After spending their lives enduring brutal treatment, the last of Bulgaria's dancing bears are headed to a mountain sanctuary where they can rest their paws. The bears are the last in a line of centuries of bears in the Balkans that have been trained to dance by walking across burning embers on their bare paws hopping from one foot onto the other to escape the fire while their trainer beat a drum until they connected the drum to the pain. The bears were caught while they were cubs and trained. Many Gypsy, or Roma, families earned their livelihoods with bear dancing for generations.

A folklore dancing troupe was banned from performing their dance routine at the opening of fourth annual Al Marbud festival in Basra, Iraq, due to local government officials claiming the dance was too liberal. In response, the group's female dancers came out for the performance dressed in the typical Islamic veil. The group's trainer, Jabar Belal, told the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat that the group chose a patriotic song about Iraq for their number. "We chose that song to please the festival organizers along with dance routines that will not upset them," Belal said. Al Hayat added that the orders for the higab, or Islamic veil, was employed after a member of the local government saw a rehearsal on television with the female dancers wearing their normal attire. He called what they were wearing "indecent. "

The second class to enter the Air Force Academy since Sept. 11, 2001 graduated Thursday morning. It wasn't a grim ceremony. Along with watching a show by the Thunderbirds after the ceremony and tossing their hats in the air, the 1,000 member graduating class was also able to view video of a boogying cadet beforehand. Along with talking about what the dangers cadets will face on the battlefield, commencement speaker Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the cadets he had seen the funny video himself.

Protesters in India were outraged when Hollywood actor Richard Gere repeatedly kissed popular Indian actress Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS awareness campaign in New Delhi, India. Calling the act as anti-Indian, leaders from many religious groups burned effigies of both the actors in various Indian cities, raised anti-Gere slogans and also demanded that Gere should apologize for his act. Local television channels repeatedly showed footage of Gere sweeping the much elated Shetty backwards in an embrace after he starts planting kisses on the actress.

The municipal administration of the Indian city of Bihar has hired a new force to collect overdue taxes from shop owners. The new force is not armed with any weapons, rather the team of 20 eunuchs will collect the municipal taxes while dancing and singing on the beat of a drum. Eunuchs, who are generally males with partial genitals, form a pretty distinctive society in India. They often make a living on tips for dancing at weddings and blessing newborn babies, and are believed to be stubborn and don't take no for an answer.