More than one million people took China's national civil service exam at the weekend, officials said, but faced huge odds against clinching one of the few government jobs available.

A total of 1.12 million took the National Public Servant Exam, according to figures from the State Administration of Civil Service figures.

An Australian family has reclaimed their Guinness World Record by stringing up more than half a million Christmas lights around their suburban home.

Guinness World Records official Chris Sheedy confirmed Monday that the Richards family of Canberra set the record for Christmas lights on a residential property with 502,165 twinkling bulbs.

A Chinese baby boy who had been declared dead was saved from being cremated alive when he started crying at a funeral parlor, media reported Thursday.

The parents of the critically-ill boy, who was less than one month old, had agreed to end his medical treatment at Anhui Provincial Children's Hospital in eastern China, hospital sources told Xinhua state news agency.

Animal rights campaigners have launched a poster campaign urging Chinese diners to turn down cat and dog dishes, with the group calling for the creatures to be considered "friends not food".

The 279 adverts were put up in 14 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Hong Kong-based campaign group Animals Asia said.

A haul of cocaine with an estimated street value of $48 million has washed ashore on a beach south of Tokyo, reports said Thursday, with authorities suspecting seafaring traffickers.

An elderly local resident found 80 kilograms (175 pounds) of the drug inside backpacks that were tied together and reported it to police, Jiji Press and other media said.

Moments after touching down, the pilot of a cargo-hauling Boeing 747 jet seemed confused in his exchanges with air traffic controllers. When told he was 9 miles (14 kilometers) north of his intended destination, he made an unusual admission: "Uh, yes sir, we just landed at the other airport."

His jet had just landed on the wrong U.S. runway — one that just happened to be long enough.

A U.S. man has been reunited with his now-vintage motorcycle nearly 50 years after it was stolen.

Donald DeVault received the 1953 Triumph Tiger 100 on Wednesday.

The world's first surviving septuplets have turned 16, and they don't mind that they're taking a lower profile these days.

The McCaughey siblings, who live in Carlisle in central Iowa, gained international fame for their births in 1997. They were on the cover of magazines and featured on network television shows.

A Chinese truck driver was fined 2.7 million yuan -- 100 years' average income for city dwellers -- and jailed for three years after his overloaded vehicle caused a bridge to collapse, reports said Thursday.

Zhang Wenjun's sand-laden lorry weighed 160 tonnes when he tried to cross a concrete bridge in Huairou on the outskirts of Beijing and the structure gave way, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

A Nepalese woman, excited to be voting for the first time, told Wednesday how she went into labor and gave birth at a polling station during elections in the Himalayan nation.

Parbati Bhandari told AFP she was so keen to take part in polls on Tuesday to elect a constituent assembly that she walked 30 minutes to a polling station just six days before her due date.