What a-wake!

Mourners paying their last respects to an 81-year-old man in Chile were stunned when he woke up in his coffin.

Feliberto Carrasco had been presumed dead when relatives found him limp and cold.

But they soon learned otherwise, when Carrasco, who had been laid out in his best suit, opened his eyes at his wake.

****

The fat lady soon will sing again in Turkmenistan, which is ending a seven-year ban on opera – and the circus – that had been instituted by its late wacky leader.

Saparmurat Niyazov had banned opera, ballet and the circus in the central Asian country because he considered them “alien” to Turkmen culture.

“Today, a new period is starting in our country, which we have called an era of great renaissance,” said the county’s new leader, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

****

Two out of three Australian travelers either are already members of the “Mile High Club,” or want to join by have the prerequisite sex in an airplane, a new survey reveals.

“People are obviously looking for more stimulating entertainment than a movie or a CD when traveling by plane,” said Paul Fisher, global marketing manager at Totaltravel.com.

****

A burglar in Berlin aborted a break-in – and then called the cops – after discovering a corpse in the apartment he was trying to loot.

“He called to say he’d just broken into a flat and found a dead body,” said a police spokeswoman. “He gave the address of the place and then hung up.”

Officers then found the 64-year-old resident of the apartment dead in his bedroom, where he apparently had passed away two weeks before. The burglar was gone.

****

The first smoke-free restaurant chain in Beijing is at risk of going out of business because nicotine-addicted customers have stopped eating there.

Business at Meizhou Dongpo has dropped 20 percent since it banned smoking in October, but “we figure that if we’re going to die, at least we’re going to die honorably,” said Guo Xiadong, the restaurant’s deputy director.