Walking on fire or driving a brace of swords through your cheeks may not be activities most commonly associated with vegetarianism. But for participants of one Thai festival it's the height of religious devotion.

Thailand's nine-day Vegetarian Festival in the tourist island of Phuket is a spectacular -- and bloody -- Chinese Taoist procession in which devotees purify themselves in public displays of self-mutilation.

Asia-Pacific leaders have staged their second summit fashion parade in just days following the recent revival of the tradition on the international diplomatic scene.

Leaders from the Asia-Pacific as well as the U.S. and Russia posed for the cameras late Wednesday in shimmering shirts made from hand-woven fabric "meticulously designed" by the office of the Sultan of Brunei, the host of this year's East Asia Summit.

A 787 Dreamliner bound for Japan was forced to turn around and fly back to Russia after toilets on the plane refused to flush, operator Japan Airlines (JAL) said Thursday.

The Boeing plane carrying 151 crew members and passengers left Moscow late Wednesday for Narita airport east of Tokyo but returned two hours later, a JAL spokesman said.

Victims of an ill-tempered monkey that terrorized a town in western Japan are to be offered compensation, an official said on Thursday.

More than 1,000 professional hunters, firefighters and police officers were mobilized to snare the piqued primate after it set upon 18 people during a weeks-long rampage through Hyuga.

In perhaps an unprecedented burst of birthday diplomacy, Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated turning 61 by quaffing vodka, wolfing down cake and being serenaded by some of the world's most powerful men.

Putin Tuesday recounted a series of light-hearted birthday moments that livened up the normally dour conference halls of a trade-focused Asia-Pacific leaders' summit on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

A Dutch initiative to combat illegal cannabis cultivation through the use of marijuana-scented "scratch-and-sniff" cards has gone nationwide to alert citizens to what their neighbors may be up to.

The expansion comes after a pilot project launched three years ago to combat illegal weed plantations by helping people to recognize the smell proved a success.

A Venezuelan couple has been fined $1,300 for getting a bit too frisky inside their automobile, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The case has rankled Venezuelans, inhabitants of one of the world's most crime-ridden countries, who grouse that the time and effort spent prosecuting the pair might have been put to better use catching thieves and robbers.

First there was the Cronut, now there's the Dosant and the Crodough. Londoners, it seems, just can't get enough of their doughnut-croissant crossovers.

From hip east London to tea rooms, high-street cafes and sky-rise restaurants, the high-calorie hybrids are flying off the shelves like the proverbial hot cakes.

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.