A court in Nepal has convicted 19 villagers over the murder of a group of farmers during a fight over a prized aphrodisiac plant dubbed the "Himalayan Viagra", an official said Tuesday.

Seven farmers were killed in the remote northern district of Manang in June 2009 after going to forage for Yarchagumba, a rare parasitic plant that is a major source of income for many Himalayan communities.

An American and an Iraqi will take flight from Baghdad, but not in a plane, or one of the helicopters that frequently buzz over the city: instead, they will fly in lawn chairs lifted by party balloons.

"In the spring of 2012, U.S. citizen Kent Couch and Iraqi pilot Captain Fareed Abdul-Zahra al-Saadi will launch a cluster balloon craft to raise awareness of the plight of Iraqi orphans as well as attempt to break multiple cluster balloon flying records," an emailed statement from Couch's spokesman said.

A man who lost a coin-tossing gambling game at a carnival in the Philippines hurled a grenade at other players, killing a teenager and injuring 22 people, according to police.

The suspect was furious because he believed another player at the gaming venue had cheated him, said local police chief Senior Inspector Jordaen Maribojo.

Ugandan police say they have arrested a man for "abusing the presidency" after he built a pigsty out of old election posters featuring the president's face.

Officer John Kuusa says the 35-year-old taxi dispatcher's decision to construct his pigsty out of the images of President Yoweri Museveni led to his Friday arrest. Kuusa said Saturday that George Kiberu used the durable posters for the roof, the walls, and as plates for the pigs.

A popular Hawaiian recording artist turned a top-security dinner of Pacific Rim leaders hosted by President Barack Obama into a subtle protest with a song in support of the "Occupy" movement.

Makana, who goes by one name, was enlisted to play a luau, or Hawaiian feast, Saturday night for leaders assembled in Obama's birthplace Honolulu for an annual summit that is formulating plans for a Pacific free-trade pact.

Thieves have snatched a copper sword from the burial site of president Abraham Lincoln, one of the most revered leaders in US history, local media reported.

The roughly three-foot (90-centimeter) sword was brandished by the statue of a Civil War artillery officer at the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site, located in Springfield, Illinois.

While other national leaders play golf or ride horses to relax, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono says he composes songs.

One of his compositions -- on the environment -- was played just before he spoke to business leaders on Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Simon Klemenjak does some street dance moves and throws his hands up in the air to cheer on the crowd before he starts singing to the techno beat in front of the altar in the Church of All Saints in Stockholm.

Instead of praying silently and singing gentle hymns, the congregation inside raves to techno sounds in ultraviolet lighting at Friday's "techno Mass" — more like a disco at a youth center than a service conducted by the Lutheran church.

More than 2,000 people marched in Hong Kong's gay pride parade Saturday, as campaigners called for the enactment of laws to ban discrimination against homosexuals.

The crowd, mainly from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community (LGBT), as well as their supporters and sex workers, paraded through the city centre in a carnival-like atmosphere during the hour-long procession.

Police in the Swiss town of Grenchen were investigating Friday after four pigs' heads were found buried at the site of a planned mosque.

Officers in the Solothurn canton were tipped off by media who received an anonymous letter stating that 120 liters of pigs' blood had been poured over the grounds in protest at the country's "rampant Islamisation."