A 94-year-old man who cashed in his funeral savings to use as an election deposit was out canvassing for votes Friday, just two days ahead of Japan's general election.

Ryokichi Kawashima is the oldest candidate in the race for the lower house this Sunday and says he felt he had to get involved in politics to stop the younger generation making such a mess of things.

The world's highest mountain should not be hard to spot but American space agency NASA has admitted it mistook a summit in India for Mount Everest, which straddles the border of Nepal and China.

The agency said on its website that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko's snap from the International Space Station, 230 miles (370 kilometers) above Earth, showed Everest lightly dusted with snow.

In a small Arctic town in Sweden, a construction crew bundled up in heavy parkas is bustling around a building site unlike any other: a massive ice hotel is taking shape.

Armed with thick gloves and safety helmets over fur-lined hats, the builders in the northern town of Jukkasjaervi assemble two-tonne blocks of ice as if they were a large set of Lego blocks, with the end result a giant igloo with several domes, vaulted ceilings and archways.

As people across the globe tremble in anticipation of next week's supposed Mayan-predicted apocalypse, one Chinese villager says he may have just what humanity needs: tsunami-proof survival pods.

Camouflage-clad former farmer and furniture maker Liu Qiyuan, 45, inspected his latest creation, a sphere several meters tall he calls "Noah's Ark", designed to withstand towering tsunamis and devastating earthquakes.

Taiwan will discuss whether to deny entry to holders of new Chinese passports with maps showing two of the island's most famous spots as part of Chinese territory, a top official said Thursday.

Wang Yu-chi, chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council which is the top China policy-making body, told parliament that relevant government units will review the matter within a week.

Activists from Ukraine's feminist group Femen staged a topless anti-corruption protest on Wednesday outside the ex-Soviet country's newly-elected parliament as a fight erupted between lawmakers inside.

The opening session of the Verkhkovna Rada began in a typically raucous fashion, after the October 28 parliamentary elections which were condemned by the West as a setback for democracy.

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.