PARIS - From how to deflect embarrassing questions from Chinese aunts to the downside of sleeping with pigs... your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

Pig of a job

A French bartender is riding high on the hog after setting herself up as a pig pedicurist.

Carole Germain has been worked off her feet tending to the hooves of the country's most pampered pigs.

"It's nuts. I thought I was the only person who had one hogging the couch, but there are thousands," said the 46-year-old from Brest in western France.

Germain shares a bed with her own pet pig Couscous.

"Actually (as far as he's concerned) I am sleeping in his bed and if I move too much he grunts and pinches me," she laughed.

Living cheek by bristly jowl with the 60-kilo (132-pound) porker, she realised part of why pigs can be so boorish is that no one thinks to do their nails.

Without a regular hoof trim "the poor pig becomes quite handicapped" and grumpy, she told AFP.

Messi enrages fans

Football legend Lionel Messi needs to get down on his dodgy knees. The Argentine ace left Chinese fans furious when he failed to play in an Inter Miami friendly in Hong Kong where some had paid $500 (sh1.9 million) to see him.

They jeered club owner David Beckham and chanted "Refund!"

But that was nothing to the venom unleashed when the injured Messi came off the bench to play for half an hour a few days later in Tokyo.

Despite profuse apologies from the club, Chinese nationalists saw the sinister hand of the old enemy Japan at play, accusing Messi of insulting them.

Government advisor Regina Ip fumed that "Hong Kong people hate Messi, Inter Miami, and the black hand behind them, for the deliberate and calculated snub to Hong Kong.

"His lies and hypocrisy are disgusting," she wrote on X.

Hail Blessed Britney

Voices are also being raised over a silent disco in Canterbury Cathedral, England's oldest and the seat of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In these events, the dancers wear headphones.

"It is categorically not a 'rave in the nave'," said the dean, Reverend David Monteith, playing down a petition to stop the sold-out gigs in the 1,400-year-old shrine.

But for some Christians boogying to Britney Spears's "Baby (hit me) One More Time" where Saint Thomas Becket met his martyrdom is toxic, to borrow another of her song titles.

Cajetan Skowronski, who organised the petition, said it gives the impression that "Christians do not take their faith or their holy places seriously."

The row hasn't stopped several other English cathedrals holding silent discos of their own later this month.

Who's afraid of Auntie now?

Young Chinese going home for the Lunar New Year have a secret weapon to help them navigate the most dreaded moment of the year -- the dinner table interrogation by nosy relatives.

The annual inquisition as extended families gather for China's biggest festival is a mainstay of books and films, bemoaned every year online.

But a new game using an AI chatbot to simulate the barrage of squirm-inducing questions young people face -- "When are you getting married?"; "How much do you earn?" -- could give them the edge.

Players must appease all eight aunts and uncles before progressing to the final bosses: the parents.

"Epic Showdown: New Year Reunion" had three million users within a week of its release before its servers crashed.

Mandela, Mother Teresa... Musk

And finally, Elon Musk has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The world's second richest man -- who spent the week promoting Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin and calling Disney "racist and sexist" for wanting to hire more women and minorities -- got the nod from a Norwegian MP with the anti-immigrant Progress Party.