It was not quite a "Snakes on a Plane" scenario, but passengers on a Qantas jet watched in amazement as a three-meter (nine feet) python clung to the outside of their aircraft during a flight.

The Australian carrier said the flight from the Queensland city of Cairns to Port Moresby, capital of the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea, took off early Thursday morning with the unintended passenger tucked into its wing.

A Mexican grandfather kept his seven-year-old grandson locked up in a wooden box with his feet tied in the southern state of Oaxaca, prosecutors said Thursday.

After anonymous calls, police found the child in the box, which was closed "with a padlocked steel chain," in the city of Putla de Guerrero, local prosecutor Victor Alonso Altamirano, told Agence France Presse.

Swedish prosecutors have issued international arrest warrants for two Britons suspected of masterminding a smuggling ring involving Chinese garlic.

The men first shipped the garlic to Norway by boat, where it entered the country duty-free since it was considered to be in transit, prosecutor Thomas Ahlstrand said Wednesday. They then drove large shipments of garlic across the Norwegian-Swedish border, avoiding customs checks and thus Swedish import duties.

Chinese state media turned on the government's own use of language Thursday, mocking a list of "repulsive" official cliches submitted by social media users.

The public shaming of bureaucrat-speak -- hosted on the microblog of the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily -- came after China's new leaders slammed the culture of long speeches and meetings and urged better governance.

Would champagne by any other name taste as good? For French producers, the answer is a resounding "non" -- especially when the beverage is to be served at the U.S. presidential inaugural luncheon.

Champagne producers in France, who are very protective of the singular nature of their product, were not necessarily upset that California-made bubbly is to be served at lunch after President Barack Obama's January 21 swearing-in.

The venerable greenback could begin printing with a loopy signature that looks like a first grader's doodle if, as expected, the White House names Jack Lew to head the U.S. Treasury.

The Treasury Secretary becomes perhaps best known for signing, electronically, every U.S. banknote printed while holding the post.

Taiwan's police said Tuesday they have launched an investigation into a report that gamblers are betting tens of millions of dollars on the life expectancy of terminally ill cancer patients.

The investigation comes after Taipei-based Next magazine claimed that gamblers -- including the families and doctors of cancer sufferers -- in the central city of Taichung are placing bets as high as Tw$1.0 billion ($34.5 million) on when patients will die.

The latest addition to America's ever-growing list of craft beers gives new meaning to the time-honored idea of feeding leftovers to the dog.

Dawg Grog, a non-alcoholic mock brew for canines, is the brainchild of Daniel Keeton, 32, who perfected it over the past year with a little help from his seven-year-old American Staffordshire terrier Lola Jane.

The little loved U.S. Congress, fresh off its fiscal cliff budget crisis, is now less popular than cockroaches and lice, a survey released Tuesday found.

The Public Policy Polling survey of 830 Americans from January 3-6 revealed that Congress had hit new lows in the eyes of the same U.S. voters who sent representatives to work there.

Seven Malaysians who escaped police custody this week did so by temporarily blinding a guard with chilli powder hidden in one of the escapee's underpants, police and press reports said Wednesday.

The escape Monday of the seven men -- whom police have called "dangerous criminals" -- has prompted a large-scale manhunt in the northern Malaysian state of Penang.