A Frenchman came within three weeks of allowing a 73 million euro lottery win to evaporate after carrying the winning ticket around in his wallet for a month, the lottery company said Wednesday.

The man from northeastern France, an online subscriber to Euromillions, hit the jackpot on December 2, but he had stopped routinely checking his numbers.

Two Russian performance artists were jailed for 10 days on Tuesday after throwing holy water at the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square and shouting, "Rise up and leave!"

The men were sentenced to 10 days in police cells for petty hooliganism after the protest they carried out on Monday, an Orthodox holiday, a member of their art group, Irina Dumitskaya told Agence France Presse.

The Asian Cup is packing a punch with its eye-popping goals and temper tantrums, but the official team chants have fallen on deaf ears.

The 16 competing sides went into battle with what organizers listed on the tournament's Twitter feed as their "Asian Cup War Cries", but most efforts got stuck in the throat.

The writing is on the wall for Chinese officials caught up in the latest hotbed of graft and corruption: calligraphy associations.

The written form has long been revered as an art in China, and it was part of the civil service examinations in Imperial times. 

It was not what Derek Nash expected to find in his 5-year-old's school bag: A bill demanding a "no-show fee" for another child's birthday party.

Nash said the bill from another parent sought 15.95 pounds ($24.00) because his son Alex had not attended the party at a ski center in Plymouth, southwest England.

Rush-hour passengers in the busy subway of Iran's capital have brushed shoulders with a surprising commuter — President Hassan Rouhani.

Rouhani, along Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and others in his government, took the subway and other mass transit in Tehran to work Monday. It was part of their effort to mark "National Clean Air Day."

An Oregon jogger thought someone knocked him in the head or he got hit by lightning or may have suffered a stroke when he felt a big blow to the head last week as he was jogging in Bush's Pasture Park.

When the 58-year-old man, Ron Jaecks of Salem, was struck a second time he saw a large winged animal he thought was a massive bat.

Idaho lawmakers worried that special recognition of the Idaho giant salamander could lead to federal protections have rejected a grade school student's request that it be named the state amphibian.

The House State Affairs Committee voted 10-6 on Monday against 14-year-old Ilah Hickman's plan. It was her fifth attempt in as many years to persuade lawmakers that students made a good choice for state amphibian.

A Kenyan school bus driver died after drinking a potion brewed by a "witchdoctor" to prove he had not stolen books, sparking angry protests from villagers, a report said Tuesday.

The school directors in a village in Kenya's southwestern Kisii district hired a witchdoctor to seek out the thief of school books, with the driver volunteering to drink a potion to prove he was innocent.

Japanese police are seeking a fraud charge against a provincial assemblyman who became globally famous after crying like a toddler over his alleged misuse of public funds, a report said Monday.

Hyogo prefectural police in western Japan submitted papers to prosecutors on Ryutaro Nonomura, 48, alleging fraud, Jiji Press news agency said. It is now up to prosecutors to decide whether to indict him.