An irate Cambodian father chained his teenage son by the neck to a power pole to punish him for skipping school to play online games, police said Thursday.

The 13-year-old's public ordeal came to an end in under two hours when neighbors alerted the police who brought in a locksmith to free the child.

An 18-year old Ukrainian girl died Thursday almost three weeks after suffering a gang rape attack by youths which shocked the nation and raised new doubts about the competence of its police.

Oksana Makar was raped by three young men in their early 20s, strangled, burned alive and then left for dead in the attack in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv, investigators have said.

After Egypt's ruling military sealed off streets around Cairo's Tahrir Square with walls of imposing concrete blocks, a group of artists decided to reopen the avenues on their own — in the public imagination, at least.

On one of the walls, they painted an exact trompe-l'oeil reproduction of the street behind it, as if it were open. The perspective painting matches up with the architecture of the neighboring buildings and even has some "pedestrians" strolling along the boulevard. The street's new name is "No Walls Street."

A Spanish court has dropped a probe into allegations a Saudi billionaire prince raped a model on a yacht in Ibiza three years ago, according to a ruling seen by Agence France Presse Wednesday.

The case concerns Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of King Abdullah and one of world's richest men, who is being asked to respond to a complaint of sexual assault against him in August 2008 by a model who was 20 at the time.

The authorities in Georgia are hoping to intoxicate tourists with their country's charms by building a fountain which pumps out strong alcoholic liquor instead of water once a week.

The fountain being built on top of a new tower in the Black Sea resort of Batumi will pump out Georgian 'chacha', a fiery spirit distilled from grapes which is similar to Italian grappa, the city's mayor said on Wednesday.

Setting aside fears for a new arms race with the United States or the conflict in Syria, President Dmitry Medvedev took to Twitter Wednesday to reassure Russia on another burning issue -- the wellbeing of his cat.

Presidential pet Dorofey had not, contrary to press reports and frenzied Internet speculation, gone missing.

A purported email exchange between Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma in which she affectionately refers to him as her "duck" has been met with delight by activists and spurred a host of jokes on the Internet.

The message, revealed by British newspapers earlier this month, is one of a cache of documents leaked by activists and purporting to be between the Assads, their advisors and family members.

Some workers in Sweden have found a rather offbeat way to spend their lunch hour. Actually, on-beat is more like it.

Dripping with sweat and awash in disco lights, they dance away to pulsating club music at Lunch Beat, a trend that started in Stockholm and is spreading to other cites in Europe.

After taking a month to dig a one-kilometer tunnel to a jewelry store in Italy, four would-be thieves were nabbed at the last minute when two of them were seen climbing out of a manhole.

The men who tipped off police were also spotted carrying walkie-talkies in the picturesque town centre of Acireale in Sicily, police said.

Master distillers from Scotland are stepping three centuries back in time to make single malt whiskey in the same place where George Washington produced his own liquid gold.

Using imported Scottish barley, they are creating the only 100 bottles of authentic single malt whiskey ever to come out of the founding father's Mount Vernon estate, south of the U.S. capital that bears his name.