Pope Francis joked during a visit to Albania that Mother Teresa would have struck fear into him if she had been his mother superior, the Vatican spokesman said Monday.

"She spoke her mind," Francis told the Albanian priest acting as his interpreter during the visit on Sunday, according to papal spokesman Federico Lombardi.

Amid the furor over the NFL's handling of recent domestic abuse incidents, there was a heart-warming moment in Seattle Sunday as Seahawk DeShawn Shead proposed to his girlfriend.

The cornerback proposed at midfield shortly after Seattle's 26-20 overtime win over Denver and she accepted, the team reported via Twitter.

The Asian Games' symbolic flame went out before the first day of competition had even ended, red-faced organizers admitted.

The cauldron at the main Incheon stadium, lit at a grand opening ceremony on Friday night, went out for 10 minutes late Saturday, organizing committee officials said.

Japanese parents watched with glee on Sunday as sumo wrestlers tried to reduce their babies to tears, in a centuries-old ritual believed to bring good health to bawling infants.

More than a hundred sobbing babies were subjected to the ordeal at Tokyo's Irugi Shrine, with their doting parents watching happily as the amateur wrestlers bounced them up and down in a makeshift sumo ring.

Poles have long been a staple of smoky strip clubs, but the women scaling and swinging from them in Las Vegas earlier this month weren't doing it for dollar bills.

Many of the attendees at the 3rd Annual Pole Expo are taking the lead of expo founder Fawnia Dietrich and refining their slinky craft as a workout activity.

A French criminal came up with a cunning plan to escape the long arm of the law by announcing his own funeral, which both the police and his unsuspecting granny attended.

The 26-year-old, wanted for a long list of offences including fraud and theft, placed a death notice in the Ouest-France regional paper and online.

A German avant-garde director and his crew spent a night in police custody over a racy nude scene shot in one of Greece's top monuments, a culture ministry source said on Friday.

Matthias Langhoff, 73, a naturalized French citizen, ran afoul of authorities whilst filming in the ancient theatre of Epidaurus in the Peloponnese late on Wednesday.

With no surreptitious phone call or text message on an illicit hot stock tip safe from US regulators, Frank Tamayo thought he had a perfect no-tech foil: post-it notes.

According to charges filed Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, for more than five years Tamayo used to turn over lucrative insider tips to his stock broker written on the small sticky notes.

Bolivian President Evo Morales said he plans to open a barbeque restaurant after retiring from politics, a local newspaper reported Friday.

Morales is slated to win next year's election to serve a third term until 2020, after he could turn his attentions from politics to hospitality.

Athletes are snapping up thousands of free condoms being given out at the Asian Games, organizers said Thursday.

"We've been handing out condoms over the past three days but their daily ration of 5,000 runs out quickly every day," Choi Hyeung-Dae, a games organizing committee official told Agence France Presse.