FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A South Florida man thought he snagged a deal when he paid $9,100 in an online auction for what he thought was a villa. What he got was a 1-foot-by-100-foot (0.3-meter-by-30-meter) strip of land.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Five kittens that stowed away on a 400-mile trip to San Diego are looking for new homes.
GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — A fast-food favorite in Texas is getting some artsy attention.
BERLIN (AP) — A paternity test on a baby orangutan has come back with a surprising result.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Krispy Kreme has stepped in to comfort Kentucky police officers mourning the loss of a doughnut truck that caught fire.
IBI, Spain (AP) — Every year since Roman times, it's been a pitched battle for control of the Spanish town of Ibi.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — It's a busy time for Santa Claus, but he's making time to feed some fish in San Francisco.
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (AP) — Police in Florida say a 23-year-old man went through a McDonald's drive-thru and tried to pay for his order with a bag of marijuana.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Officials say a squirrel is to blame for power outages that affected thousands of people in upstate New York.
PARIS (AP) — France's customs agency says it's made an extremely surprising discovery in a garage in Marseille: a lion cub.
NEWRY, Maine (AP) — Baseball's fall classic focuses on an American pastime. A Maine ski resort has its own fall classic based on a Finnish tradition.
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man is accused of stealing 150 pounds (68 kilograms) of waffle mix from a former employer and flipping it to a syrupy stream of buyers.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Robbing a Store 101: Take the money and run — but not before checking your getaway car's gas tank.
READING, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man who admitted he drunkenly fired a shotgun inside his apartment because he feared there were clowns inside could spend the next five years in prison.
MOSCOW (AP) — Officials in Moscow say a U.S. citizen has been detained in Russia's Far East after accidently sailing there from Alaska on a small boat.
HONOLULU (AP) — Scientists are touting the first sighting of a hybrid between a melon-headed whale and a rough-toothed dolphin in the ocean off Hawaii. But don't call it a "wholphin," they say.
Mark Hough had barely taken a sip of his Friday afternoon margarita when he heard twigs snapping and leaves rustling in his lush Altadena, California, backyard.
OGDEN, Utah (AP) — The force is with them.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A 2-year-old boy who climbed into a claw machine at a Pennsylvania laundromat while trying to retrieve a plush toy was rescued by emergency workers — but never got his prize.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A U.S. appeals court on Monday favored humans over animals in a novel copyright lawsuit filed over a series of entertaining selfies taken by a monkey with a toothy grin.
LOWER BURRELL, Pa. (AP) — Attention all shoppers: wedding in aisle 13.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Lab results have revealed the answer to a mystery at an Oklahoma zoo: Just what caused a female lion to sprout a mane.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A video of an orangutan smoking has brought more criticism of a zoo in Indonesia infamous for past animal welfare troubles.
Dogs, cats and even pigs and miniature horses have made it into airline passenger cabins as emotional support animals in recent years.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Archaic laws that are a holdover from a time when people fought in duels a la Alexander Hamilton and rode horses on highways would be struck from the books in Rhode Island if a lawmaker has his way.
SPEARFISH, S.D. (AP) — Monday marks the 75th anniversary of a startling weather event that put a western South Dakota city in the record books: In just two minutes, the temperature in Spearfish jumped from negative 4 degrees (-20 Celsius) to 45 degrees (7 Celsius) on Jan. 22, 1943.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia father put the city's signature sandwich to use in a whole new way: measuring his baby's size in cheesesteaks.
ERIE (AP) — A Pennsylvania woman says she went online to check her electric bill and was stunned at the amount — more than $284 billion.
BYRAM, Miss. (AP) — A 5-year-old Mississippi boy called 911 to report that the Grinch was trying to steal Christmas.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Reindeer are supposed to pull Santa Claus' sleigh, but in Oregon recently, a red-suited man on a sled wound up pushing a deer.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A Delta flight from New York City to Seattle had to make a stop in Billings after the plane's toilets stopped working and passengers couldn't hold it any longer.
PLAINS, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man who always joked that he wanted to take something to eat when he died has gotten his wish.
MINOT, N.D. (AP) — The U.S. Air Force says its tweet declaring Santa Claus "isn't real" was just a bluff, part of a threat to steal Christmas from two feuding bases.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Twitter user has earned kudos online for discovering a subtle message on KFC's account.
PARMA, Ohio (AP) — A two-story, "Star Wars"-inspired Halloween yard display in Ohio is enticing kids to get toy lightsabers and attracting hundreds of visitors from across the state.
SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. (AP) — A wetsuit, air tank and flippers usually aren't the preferred attire for carving a pumpkin, but about 30 people required them over the weekend.
BALTIMORE (AP) — An unusual smell prompted an evacuation and a hazardous materials response at a Baltimore high school. But after five people were taken to the hospital complaining of upset stomachs, fire officials discovered the source of the smell: a pumpkin spice air freshener.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburgh police say they're looking for a clumsy crook who robbed a convenience store while wearing a Darth Vader mask.
ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — For a stowaway who made a 16-kilometer (10-mile) journey squeezed in a wheel arch, a koala was lucky to escape with just scratches.
STOCKBRIDGE, Ga. (AP) — Police have confirmed that a tiger that was running loose on a Georgia highway was shot and killed.
DEVILS TOWER, Wyo. (AP) — Just like in the science-fiction movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," UFO enthusiasts are being drawn to a strange geological formation in Wyoming.
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — A Virginia man returned home from a trip and found that his apartment had been broken into — and cleaned.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — It was a woolly ride, but three wild rabbits managed to escape rising floodwaters in New Zealand by clambering aboard sheep and surfing to safety on their backs.
DEPOE BAY, Ore. (AP) — A truck hauling eels overturned on an Oregon highway, turning the coastal road into a slimy mess.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — There's an upswing in monkey business in and around a state park in Florida, where bands of non-native rhesus macaques live along a river that's popular with kayakers and tourists.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Some runners didn't expect to see a bear on their Colorado race route.
CINCINNATI (AP) — The Cincinnati Zoo's prematurely born hippo named Fiona is getting a new beer in her honor.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina man is trying to explain how his car ended up in a swimming pool.
PENNSAUKEN, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey high school student who hopes to become a funeral director has surprised her classmates by arriving at her prom in an open prop coffin.
ASHWAUBENON, Wis. (AP) — A student dressed as a storm trooper for "Star Wars Day" prompted the evacuation of a Wisconsin high school when a frightened parent saw the costumed figure entering the facility and called 911.
AKRON, Ohio (AP) — Police say an Ohio man called 911 to request a police dog to help track down heroin allegedly stolen from him.
