A southern Philippine town plans to hold funeral rites for the world's largest saltwater crocodile and then preserve its remains in a museum to keep tourists coming and prevent their community from slipping back into obscurity, the town's mayor said Monday.

The 1-ton crocodile was declared dead Sunday a few hours after flipping over with a bloated stomach in a pond in an eco-tourism park in Bunawan town, which had started to draw tourists, revenue and development because of the immense reptile, Mayor Edwin Cox Elorde said.

Would you vote for the sleek pedigree or a cheeky mongrel? The race for the top job in Italy's February vote has taken on a new angle, with rival candidates Mario Monti and Silvio Berlusconi adopting canine friends in a bizarre election ploy.

Three-time premier Berlusconi, whose centre-right party is catching up with the left in the polls, adopted a stray from the streets of Sicily this week and photographs of the pair canoodling in a garden instantly went viral on social networks.

Malawi is to reprint thousands of presidential portraits to add "Doctor" to Joyce Banda's name, the government said Friday, raising eyebrows amid a tough austerity drive.

South Korea's Jeonju University last week awarded Banda an honorary doctorate for her no-nonsense reforms since taking office.

Two thieves who stole Chinese artefacts worth millions of pounds from a British museum and promptly lost them were handed lengthy jail sentences on Friday.

Lee Wildman, 36, was jailed for nine years and 33-year-old Adrian Stanton was handed an eight-year term for their raid on the Oriental Museum in Durham, northwest England, on April 5 last year.

Even though it was long the language of global diplomacy, new U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry laughingly refused to try out his rusty French before the bilingual Canadian press on Friday.

"Not today. I got to refresh myself on that," Kerry said at his first press conference when a Canadian reporter asked him to reply to a question with "a little bit of French, please."

No wonder they're endangered.

Galapagos tortoises at London's zoo lumbered around impassively as famous French pianist Richard Clayderman serenaded them with music from his latest album, "Romantique," on Thursday.

An Israeli woman has turned to Facebook to beat a parking ticket — and expose a Tel Aviv road crew.

Hila Ben Baruch says she parked her car legally near her Tel Aviv home only to find it gone and replaced with a handicapped parking sign. City Hall slapped her with more than $300 in fines. Making matters worse, she says a city representative accused her of lying when she called to complain.

A Sri Lankan prisoner who tried to hide his mobile phone during a search of his cell was caught out when guards heard ring tones from his rear-end, a hospital official said Friday.

The 58-year-old convict had to be admitted to the national hospital in Colombo where doctors later retrieved the handset from his rectum.

State media coverage of a routine visit to a home by China's incoming premier Li Keqiang has become a colorful Internet sensation after a boy appeared on camera half-naked.

Internet users were on Thursday circulating the CCTV state television footage from the northern city of Baotou, cheering the rare unplanned blip in usually staid government-controlled coverage of officials' tightly scripted trips.

A video posted online purportedly shows Syrian soldiers taking a break from the country's civil war by bopping around to American R&B star Usher's hit song "Yeah!"

The soldiers dressed in camouflage combat gear — some armed with automatic rifles or rocket-propelled grenades poking out of their flak jackets — form a conga line and shimmy past the camera grinning.