The head of Mexico's consumer protection agency was fired Wednesday after a scandal erupted over his daughter's bid to close a restaurant that denied her the table she wanted.

President Enrique Pena Nieto sacked Humberto Benitez, chief of the Federal Consumer Prosecutor's Office (Profeco), because the case had "damaged the image and prestige of the institution," said Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong.

British embassies were asked if they could silence a cockerel and order an unfit husband to shape up, among other "bizarre" requests for help in the last 12 months, the Foreign Office said Thursday.

A man asked consular staff in Rome to translate a phrase for a tattoo he wanted, while another man asked the Stockholm embassy if they could check out the credentials of a woman he met online.

What could be a World War II era recipe for Coca-Cola's secret formula found a buyer Wednesday on eBay -- a 15-year-old who now has three days to come up with $15 million to pay for it.

Georgia antiques dealer Cliff Kluge listed the yellowing typewritten document -- found among papers at a Tennessee estate sale -- with an opening bid of $5 million and a buy-it-now price of $15 million as a publicity stunt.

A coin toss has decided the lucky winner of mayor for a small Philippine town, after rival candidates were tied at the end the vote count, an election official said Thursday.

The dramatic conclusion to the contest for San Teodoro, a farming town of about 16,000 people in the central Philippines, took place in the local election office, with the politicians tossing the coin to decide their fate.

Not only is "prostitution" a tagged skill you can select on LinkedIn*, there are actually escorts who advertise their services on the professional networking site. Now LinkedIn is making sure everyone knows that the practice is not OK.

LinkedIn just changed its privacy policy and user agreement and now explicitly bans escorts from using the site to get clients. The new user agreement states that you must not: "Create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution" even if prostitution is legal where you live.

With a frost warning in effect in parts of Canada, an Ottawa area farmer reportedly sent a helicopter to hover over his apple orchard overnight Monday in an unusual effort to save his crop.

Temperatures in the Ottawa region fell to -2 degrees Celsius (28 Fahrenheit) at about 3 a.m. (0700 GMT) early Tuesday morning.

A large rainforest plant known as a corpse flower because of its awful smell has bloomed again at an Ohio State University greenhouse, and there's more excitement because another corpse flower there is expected to open soon, a spokeswoman said.

A 6-foot (1.8-meter) titan arum, nicknamed Woody after former Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, opened Tuesday to reveal its bold, reddish-purple color and release its rotting-flesh smell a little over two years after it first flowered.

The giant inflatable rubber duck which has attracted tens of thousands of visitors since it sailed into Hong Kong two weeks ago was reduced to a sad deflated disc Wednesday in the city's harbor.

Duck mania has gripped Hong Kong since its arrival, with locals and tourists flocking to catch a glimpse of the 16.5-meter-tall (54-feet) artwork, conceived by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman.

A wealthy Chinese Maserati owner hired four sledgehammer-wielding men to smash up his $420,000 supercar in protest at poor customer service, reports said Wednesday.

The car owner, identified only by his surname Wang, had the group attack the Maserati Quattroporte at the opening of an auto show in the eastern city of Qingdao, in Shandong province, the Qingdao Morning Post said.

The annual rush to the hills by villagers keen to harvest a rare aphrodisiac fungus dubbed "Himalayan Viagra" has emptied rural schools in Nepal and forced them to shut, a local official said Tuesday.

Parents, students and even teachers have left home in pursuit of "yarchagumba", a high-altitude caterpillar fungus which is eagerly sought for its reputed sexual enhancement.