BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Cosy might be the best word to describe the smallest house in Brussels, which is about to go up for auction. The centuries-old former furniture workshop and creperie a stone's throw from the Belgian capital's picturesque central square is just 2.75 meters wide and has a ground floor only 1.75 meters (5 foot 9 inches) across. "There's a lot of interest and there are also a lot of tourists who want to see it," said Claude Rotsart de Hertaing, a Brussels pensioner who works part time showing prospective buyers around houses. ...

OSLO (Reuters) - A truckload of burning cheese has closed a road tunnel in Arctic Norway for the last six days. Some 27 metric tons of flaming brown cheese (brunost), a Norwegian delicacy, blocked off a three-km (1.9 mile) tunnel near the northern coastal town of Narvik when it caught fire last Thursday. The fire was finally put out on Monday. "This high concentration of fat and sugar is almost like petrol if it gets hot enough," said Viggo Berg, a policeman. Brown cheese is made from whey, contains up to 30 percent fat and has a caramel taste. ...

READING, Pa. (AP) — Everyone knows soda can be bad for your teeth. Sometimes, it can apparently threaten the morning commute, too.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Police say three masked men who tried to rob a Chinese restaurant in Massachusetts ran away empty handed because they couldn't figure out how to open the cash register.

PARIS (AP) — A foul-smelling cloud of gas escaped from a factory in northern France on Tuesday, making life unpleasant from the outskirts of Paris to Britain's shores and prompting scores of emergency calls.

PARIS (Reuters) - A cloud of harmless gas smelling of sweat and rotten eggs leaked out of a chemicals factory in northwest France and wafted across the English Channel as far as London on Tuesday. The leak occurred on Monday morning at a Lubrizol France plant near Rouen, 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Paris, and winds blew the invisible gas cloud south over northern France on Monday night and then up into England on Tuesday. ...

PARIS (AP) — A foul-smelling cloud of gas escaped from a factory in northern France on Tuesday, making life unpleasant from the outskirts of Paris to Britain's shores and prompting scores of emergency calls.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Long before Hostess Brands' plan to shut down made Twinkies the rage, Nancy Peppin found something special about the cream-filled snack cakes.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Refrigerators are getting smart. A new model released earlier this month runs apps to help users browse recipes, create shopping lists and manage the expiration dates of items like yogurt and milk. The T9000 refrigerator by electronics company Samsung has a 10-inch Wi-Fi-enabled touchscreen and includes apps such as Epicurious for recipes and Evernote for note-taking. ...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The U.S. fast-food chain Subway got caught up in an online furore after an Australian teenager measured his "footlong" Subway sandwich and found that it was an inch (2.54 cm) short. Matt Corby's photo of the sandwich next to a tape measure attracted hundreds of thousands of likes and hundreds more comments when he posted it on Subway's Facebook fanpage. In response, Subway Australia said the "Subway Footlong" was a registered trademark "as a descriptive name for the sub sold in Subway restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length. ...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A prank note in an Australian library declaring that disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong's books would be moved to the fiction section has gone viral on the Internet, with one commentator declaring: "Hell hath no fury like a librarian". "All Non-Fiction Lance Armstrong Books, including 'Lance Armstrong - Images of a Champion', 'The Lance Armstrong Performance Program and 'Lance Armstrong: World's Greatest Champion,' will soon be moved to the fiction section," read the sign posted at Sydney's Manly Library on Saturday. ...

BANJUL (Reuters) - Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has decreed a four-day working week for public officials, making Friday a day of rest to allow residents in the small West African state more time for prayer and agriculture. Jammeh said in statement the decision was made in light of demand from the general public. The shorter working week will take effect from February 1. The new public sector working times in Gambia, a sliver of land stretching inland from the West African coast along the river Gambia, will be Mondays to Thursdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ...

BRASILIA (Reuters) - A judge in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state has confiscated copies of wildly-popular trilogy "Fifty Shades of Grey" and other erotic books from two stores, saying proprietors must seal the novels to prevent children leafing through them. Police and judicial officials in the Rio town of Macae seized 64 books including 11 copies of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" series by British author E.L. James after the shops flouted Brazilian laws by failing to conceal erotic images and content deemed inappropriate for under-18s. ...

MAPLEWOOD, New Jersey (Reuters) - The age-old call to beat swords into ploughshares is being answered in Newark, New Jersey by turning bullets into bling. Guns and shell casings seized by the Newark Police are being melted down and made into bracelets by a jewellery company. A portion of proceeds from each sale goes to fund gun buy-back amnesty programs in New Jersey's largest city. The company, Jewelry for a Cause, worked with Newark Mayor Cory Booker and the city police chief to design the "Caliber Collection". ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Reuters) - Humane society members wearing protective masks removed nearly 300 animals including pigeons, chickens and rabbits from an Ohio man's reeking house this week. Most of the animals are expected to survive including some that were sick, Sheila Marquis, an officer with the Humane Society of Dayton, Ohio, told Reuters on Saturday. Workers on Thursday took away 60 pigeons, chickens and roosters from the house in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton. They returned the following day for 223 animals including 100 pigeons and 30 rabbits. ...

SCOTTBASE, Antarctica (AP) — Talk about whisky on ice: Three bottles of rare, 19th century Scotch found beneath the floor boards of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackelton's abandoned expedition base were returned to the polar continent Saturday after a distiller flew them to Scotland to recreate the long-lost recipe.

(Reuters) - Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o has denied ever being in on an elaborate hoax, telling ESPN he had believed his relationship with a woman who turned out to be an online fabrication was real. The tragic story of his girlfriend and her injuries from a car accident and death from leukaemia was one of the most widely recounted U.S. sports stories last year as Notre Dame made a drive toward the national championship game. "I wasn't faking it," Te'o told ESPN in an off-camera interview on Friday, excerpts of which were posted on ESPN.com. "I wasn't part of this. ...

SAN ANDREAS, Calif. (AP) — Authorities in Northern California say a man arrested in nothing but a trench coat and socks after a break-in told investigators he had been using the homeowner's sauna.