Police in Japan have arrested a 70-year-old man over claims he arranged sexual encounters among senior citizens through newspaper adverts soliciting "tea-drinking companions", police and press reports said Tuesday.

Kiyohide Kuroda had allegedly been posting classified ads in a Tokyo newspaper for around a decade before he was taken into custody last week.

After falling out of favor during the global economic turmoil, APEC's propensity for dressing up its leaders in "silly shirts" returned with a gusto on Monday as Indonesia's guitar-strumming president led a stylish parade of Balinese design.

U.S. President Barack Obama was a notable absentee, perhaps relieved that a budget shutdown kept him home after he axed the annual fashion show when he chaired the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii two years ago.

An Italian junior minister who says she is Silvio Berlusconi's "kamikaze" is complaining after her symbolic resignation was accepted, in one more political melodrama around the flamboyant tycoon.

"I am paying for Silvio," Michaela Biancofiore, a junior minister for public administration and simplification, said in an interview published by the Corriere della Sera daily on Monday.

One of Margaret Thatcher's ministers gushed over her "good looks, charm and bearing" in a resignation note released on Monday that reads almost like a love letter to the former British prime minister.

John Nott wrote the private note when he resigned as defense minister from Thatcher's Conservative government in 1983, and it has now been made public.

Germany wrapped up its world-famous Oktoberfest beer festival Sunday, reporting that 6.4 million visitors drank 6.7 million liter-sized Mass glasses -- more than twice the volume of an Olympic swimming pool -- of the amber nectar over 16 days.

The 180th edition of the Munich celebration of beer, lederhosen, dirndl dresses and oompah music was "extremely relaxed, folk festival fun for every taste", said its organizer Dieter Reiter.

Shepherds led a flock of 2,000 sheep through Madrid on Sunday in defense of ancient grazing, droving and migration rights increasingly threatened by urban sprawl and modern agricultural practices.

Tourists were surprised to see downtown traffic cut to permit the ovine parade to bleat — bells clanking — across some of Madrid's most upmarket urban settings.

Iranians are accustomed to jabs from Israel's prime minister. But this one hit a nerve: Claiming clampdowns by Iran's rulers extended to blue jeans.

Social media sites were flooded Monday with Iranians posting photos including an Iranian closet piled high with denim and a young boy in jeans whispering into the ear of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Russians in Siberia were thrown into momentary panic on Friday when the emergencies ministry mistakenly issued a press release reporting 55 people had died from inhaling toxic chlorine gas.

Emergency services on Friday were holding scheduled drills across the vast country involving various disaster scenarios such as deadly explosions and fires.

Pope Francis on Friday advised married couples not to go to bed angry "even if the plates fly" in a light-hearted address during a pilgrimage to the sites associated with St Francis of Assisi.

"Argue as much as you like, even if the plates fly that is fine, but never end the day without making peace," the pope said in Assisi Cathedral.

A group of die-hard "Breaking Bad" fans have posted an obituary notice for the show's anti-hero Walter White in a local paper in New Mexico, made famous by the cult series.

David Layman, coincidentally a science teacher like White, was among 10.3 million viewers who tuned in to last weekend's final episode of the series about the central character's transformation into a drug lord, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.