A man with an apparent case of arachnophobia caused a fire at a suburban Detroit gas pump by putting a lighter to what he says was a spider near his fuel door.

WJBK-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1Fqtbo5 ) Saturday that he escaped injury and his vehicle suffered little damage, but the gas pump was destroyed. A clerk shut off the pump from indoors and called the fire department.

Maya Donnelly awoke to what sounded like thunder in the early morning hours, but dismissed it as a typical monsoon storm and went back to sleep.

Later that morning, she looked in the carport at her home in Nogales, near the U.S.-Mexico border, and saw pieces of wood on the ground. She found a bulky bundle wrapped in black plastic.

A macaque monkey who took now-famous selfie photographs should be declared the copyright owner of the photos, rather than the nature photographer who positioned the camera, animal-rights activists contend in a novel lawsuit.

The suit was filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Matthew Murraine wants to know who swiped his 100-pound pumpkin.

Murraine has been growing a type of large pumpkin at his home in Spearfish, South Dakota, this summer. Last Friday, someone stole the largest one in a heist Murraine believes was carefully planned.

An 8-year-old girl received a one-day suspension from her southern New Jersey public elementary school for wearing a shirt that was the wrong shade of green.

The girl's mother tells WTXF-TV (http://bit.ly/1MJ0vsL ) that Winslow Township Elementary School No. 4 sent her daughter home Tuesday for wearing a kelly green polo shirt, which was deemed to be in violation of the Camden County school's dress code.

Pope Francis wasn't the only person to drink from the glass of water he used during his speech to Congress. An enterprising Democratic congressman from Philadelphia also took a sip.

U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, a Roman Catholic, told the Philadelphia Daily News (http://bit.ly/1iQthvf ) that as the pope left the chamber Thursday, the lawmaker headed to the lectern to grab Francis' drinking glass.

The company behind a chatty Japanese humanoid named Pepper has felt the need to remind customers who purchase the robots not to engage in sex with them.

Mobile phone giant SoftBank, which sells the units in Japan, states helpfully in its user agreement: "The policy owner must not perform any sexual act or other indecent behaviour."

An Italian student is appealing for the public to crowdfund his PhD research into the mafia so he can shed new light on organised crime on the streets of Naples where the powerful Camorra syndicate holds sway.

After being rebuffed by supervisors in Italy who thought studying statistics beat infiltrating the grimy world of extortioners and victims, Mario Trifuoggi decided to move his PhD to London and ask donors to help with the costs.

Creative drug smugglers in Argentina fused rice with cocaine and tried to ship nearly 1,000 bags to Europe marked as donations for a U.N. food program in Africa, police said Wednesday.

Authorities seized 920 bags of the special rice in the city of Rosario, north of the capital Buenos Aires, and arrested the gang behind the unusual ruse.

Bolivia has a novel idea to cut down the salt intake of its people: banish it from restaurant tables.

About a third of Bolivia's population suffers from hypertension, or high blood pressure, and the government blames salt for it.