orld-popular cartoon characters The Smurfs are now 50 years old and Belgians have prepared a big birthday bash starting early this week. The celebration will cover key European cities including Paris and Berlin. The Smurfs, the diminutive blue-colored forest dwellers, were created by late Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, fondly called 'Peyo,' through a comic strip in the late 1950s-back then, they were still called Schtroumpf. In the early 1980s, Smurfs debuted on US television and became hugely popular worldwide since then.

A cancer patient was brought to tears when she was thrown out of a courtroom Friday for refusing to remove her hat. District Court judge Holly Hollenbeck told Bev Williams, 43, to remove the knitted beanie she was wearing, or exit his court in the Benton County Justice Center.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday announced that Big Apple locals and tourists will enjoy the first-ever "green" Rockefeller Center Christmas tree this year. The 84-foot tall Norway spruce will be officially lit during a ceremony on Nov. 28 with energy-efficient LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, instead of the usual incandescent bulbs.

Naked hikers in Dorset, England have complained about the way police handled the marshalling of their charity walk. The nude ramblers, numbering about 20, were en route on a 2-mile hike in Dorset to raise money for the Marine Conservation Society when they were reportedly followed by 10 officers, patrol cars and a helicopter on the trek.

It was in invitation no thief could ever refuse. The organizers of the Basel Shift Festival found this out when a thief ran off with the book titled "Steal this Book. "