Zeus, the Great Dane who in 2012 earned the Guinness World Record as tallest dog in the world, has died at age five, a local U.S. newspaper said Friday.

Zeus died last week of old age, owner Kevin Doorlag told the Kalamazoo Gazette, a local daily in the midwestern U.S. state of Michigan. He would have celebrated his sixth birthday in November.

A little luck goes a long way as Rory McIlroy benefited from his ball landing in a fan's pocket in the second round of the Tour Championship.

McIlroy smacked his drive on the par-four No. 14 into the trees on the right side of the fairway only to have it land into a spectator's pocket.

An Argentine couple has won an exemption from a strict dictatorship-era law on baby names to pay homage to the father's football hero by calling their newborn son Messi.

Daniel Varela had been on a mission to name his firstborn son for Lionel Messi after first seeing the Barcelona striker play for Argentina's national youth team.

Thieves have picked clean a pumpkin patch that had been cultivated by New Mexico preschoolers.

Eastern New Mexico University's Child Development Center said the Portales school's pumpkin patch was raided sometime over the weekend after students had worked for months growing the pumpkins.

Bai Yun, the San Diego Zoo's giant female panda, has been known to chew on bamboo up to 12 hours a day, so when she chipped a lower tooth, veterinarians had to fix it.

The 23-year-old panda went to the dentist Wednesday, got a shot to make her numb and got the chip repaired, a cleaning and X-rays.

Japan's vast pornography industry is desperately short of men, one actor claims, insisting even the endangered Bengal Tiger is more numerous.

A veteran porn star known only as Shimiken says he is one of just 70 male actors, with just a handful of them doing all the heavy lifting.

Proof of Haverhill High School boys' swimming team's 1978 Massachusetts state championship is finally returning home.

For decades, the trophy commemorating one the greatest achievements in school athletic history has been missing.

Police in Michigan say they arrested a shoplifting suspect following her slow-speed getaway in a $1,200 motorized wheelchair shopping cart taken from a Wal-Mart.

The Muskegon Chronicle (http://bit.ly/1wgjeQT ) says police located 46-year-old Shirley Mason about 2 miles away, riding the cart with $600 in clothing.

A burglar planning to rob a Florida home stole a little nap instead and ended up in handcuffs, officials said on Wednesday.

The man -- apparently overcome with exhaustion -- laid down on a bed at the home during a burglary on Monday, and fell into a deep sleep, the local sheriff's department told Agence France Presse.

Polish villagers got a surprise when half a dozen U.S. military helicopters emerged from heavy fog to make an emergency landing in a rapeseed field.

Onlookers responded "first with worry and bewilderment, then curiosity," Stanislaw Raginiak from the office of the rural county of Gruta said Wednesday.