A Japanese man went on a year-long burglary spree, making off with a haul worth $185,000 to feed 120 cats a gourmet diet, police said Thursday.

Mamoru Demizu, 48, is suspected of breaking into houses to steal cash and jewels on 32 separate occasions.

A zany Norwegian music video originally intended as a joke was the most popular video of the year on YouTube, the website revealed Wednesday.

Since its release on September 3 the clip -- featuring people in animal costumes dancing in a forest to the refrain "What does the fox say?" -- had more than 276 million views on YouTube, the site said.

Many of us cannot recall the last time we got a letter in the mail, but Santa will this year receive a record eight million of them, the United Nations said Wednesday.

Global postal services expect to sort through that number of wish lists by the time Christmas rolls around, according to a survey by the Universal Postal Union (UPU), which coordinates the world's mail systems.

Citizens of Planet Earth are being invited to make a "video shout-out" to wake up a deep-space probe, Rosetta, that has been in hibernation since June 2011.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is offering prizes for the best video clip of people shouting "Wake up, Rosetta!" to help end its scout's long sleep next month.

Hopes among resourceful inmates of an Austrian prison for a cheerier Christmas have been dashed after 50 liters (13 gallons) of a festive homebrew hooch were discovered by guards.

Prisoners at the Stein prison mixed bread rolls with fruit to create "Punsch", a popular winter-warmer at Austrian Christmas markets on the outside world, the jail's management said on Tuesday.

Canada vowed Tuesday to defend the North Pole and Santa Claus, insisting the mythical figure is a citizen, after Russia ordered its military to step up its Arctic presence.

Paul Calandra, parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, cited Canada's claim of the North Pole to bash an opposition party in Parliament.

It's your 150th day in space, and life is starting to resemble the movie "Groundhog Day" -- a repetitive daily routine interspersed with tugs of longing for life back on Earth.

Then, all of a sudden, things start to look up.

U.S. President Barack Obama may have moved the masses attending Nelson Mandela's memorial service with his stirring eulogy on Tuesday, but it was his grinning "selfie" with the Danish and British premiers that set social networks abuzz.

In a candid moment captured by Agence France Presse photographer Roberto Schmidt, Denmark's Helle Thorning-Schmidt can be seen holding up her smartphone, with Obama lending a helping hand, as they pose for a picture with David Cameron, all three of them smiling broadly in their seats at Soweto's World Cup stadium.

Istanbul is planning to introduce floating car parks to try to resolve the chronic traffic problems of Turkey's largest city, local officials said Tuesday.

The municipal car park operator said it will use out-of-service ferries anchored in the Bosphorus to create multi-storey lots near traffic hotspots.

A passenger who fell asleep while flying to Los Angeles said he awoke to discover himself alone and locked inside a dark, empty plane in Houston.

Tom Wagner said he was supposed to change planes Friday at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. But no staff noticed he was still sleeping in a window seat at the rear of the flight from Louisiana before they closed up the jet.