Overweight policemen in an Indonesian city have been ordered to join an exercise program as many of them are currently too slow to catch fleeing criminals.

"The pot-bellied police run too slow," Wahyu Widada, police chief of Tangerang, near the capital Jakarta, told AFP.

Malaysian state energy firm Petronas has pulled a YouTube music video it posted to mark the Hindu festival of Diwali after angry viewers pointed out that it depicted an inappropriate funeral dance.

Race and religion are sensitive issues in Malaysia which experienced deadly racial riots in 1969, and critics complained that the video failed to depict the true meaning of the festival of lights, which commemorates the triumph of good over evil.

The flamboyant Australian mining magnate behind the building of the Titanic II said Friday a New York gala to unveil plans for the vessel would be delayed out of respect for the victims of super storm Sandy.

Clive Palmer said the launch planned to take place on the retired aircraft carrier USS Intrepid in New York, at which he was to unveil the design and plans for his Titanic II project, will be rescheduled for early 2013.

What's in a name? The answer is a great deal of confusion for passengers using one South African airport, which has apparently changed its name twice in two weeks.

In keeping with South Africa's drive to change European or apartheid-era place names, the airport formerly known as Bloemfontein International Airport was targeted for a moniker overhaul.

Several dozen South Korean activists launched balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets, condoms and sanitary pads across the border with North Korea on Thursday.

The launch went ahead despite a recent threat from Pyongyang of military strikes against similar propaganda exercises by North Korean defectors.

Military training was suspended, flights rescheduled and emergency calls reserved for latecomers Thursday as hundreds of thousands of South Korean students sat a crucial college entrance examination.

As every year, the focus of the education-obsessed country narrowed for one day to ensure the smooth running of the exam, seen as a defining moment that can hold the key to everything, from future careers to marriage prospects.

A New Zealand judge on Thursday threw out an attempt to prosecute a dead South Korean fisherman, comparing the case to a Monty Python sketch, reports said.

Trawler officers Soon Ill Hwang and Dae Jun Lee were accused in Christchurch District Court of illegally dumping dead fish at sea in a case brought by the Ministry for Primary Industries, the New Zealand Herald reported.

A 25-year-old man died and another was recovering in hospital Wednesday after they became stranded in the harsh Australian Outback, prompting warnings about the risks of the desert.

The pair had been on a routine morning check of a spring near Ethabuka cattle station, near the Simpson Desert in southeast Queensland state, on Monday when their four-wheel-drive vehicle became bogged on a sand dune.

A Russian man reportedly suffering from unrequited love for his colleague went on a shooting spree in his Moscow office, killing five and wounding another two, police said on Wednesday.

He opened fire at the offices of the drugs company in northeast Moscow Wednesday, killing five colleagues and wounding another two, the Investigative Committee said. The company's security guards had detained him, the statement added.

Nothing was going to stop first-time voter Galicia Malone from casting her ballot in Tuesday's US elections -- not even the imminent birth of her first child.

The 21-year-old from Dolton, Illinois, a suburb of President Barack Obama's adopted hometown Chicago, had been in labor since the middle of the night, with contractions five minutes apart.