A rotten egg smell which had Californians turning up their noses was caused by dead fish or algae in a nearby lake, and nothing more sinister, experts said Tuesday.

More than 200 people called authorities Monday after the sulphurous odor was detected over a 150 mile area, leading to online speculation including that it was some kind of geo-thermic event preceding a long-feared mega earthquake experts believe will shake California.

A Chinese man accused of swallowing a diamond worth $13,600 at a gem show in Sri Lanka actually ingested a fake stone in an elaborate bluff to allow the real thief to escape, police said Tuesday.

Detectives discovered the ruse after waiting until the man, 32, passed the fake stone that he had swallowed at the Facets Sri Lanka annual jewelry exhibition in Colombo last week.

With exorcism booming in Poland, Roman Catholic priests here have joined forces with a publisher to launch what they claim is the world's first monthly magazine focused exclusively on chasing out the devil.

"The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling," Father Aleksander Posacki, a professor of philosophy, theology and leading demonologist and exorcist told reporters in Warsaw at the Monday launch of the Egzorcysta monthly.

Marta Beatriz Roque, the 67 year-old "Iron Lady" of Cuban dissidents, began a hunger strike Monday to protest conditions that opponents to the Communist regime face on the island.

"I have declared a hunger strike" against the government's "intolerable and untenable" treatment of the opposition, Roque told Agence France Presse.

Paris police have deployed a team of officers to try and catch "class warriors" who have been vandalizing bikes from the city's cycle rental scheme, officials said Monday.

Fifty of the sturdy Velib bicycles have had their back tyres slashed in recent days in various bike docks in two separate areas of the capital.

It wasn't exactly Prince Charming but one of Ukraine's "Sleeping Beauties" finally got a kiss on the lips as she dozed on a dais filmed by cameras -- though unlike the fairy tale she never woke up.

"I'm not sure I would marry precisely this girl, I just was curious whether she would open her eyes," said the young woman who dared the embrace while male visitors shied away.

Snakes, scorpions and swirling dust didn't deter a Syrian couple from getting married at Jordan's tent city for refugees.

A carpenter, Hodasa al-Hariri, 23, married his 20-year-old cousin, Hanan al-Hariri, in a simple ceremony on Sunday at the Zaatari camp.

Pradeep Kumar, a muscular man in shades and tattoos, pulls up on a motorcycle, ready for his job as a bouncer. Not at a nightclub, but at another workplace where violence is common in India: a hospital.

He and his burly colleagues keep the emergency and labor rooms from filling up with patients' often agitated relatives and friends. The bouncers are polite, yet so tough-looking that people think twice about ignoring their orders.

President Barack Obama reputedly loves nothing more than a good old campaign trail hug -- but he may have got more than he bargained for Sunday.

Obama was lifted at least a foot in the air in an intense bear hug by hulking pizza shop owner Scott Van Duzer, during a bus tour of Florida.

Tracy Reese capitalized on her high-profile sartorial relationship with First Lady Michelle Obama with a sparkling New York fashion week show Sunday that paid homage to every woman's inner nerd.

Rubbishing the old adage about girls who wear glasses, Reese accessorized her ethereal and colorful spring-summer 2013 with the kind of old-school, oversized spectacles typically sported by bad-boy photographer Terry Richardson.