to keep deer away and reduce accidents, officials said Monday.

Nexco East, an expressway operator, imports wolf urine from the United States to spray on the highways it operates in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands.

Dutch police on Saturday briefly detained two brothers aged five and seven who crashed a car after a mile-long joyride.

"A police patrol this morning saw a car with the doors open and two young boys stood next to it," in Bloemendael, west of Amsterdam, police spokeswoman Lenny Beijerbergen told Agence France Presse.

A huge-headed, duck-footed mix of beagle, boxer and basset hound was the upset winner Friday at the 25th annual World's Ugliest Dog Contest.

Walle (WAHL-ee), a 4-year-old mutt from Chico, California who was entered at the last minute, was judged most unsightly of 30 dogs at the Northern California competition.

Most criminals would give anything to get out of jail, but two armed robbers in Switzerland decided Friday to turn that on its head, barging into a Geneva jail in broad daylight to steal cash.

The two black-clad men, one of them with a handgun, got into the Montfleury remand center and made off with an undisclosed sum, said a Geneva police statement that did not provide further details.