A 10-year-old U.S. girl is being credited for helping save her grandfather's life after noticing, thanks to her science fair project, that he was having a stroke.

Sophia Tabors of St. Louis, Missouri, told a local television station she decided to study strokes after one of her grandfathers had one. The ensuing project by the fourth-grader won a second-place ribbon.

Authorities say a cyclist started a 73-acre wildfire in southwest Idaho by lighting his toilet paper on fire after taking a comfort break.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials say the cyclist stopped to defecate in a ravine in the Boise foothills on Wednesday afternoon. The man then lit the toilet paper on fire but lost control of the embers in the dry grass while trying to extinguishing the waste.

A man who thought he spotted a lion that people have reported seeing wandering on Milwaukee's north side has shot and injured a large pit bull.

Police say the dog, which was shot Tuesday night, is being cared for at the Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission.

U.S. President Barack Obama is a man of many musical talents –- proven with previous public performances –- but rapping, he admits, just isn't one of them.

Speaking at the Beating the Odds youth summit in Washington Thursday, Obama said his hip-hop rhyming skills are not among his greatest musical assets.

Polish TV presenter Robert Bernatowicz used to hate Warsaw's colossal Palace of Culture, an unwanted gift from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin that opened 60 years ago this week. But that was before he broke into the building.

"I heard there was a tunnel where a fancy secret train ran between the Communist Party's headquarters and the palace. And I had this vision I'd find it," he told Agence France Presse.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to give Silvio Berlusconi Russian citizenship -- and the job of economy minister -- the disgraced Italian billionaire politician was quoted as saying Thursday.

"In Italy, I have been relegated to the sidelines, but Putin has told me he is willing to give me citizenship, and entrust me with running the economy ministry," La Stampa newspaper quoted him as saying at a dinner party.

A long march by China's armed police towards feet that do not smell appears to be nearing its end, with military leaders announcing "liberation shoes" dating back six decades will be "honorably discharged".

New breathable black canvas footwear will be distributed to members of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) paramilitary police, the force's website said.

A Japanese zoo is trying to do the impossible -- improve the image of cockroaches, putting on an exhibition of one of the world's most hated insects.

With a whopping -- and disgusting -- 4,000 species around the planet, the hardy creature can survive almost anywhere, but is most commonly encountered by city-dwellers in grubby corners of the kitchen, or roaming around the floor at night.

Japanese Twitter users were howling in derision Wednesday after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used paper models and cut-out firefighters on television, in his latest attempt to explain controversial security legislation.

Apparently concerned about declining public support and suspicion of bills that will allow so-called "collective defence", Abe used props on two different programmes to try to persuade the public of his case.

Scrabble lovers tend to alight on similar words when describing Nigel Richards, the New Zealander who this week won the word game's francophone world championship even though he cannot speak any French.

"Freak" comes up a lot, along with "elusive", "enigmatic" and, the highest-scoring of all, "amazing". He is also, ironically, described as "a man of few words".