U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was forced to rough it on an overnight bus to meet Argentine leaders on Monday because of Chile's volcanic ash cloud. Worse still -- it was his birthday.

Ban became the highest-profile person to fall victim as the eruption of Chile's Puyehue volcano, high in the Andes, entered a second week, spewing ash that has disrupted air travel from South America to Australia.

Astronomers in parts of Europe, Africa, Central Asia and Australia were hoping for clear skies on Wednesday to enjoy a total lunar eclipse, the first of 2011 and the longest in nearly 11 years.

A total lunar eclipse occurs when Earth casts its shadow over the Moon.

Animal rights activists and thousands of members of the public expressed outrage Wednesday over a photo on Facebook showing a puppy pegged to a clothes line in the Philippines.

The photo was apparently posted by a young Filipino man on his Facebook account, where he initially ignored reprimands by pet lovers and boasted he would not be jailed for "washing" his dog.

Finland's foreign ministry on Monday won the Steam Spirit Prize for promoting sauna culture abroad, organizers said, hailing Finnish diplomats for using saunas to help forge international relations.

"The prize is given for a deed, a person or an event promoting sauna culture. The recipient meets all these criteria," Sauna Society chairman Ben Grass said in a statement.

A pair of round-framed spectacles belonging to India's independence icon Mahatma Gandhi have gone missing from a museum in western India, officials said.

Staff at the Sevagram Ashram, a religious retreat some 75 kilometers (47 miles) from the city of Nagpur, noticed that the glasses had disappeared as they made preparations to mark the anniversary of its founding.

The world's first mother-daughter uterus transplant could take place next year in Sweden, the head of an international research team in the western Swedish city of Gothenburg said Tuesday.

"We have reached a stage where we have started to plan for a human transplant and we are investigating 10 pairs, most of those are mother and daughters," Mats Braenstroem told Agence France Presse, adding the first of such transplants could take place "hopefully at the beginning of next year."

The Dead Sea is dying, goes the conventional wisdom: The water level of the fabled salty lake is dropping nearly 4 feet (1.2 meters) a year. Less well known: Part of the lake is actually overflowing, threatening one of Israel's key tourism destinations.

Israel is feverishly campaigning to have the Dead Sea — the lowest point on earth and repository of precious minerals — named one of the natural wonders of the world. At the same time, it's racing to stabilize what it calls "the world's largest natural spa" so hotels on its southern end aren't swamped and tourists can continue to soak in the lake's therapeutic waters.

Salem, the Massachusetts city of 41,000 souls is so closely identified with its witch history that flying witch logos adorn police cars and Salem High School's mascot is a witch.

But town leaders have rebranded the image to downplay witchy things and emphasize other aspects such as museums, dining, and its rich maritime history.

State police in Michigan are trying to find who left what appear to be a grandmother's cremated remains in an urn at a Goodwill store near Flint, Michigan.

Fenton Goodwill store manager Allen Ryckman says "it's got to be the No. 1 or No. 2 weirdest item" the store has ever received. He says it appears to have come from a house that was cleaned out.

President of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi told him over a game of chess in Tripoli on Sunday he had no plans to stand down or leave his country.

As fighting between Gadhafi's forces and Libyan insurgents raged across western Libya, the Russian eccentric who once claimed he hosted extraterrestrials, also sat down for a game of chess with Gadhafi's eldest son Muhammad and the two played the Sicilian defense, Russia's Interfax news agency said.