A 13-year-old Belgian boy and his mother who made off with armfuls of toy Smurfs have been nabbed with the haul of small blue heroes dreamt up by a Belgian comic-book author, police said Monday.

Staged weeks ahead of the worldwide release of the much-awaited Hollywood movie on Peyo's Smurfs, the heist took place Friday in a supermarket outside Ghent.

Joey "Jaws" Chestnut put away 62 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes on Monday to win a U.S. gorging contest worthy of ancient Rome, earning the coveted mustard-yellow belt for the fifth consecutive time.

A fabled stop on the world's puzzlingly fascinating competitive eating tour, "Nathan's Famous" hot dog parlor in New York's suitably cheesy Coney Island hosts the exercise in sheer gluttony each Independence Day holiday.

Australians, renowned for their sporting prowess in cricket and rugby, now want to win a world cup for running around on broomsticks -- otherwise known as Quidditch.

In J.K Rowling's hugely successful Harry Potter books and films, Quidditch is a semi-contact sport played by wizards and witches -- as popular in their world as football or cricket is in real life.

Indian gay rights activists voiced shock and outrage Tuesday over public comments by the health minister who said that homosexuality was a "disease" brought to the country by foreigners.

Speaking at a national meeting Monday of district and mayoral leaders on HIV/AIDS prevention, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad stated that homosexuality was "unnatural and not good for India."

Anti-landmine activists in western Uganda were stunned to discover a primary school using an unexploded mortar bomb as a bell, the group's coordinator told Agence France Presse on Monday.

"It was a big shock. When we arrived at the school we even found one of the students striking it," Wilson Bwambale, coordinator of Anti-Mines Network Rwenzori, said.

Hackers broke into an official Twitter account operated by Fox News early Monday and posted a series of tweets that claimed President Barack Obama had been assassinated.

The Twitter feed for Fox News' political news -- @FoxNewspolitics -- sent out a series of "malicious and false tweets," starting around 2:00 am, Fox News confirmed in a statement. The posts had not been taken down hours later.

An Australian pub that has a no head wear policy was forced to apologize Monday after ejecting a Sikh man for refusing to take off his turban.

A staff member at the Royal English Hotel in Brisbane barred the man on Sunday.

Whether it's with an explosion of colorful fireworks, a hometown parade or just one burger too many, people across the United States will celebrate Independence Day Monday — each in his own way.

Thousands will camp out near the Washington Monument, eagerly awaiting the festivities there, while others will throw on a Hawaiian shirt and shorts and head for the still-snowy slopes at resorts from California to Colorado. If you're in Boston, the annual Boston Pops concert is a must. But if you're in Akron, Ohio, the Rib, White & Blue Food Festival is enticing. And then, there are Nevada's casinos. They're promising a pyrotechnics extravaganza that could be a gambler's best bet.

A Michigan jail inmate says he's being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment because he can't have pornography.

In a handwritten lawsuit, 21-year-old Kyle Richards claims his civil rights are being violated at the Macomb County Jail. Richards says denying his request for erotic material subjects him to a "poor standard of living" and "sexual and sensory deprivation."

Massachusetts officials have closed a busy public swimming pool after a woman's dead body went unnoticed in the water for two days as people continued to swim, the Boston Globe reported Friday.

The permit for the state-run swimming pool expired six months ago, and a city inspector who examined the site on Tuesday -- just hours before the body surfaced -- did not see the remains because the water was so murky, the newspaper reported.