An unconventional artist who became notorious for turning the Trevi Fountain in Rome into a surreal pool of blood two weeks ago, mounted another protest action, this time using more than a million multi-colored plastic balls which he released from the top of Rome's famous Spanish Steps.

"This was an artistic gesture to demonstrate the problems we have in Italy and to do so, I used art," Graziano Cecchini said of his latest stunt. "Both the Left and the Right are telling us so many lies and I and the Italians have had enough. They have broken our balls and hence this live art display."

It was a festive and rich Christmas for 1,850 Spaniards holding the winning number 06381 for Spain's lottery. With a $3.1 million jackpot, the winners received $430,000 each.

The jackpot money was spread across 11 Spanish provinces where the tickets were sold, including Madrid, Barcelona and Alicante. In contrast, ticket holders of the second prize all came from Barcelona.

A ten-year-old boy has been described as a lingo genius after it was learned he could speak 10 languages aside from his native Hindi.

Arpan Sharma, a primary pupil from Oldbury, West Midlands taught himself using CD-Rom, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swahili, Mandarin, Polish, Thai and the Lugandan language of Uganda.

Nobel Prize winning author Doris Lessing has said that the 9/11 attacks were not as bad as the reign of terror waged by the IRA on mainland Britain.

The Associated Press (AP) reports Lessing, in conversation with the leading Spanish daily El Pais, as saying "September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible."

A nine-year-old Indonesian-Chinese math prodigy on Tuesday started his university studies in Hong Kong, the Chinese media reported.

And it looks like March Tian Boedihardjo is off to become the youngest holder of a master's degree by breezing through his first lessons at the Hong Kong Baptist University. The Hong Kong-born Boedihardjo described the mathematical analysis lecture on Tuesday as easy and said he learned it two years ago.