British Energy Secretary Chris Huhne resigned on Friday after prosecutors announced he would be charged over allegations that he dodged a speeding penalty, but vowed to prove his innocence.

Huhne is a member of the Liberal Democrat party, the junior partner in Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition, and becomes the third minister to quit since the government took office in May 2010.

A zoo in the freezing steppes of Kazakhstan is giving its monkeys red wine to ward off winter colds, its chief animal specialist told Agence France Presse on Friday.

"We give the monkeys wine because in the winter it protects them from respiratory infections. You could say we douse them with wine to ward off flu," said Svetlana Pilyuk of the Karagandy zoo in the east of the ex-Soviet state.

A Taiwanese man died while playing video games at an Internet cafe as dozens of other patrons carried on for hours afterwards apparently unaware that they were sitting near a corpse, according to police.

The 23-year-old checked in at the cafe in New Taipei city on Tuesday night and was found dead but still sitting rigidly on a chair with his hands stretched out the following night by a waitress, police said.

A man walking his dogs in a federal park was hit with a stun gun and arrested by a park ranger who accused him of not putting a leash on the animals and giving a false name, astonishing passers-by who say the reaction was excessive.

The ranger deployed the Taser stun gun on Gary Hesterberg on Sunday after he ignored the ranger's orders and tried to walk away, the National Park Service said. Hesterberg was allegedly walking his dogs without leashes in violation of the rules of Rancho Corral de Tierra, which was incorporated into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in December.

A 92-year-old Russian professor has been granted Estonian citizenship, more than seven decades after a Soviet invasion voided his application, the Estonian government said Thursday.

The government said in a statement it was honoring Isidor Levin's "extraordinary input" in helping keep Estonian culture alive during five decades of Soviet rule.

Hollywood star and weather seer Punxsutawney Phil used to be the only groundhog that mattered in weather predicting, but Phil's shock decision Thursday that spring is still six weeks away put him out on a limb.

As the eastern United States enjoys an exceptionally mild winter, most would have guessed that spring is around the corner. But when Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow Thursday, his handlers announced he was able to see his shadow. According to tradition, that signals six more weeks of winter.

French presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande was targeted in a flour-throwing attack Wednesday as he wrapped up a speech about housing problems.

The Socialist candidate, tipped by opinion polls to win the April-May two-round election, was unharmed but left covered in white powder after the attack by a woman who was swiftly removed from the room in Paris.

Guinness World Records experts said Thursday they are to travel to a remote valley in southwestern Nepal to measure a 72-year-old claiming to be the world's shortest man.

Chandra Bahadur Dangi is 56 centimeters tall and weighs 12 kilos he told a media conference broadcast by Nepali state television.

Twins born in Indonesia and put up separately for adoption, have been reunited after finding each other living just 40 kilometers (25 miles) apart, in southern Sweden, three decades later.

Non-identical twins Emilie Falk and Lin Backman -- strangers until last year -- were separated nearly 29 years ago.

Many points of contention were aired at a high-stakes U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria's bloodshed on Tuesday, but at least one came straight from another era -- Lawrence of Arabia.

Syria's U.N. representative brought up the famous British soldier from World War I as he defiantly rejected a draft resolution backed by other Arab states calling on President Bashar al-Assad to step down.