A small Japanese city has claimed a new snowman-building world record, an official said Monday, after a winter storm dumped tonnes of the white stuff.

More than 600 people raced to complete a whopping 1,585 snowmen -- each at least three-feet (90 centimeters) tall -- in an hour, smashing the previous Guinness World Record.

Trustworthy Tokyo-ites handed in $28 million of lost cash last year, police said Monday, with three quarters of it returned to its rightful owner, in the latest example of Japan's startling honesty.

Upstanding citizens who had chanced upon wallets full of money took a total 3.34 billion yen to their local police officers, a spokeswoman for Tokyo Metropolitan Police told Agence France Presse.

Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has conducted what is reportedly the world's first political emoji interview, using an angry red face to describe Russia's Vladimir Putin and a running man to depict her boss Tony Abbott.

Buzzfeed, which on Thursday released a video with U.S. President Barack Obama doing "things everyone does but doesn't talk about" such as posing in front of a mirror, interviewed Bishop by sending her text messages.

A family says a dog who ran away from home turned up at an Iowa hospital, where her owner was recovering from surgery.

The dog, Sissy, went missing from home last Saturday. The miniature schnauzer traveled almost 2 miles to get to Mercy Medical Center. That's where the dog's owner, Nancy Franck, was.

A Pennsylvania school district superintendent says five middle school students were mistakenly handed word search puzzles based on "Fifty Shades of Grey" with such terms as "leather cuffs" and "spanking."

The Valley Independent (http://bit.ly/1F6liC5 ) reports Monessen Schools Superintendent Leanne Spazak issued a statement Thursday apologizing and saying the puzzles were "mistakenly and unknowingly" put in a stack of worksheets given to five students Monday.

As Japan celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday a group of killjoys marched through Tokyo protesting what it called the "passion-based capitalism" of the annual celebration of romance.

Members of 'Kakuhido', which translates as the Revolutionary Alliance of Men that Women find Unattractive and claims on its website that "public smooching is terrorism", walked through the busy Shibuya district waving banners with buzzkill slogans demanding an end to Valentine's Day.

A lipstick print on a napkin left by Britain's "Iron Lady" prime minister Margaret Thatcher during a visit to the United States has gone on sale online ahead of Valentine's Day.

The curious collectible -- a napkin from the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee -- has so far fetched bids of £1,950 (2,600 euros, $3,000) on the collectors' site Picollecta.

A law student famous in Spain for conning his way into King Felipe's swearing-in reception and other official events was arrested Friday after leaving a restaurant without paying the bill, police said.

A police spokesman said Francisco Nicolas Gomez Iglesias, a fresh-faced 20-year-old dubbed "Little Nicholas", had dinner with friends on Thursday and left without paying 500 euros ($570).

Every dog has its day, even at New York Fashion Week. So do the odd cat, hen and even a big old lizard.

Some 150 critters took to the catwalk Thursday night in the 11th edition of the New York Pet Show.

Being president of the United States is not all drone strikes and crisis meetings. Occasionally you get to have a bit of fun.

A video released Thursday shows Barack Obama doing just that, posing in front of the mirror with aviator sunglasses, playing around with a selfie stick and struggling to enunciate "February."