NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cyprus said Tuesday ransom was the motive of thieves who stole the body of former President Tassos Papadopoulos, found in a shallow grave Monday three months after it disappeared from its tomb.

BOSTON (Reuters Life!) - Fueled by leftover chocolate and with components made from carrots, potato starch and flax, the world's first sustainable Formula 3 racing car has a top speed of 135 miles per hour and can go from zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds.

LUANDA (Reuters) - Wild elephants rampaged through a southern village in Angola last weekend, destroying farms and dozens of houses and prompting most of its 4,000 residents to flee to neighboring Namibia, a local official said Tuesday.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Don't mess with a century-old tradition even if it is sexist, Canadians told the Conservative government this week, forcing Ottawa to scrap plans to make the country's national anthem gender-neutral.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than whites and Asians to lose sleep over job and money worries, a sleep survey released on Monday found.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's parliamentary restaurant will be serving seal meat on Wednesday in a gesture of defiance aimed at a European Union ban on imports of seal products.

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - Australian underwear company AussieBum has been monkeying around and the result is a range of men's underwear made with bananas.

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Thursday banned men in the Gaza Strip from working in women's hair salons, vowing to arrest and try offenders.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China must urgently address the physical fitness of the nation's youth or run the risk of raising a generation incapable of fighting the Japanese in a future war, the head of the country's top sports university said Thursday.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Swedish pilot with a fake commercial license was arrested in his cockpit at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport as he prepared to fly 101 passengers on a Boeing 737 to Turkey, Dutch police said Wednesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Performers in London's West End are having to cope with a different kind of stage fright in the form of mice, rat and flea infestations in theatres, according to a new survey by actors' union Equity.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - "O Canada," the country's national anthem, has included the line, "True patriot love in all thy sons' command," for nearly 100 years.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An investigation is underway into why a young child, apparently under an adult's supervision, was allowed to direct air traffic at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport, U.S. authorities said on Wednesday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A U.S. Army sergeant on Tuesday sued the makers of Oscar-nominated film "The Hurt Locker" five days before the Academy Awards, claiming the central character in the film is based on him.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military called off a raid in Palestinian territory after a soldier posted details, including the time and place, on social networking website Facebook, Israel's Army Radio reported Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. marriages last longer than unions where couples live together outside matrimony, the Centers for Disease Control reported on Tuesday.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Film critic Roger Ebert, rendered mute by several cancer surgeries, delivered his Oscar picks on Oprah Winfrey's television chat show on Tuesday using his newly synthesized voice fashioned from old audio clips.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police detained a nightclub reveler they caught trying to snort amphetamines off the top of their unmarked patrol car.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Hunger drove a wild panda to break into a Chinese farmer's pig pen and eat their food, which was meat and bone, rather than bamboo.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Some 5,200 Australians posed naked in front of the Sydney Opera House on Monday for a photo shoot by New York-based artist Spencer Tunick for another signature installation of nudes against urban backdrops.