Part of a vanity airport built by toppled Sri Lankan strongman Mahinda Rajapakse will be used as a rice storage warehouse to reduce losses after failing to take off, officials said Wednesday.

Rajapakse International aiport, located in the remote farming outpost of Hambantota 250 kilometres (180 miles) from Colombo, has been shunned by airlines after setting planes on a collision course with migrating birds. 

Malaysia Airlines said one of its jets made an unscheduled landing in India on Thursday due to broken lavatories while flying the same route as flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine last year.

A spokeswoman said MH19 -- the new flight code after "MH17" was retired following the tragedy -- landed in Chennai on a scheduled flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

A heavily overgrown sheep had its massive fleece shorn Thursday by an Australian national champion in a life-saving operation that animal welfare officers said may have set a new world record for a single shearing.

The merino sheep, named Chris by bushwalkers who spotted him wandering alone on the outskirts of Australia's capital Canberra, was rescued by RSPCA officers Wednesday and went under the cutters Thursday.

Tourism bosses in a Japanese prefecture have come up with what they hope will draw more feline-loving visitors: a Google-style street view for cats.

Billed as a world's first, officials this week launched an online map that explores the streets of port city Onomichi from the purr-spective of a four-pawed visitor. 

Australian animal welfare officers Wednesday put out an urgent appeal for shearers after finding a huge sheep with wool so overgrown its life was in danger, with a national champion set to take on the challenge.

The very woolly merino sheep was spotted wandering on its own near Mulligan Flats, a grassy woodland just outside the national capital Canberra, by bushwalkers who alerted local RSPCA officers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin may be nearing his 63rd birthday, but he can still beat a team of kids in hockey. With the help of some of Russia's most formidable hockey veterans, that is.

Putin marked the opening of the school year on Tuesday by taking part in a game against student players from the Sirius academy for gifted children at the Shaiba arena in Sochi, one of the hockey venues at the 2014 Olympics.

An ice cream chain in China's commercial hub Shanghai is offering a lickable likeness of the head of executed Japanese war criminal Hideki Tojo to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Iceason parlors are selling ice cream bars on a stick with the image of Tojo, former Japanese army general and prime minister, in a campaign with the slogan "10,000 people together eat the Japanese war criminal."

A group of hackers on Tuesday claimed they had downed the website of Britain's lead law enforcement agency after it arrested six people over similar attacks.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) website was offline for around an hour after suffering a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, claimed by hacking group Lizard Squad.

Here comes the bride all dressed in white. And, don't look now, but here come thousands of bicyclists not dressed in anything.

Nude and body-painted participants from this year's Philly Naked Bike Ride cruised through the wedding day photo shoot of lovebirds Ross Cohen and Blair Delson.

Thousands of prepaid travel cards featuring a popular Japanese porn star sold out in a matter of hours in Taipei on Tuesday, despite a groundswell of objection from women's groups and politicians.

All 30,000 commuter cards featuring Yui Hatano were sold by 4:18 am local time after going on sale at midnight, the EasyCard Corporation said in a statement.