A hotelier in rural Austria was stuck in a lift for four days but skills acquired on a Swedish military survival course helped him pull through, police said Friday.

A friend delivering bread eventually alerted rescue services on Friday after noticing post piled up outside the hotel in Bad Gastein near Salzburg, western Austria.

A message in a bottle to a woman named Mary thrown by a Canadian into the Atlantic in 1985 has washed ashore almost 8,000 kilometres (4,971 miles) away in Croatia 28 years later.

"Mary, you are really great person. I hope we can keep in correspondence. I said I would write. Your friend forever, Jonathon, Nova Scotia, 1985," said the message found by 23-year-old Croatian Matea Medak Rezic.

A New Zealand politician whose humorous speech to parliament backing gay marriage has become an Internet hit said Friday he was staggered at the response to his words.

Maurice Williamson, a minister in the conservative National Party government, joked ahead of Wednesday's vote that he had seen "the most enormous big gay rainbow" over his electorate and taken it as a sign to back the change.

Volunteers are searching for a pair of wallabies hopping through Austria — yes, Austria.

The kangaroo-like marsupials, which are smaller than "roos" and primarily found in Australia, escaped from a farm in the Upper Austrian countryside, about 180 kilometers (about 110 miles) northwest of Vienna. Thursday was the third day of the quest to find them.

The world's oldest person turned 116 on Friday as local health chiefs in Japan launch a study to find out why he and many of those around him have lived so long.

Jiroemon Kimura, who was born in 1897, was expected to celebrate his astonishing milestone with friends and family, and receive a visit from the mayor of his home city of Kyotango in the west of the country.

As Italian lawmakers failed to agree on a choice for the country's next president on Thursday, some cast prank ballots for porn star Rocco Siffredi and actress Sophia Loren.

Parliament speaker Laura Boldrini was quick to point out -- and not tongue-in-cheek -- that Siffredi "does not have the prerequisites", Italian media reported.

You meet someone, there's chemistry, and then come the introductory questions: What's your name? Come here often? Are you my cousin?

In Iceland, a country with a population of 320,000 where most everyone is distantly related, inadvertently kissing cousins is a real risk.

Seems Dubai police have a thing for Italian speed: They're making preparations to have a nearly $250,000 Ferrari join an even pricier Lamborghini as the flagship flash of its fleet.

Photos carried Wednesday by the Emirates 24/7 online newspaper show the car getting the green-and-white colors of Dubai's police force. Earlier this week, Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said the Ferrari was on the way.

A U.S. man whose estranged wife cut off his penis accused her Wednesday of effectively murdering him, recounting his horror as she severed the organ and threw it into a garbage disposal machine.

The 60-year-old man said he would never have sex again after his wife -- who said she "wanted him to stop hurting her with his penis" -- drugged him and tied him to a bed, before taking a kitchen knife to his manhood.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino's youngest sister, movie star and TV show host Kris Aquino, was the country's top taxpayer, beating many of its wealthiest tycoons, the tax commissioner said Tuesday.

Kristina "Kris" Aquino, 42, paid 49.87 million pesos ($1.22 million), topping the list of individual taxpayers in 2011, according to a list released by the internal revenue bureau.