Fancy a holiday in a sea of junk? Environmentalists in the United States are offering "eco-adventurers" the chance to do just that.

From May 1 next year, the Sea Dragon will sail for two months through sections of the North Pacific Ocean swirling with debris from the March 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan, organizers said Wednesday.

A British curry house was in hot water Wednesday after a competition to find out who could stomach most of its infamous "Kismot Killer" curry ended up with two participants hospitalized.

Emergency services are demanding a review into the tournament after they were called to the Kismot restaurant in the Scottish capital Edinburgh on Saturday following reports that some competitors were "very unwell".

Several Chinese online stores are offering die-hard Apple fans the opportunity to buy the much-anticipated next-generation iPhone 5. There's just one catch -- the U.S. tech giant hasn't released it yet.

The fake smartphones are available for as little as 200 Yuan ($31) on hugely popular websites such as China's largest online marketplace Taobao.com, which has 370 million registered users.

Revelers at the world's biggest beer festival slurped down a record number of ales, taking advantage of balmy late summer weather, organizers said Tuesday as the festivities closed.

A total of 6.9 million visitors staggered around the cavernous beer tents in Munich, guzzling 7.5 million "steins", liter-sized measures of the amber nectar, despite a record high price of nine euros ($12).

An Algerian teenager set himself on fire in front of horrified high school classmates after failing final exams and not being allowed to repeat his senior year, a report said Tuesday.

The 19-year-old was in critical condition at a hospital in the western town of Oran after the incident that unfolded at the Souiyah El Houari high school on Monday, the French-language Quotidien d'Oran reported.

Spain's fabulously wealthy 85-year-old Duchess of Alba faced a topless photo scandal Tuesday on the eve of her wedding to a civil servant 25 years her junior.

A 30-year-old photograph of the duchess as she sunbathed topless in Ibiza was splashed on the cover of the racy Spanish magazine Interviu, reportedly prompting a legal threat.

Lithuanian basketball legend Arvydas Sabonis said Tuesday he would have to limit his pleasures after suffering a heart attack a week ago, as doctors decided to release him from hospital.

"The doctors told me, 'You can't smoke, you can't drink, and you can't play basketball.' So of the things I like, only sex is left," Sabonis told Lithuanian media at the clinic in his hometown, the central city of Kaunas.

Scientists on Sunday said they had gained insights into a remarkable bacterium that lives without oxygen and transforms ammonium, the ingredient of urine, into hydrazine, a rocket fuel.

So-called anammox -- for anaerobic ammonium oxidation -- germs caused a sensation when they were first identified in the 1990s, but uncovering their secrets is taking time.

Trade unions Monday kicked up a storm in Belgium over a rule ordering 10,000 French-speaking civil servants to clock out whenever they stop work for a smoke, with each minute sliced off their wages.

"The rule is that when you go out or come back into a building you clock in," Hugo Poliart, the spokesman for the administration of the French-speaking Wallonia region, told Agence France Presse.

A German man drove around 15 kilometers (nine miles) on the wrong side of a motorway in Austria early on Sunday morning, miraculously causing no accidents, police said.

The man, 36, who was found to be over the legal limit for alcohol, was stopped near Salzburg at around 5.45 am (0345 GMT), telling police he had "turned around on the motorway after noticing his mistake."