A man whose teenage son ran up a $54,000 credit card bill in a champagne-fuelled tour of Japanese girlie bars does not have to pay most of it back, a court has ruled.

The 16-year-old and his friend took his father's platinum American Express card around luxury nightspots in the ancient capital of Kyoto, quaffing whisky and sparkling wine at up to 380,000 yen ($3,700) per bottle, Japanese media said.

A newborn baby boy was rescued from a sewage pipe in a Chinese apartment building after being flushed down a toilet, state media said.

"Fortunately the baby survived. But the person (who abandoned him) is still suspected of attempted murder," said an unnamed police officer, according to the official news portal hangzhou.com.cn.

Anthony Weiner, running for New York mayor two years after he became notorious for sending women sexually explicit photos, raced to fix his campaign website Friday after another pictorial faux-pas.

The site had featured a banner image of a city skyline... from Pittsburgh.

A South African woman is fighting fraud charges for stealing casino patrons' jewellery after pretending they were for good luck rituals with an African demon.

Nancy Shanelle Naidoo promised customers a tokoloshe -- a mythical sprite-like creature -- would bring them luck while gambling after she prayed over their possessions.

A Bosnian shepherd who killed with an axe a bear that attacked him overnight was hospitalized and his condition was described as serious, a local TV station reported on Sunday.

Blazo Grkovic, who was attacked by a brown bear as he was guarding his flock of sheep at the foot of southern Bosnian mountain Volujak, told local BN television he had "hit it in the neck."

A Chinese tourist who defaced an ancient Egyptian monument was hunted down by Internet users who prompted his parents to apologize, state media reported on Monday.

A photo posted on Chinese social networking service Sina Weibo showed crudely drawn Chinese characters written over an ancient sandstone relic lined with hieroglyphics on the banks of the Nile River, the Global Times newspaper said.

Officials say an elderly man suffering from Alzheimer's disease fell from an ambulance and died in southeastern Brazil.

Graciele Gomes da Silva heads the health department of the city of Joao Pinheiro. She says 82-year-old Luis Jose Lima apparently opened the ambulance's back door, fell to the highway and was hit by an oncoming car that left the scene.

One mistake by a clumsy crane operator caused a 10-hour blackout over about a third of Vietnam, exposing the fragility of the nation's power grid.

State electricity company EVN said in a statement Thursday that the blackout occurred Wednesday after the crane operator knocked a tree down onto the main north-south high voltage power transmission line.

It's not unusual for a cat to get a hairball, but a 400-pound (180-kilogram) tiger needed help from veterinary surgeons when he couldn't hack up a soccer ball-sized hairball by himself.

The 17-year-old tiger named Ty underwent the procedure Wednesday at a veterinary center in the Tampa Bay area community of Clearwater. Doctors said in a statement that they safely removed the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) obstruction from Ty's stomach.

A Swaziland high court judge has become entangled in messy battle over custody of a dachshund puppy, which he is accused of dognapping from a neighbor using a falsified court order.

Judge Jacobus Annandale, an avid dog-breeder, allegedly sent police officers with a fake court order to nab the long-bodied pup a few days after selling it.