Europeans will lose an hour of sleep this Sunday, something most Americans did three weeks ago. And in the fall they'll get it back a week before their U.S. counterparts.

So why this trans-Atlantic divide?

A Canadian judge jailed a tardy juror for delaying a rape trial this week, media reported on Thursday.

Fed up with her dawdling, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Gerald Chartier reportedly discharged the woman known only as "Juror 10" and issued a warrant for her arrest on Wednesday, while the trial continued without her.

New York City's police commissioner announced new restrictions Thursday for cops who want to tweet and post on Facebook.

Police will not be allowed to specify their jobs on YouTube, Facebook and other Internet platforms, NY1 television and the New York Daily News reported. They also can't post photos of themselves in uniform, unless the pictures are from an official function, NY1 reported.

German biologists who uncovered a constellation of new weevil species in New Guinea were stumped to provide names for all their finds until one had the idea of reaching for the phone book.

If your family name is Morea -- found on page 275 of the Papua New Guinea Telephone Directory of 2010 -- you may be interested to know that you have been immortalised with a species of small shiny beetle called Trigonopterus moreaorum.

An ancient statue of Mars has lost its fake penis and his counterpart Venus her hands, in the reversal of cosmetic changes ordered by Italy's ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

In 2010 Berlusconi decided the two marble statues adorning the official residence of the prime minister were "incomplete" and ordered a swift intervention to remedy their shortcomings.

A sea lion pup startled guests after waddling from a California beach into a nearby luxury hotel, where it pitched up at the patio bar.

Shane Pappas, manager of the Pantai Inn in La Jolla, said he was alerted when staff found the malnourished animal. "I got an email saying that we had a sea lion pup lounging on our patio," he said.

Fed up with the neighbors? Pipes burst in the kitchen? Or, you just want to get away from it all for a while?

Hotel Finn in the heart of Helsinki might just be the ticket — they're seeking a "professional sleeper" for 35 days to test their rooms and write all about it.

A 25-year-old mother whose two young children starved to death surrounded by rubbish after she locked them in her apartment has been sentenced to 30 years in jail in Japan, reports said Wednesday.

Single mother Sanae Nakamura regularly left her daughter, 3, and one-year-old son, in the apartment in western Osaka while she spent the night at her boyfriend's house, reports said.

Brazilian advertising regulators have warned a brewer over an ad for beer-flavored ice cream, saying it could tempt children and adolescents to drink.

The warning by the National Council for Self-Regulation focuses on an ad on the Skol brand's website and Facebook page which shows a yellow ice cream box with a lid similar to that of a beer can and the caption: "Shall we go to the bar to have an ice cream?"

French police were left baffled Wednesday following the discovery of a charred corpse hanging from a railway cable above tracks in Paris.

Detectives were at a loss to explain how the unidentifiable corpse could have got to where it was found overnight as there was no bridge anywhere near the spot.