Animal lovers in Singapore will soon be able to publish tributes to their dead pets when the city-state's leading daily launches a special obituary section.

From December 16, the classified ads section in the Sunday edition of the English-language Straits Times will have a segment devoted to pet obituaries, publisher Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) said.

Gangsters in one of Canada's most crime-ridden cities can expect a special greeting card this Christmas -- from a local police chief dressed as jolly Santa Claus and packing heat.

The card is being mailed out this week to "prolific offenders, property offenders and persons known for drug and gang activity," said police in Abbotsford, British Columbia near Vancouver.

Sales of Romania's Christmas sweet bread "cozonac" are expected to grow this year, reaching up to 22 million euros ($29 million) despite a struggling economy, the industry said Tuesday.

"More than seven million 'cozonac' should be baked this year by industrial bakeries, a five-percent rise compared to last year", Aurel Popescu, the head of Romania's bakery-owners association told Mediafax news agency.

South African pop legend Yvonne Chaka Chaka declared Tuesday that she would not let her husband have a second wife and warned he would have to go if he tried.

The star known as the "Princess of Africa" made the warning as she appeared at the U.N. headquarters with Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin and U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon to demand that governments respect gay rights.

A public housing agency in Sicily is under investigation after 81 of its 96 employees were found to skip work to go shopping or hang out at the bar instead, the police said on Monday.

Absentees at the office in the city of Messina asked their colleagues to clock them in and out every day, according to footage recorded on cameras set up by police to catch the rule-breakers.

Switzerland's largest city Zurich acknowledged Monday it had lost trace of 5,176 works of art, including an original painting by Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier.

The city had carried out its first full inventory of its vast collection of 35,000 pieces in nearly a century, only to discover that nearly 15 percent were missing, including nearly 1,400 original works, it said in a statement.

A stylishly-attired monkey became an instant Internet celebrity, and triggered an animal welfare investigation, when it was found wandering in a Canadian furniture store car park.

The months-old rhesus macaque, named Darwin, spent the night at an animal shelter in Toronto after he was found wandering around an IKEA lot wearing a sheepskin coat on Sunday afternoon.

Tens of thousands of lovelorn South Koreans are set to take part in a "battle of the singles" on Christmas Eve -- a mass dating event triggered by an innocuous query posted on Facebook last month.

More than 36,000 people have signed up for the event in a park in central Seoul since two young men jokingly floated the idea on the social networking site and met with an overwhelming response.

"Victory" has never smelled so sweet -- or at least that's what they would have you believe at the shop selling Gaza's newest fragrance named M75 after a long-range Hamas rocket.

It's a bold move by the "Stay Stylish" shop in Gaza City's upscale Rimal neighborhood, but one that store owner Abu Ahmed expects to pay dividends.

Moon Tae-Hwa stares at his computer, dizzy and nauseous from the hours of porn he's viewed online. He feels no shame — he says he's "cleaning up dirty things."

Moon is among the most successful members of the "Nuri Cops" (roughly "net cops"), a squad of nearly 800 volunteers who help government censors by patrolling the Internet for pornography in their spare time.