A child's helium balloon has been blamed for a power failure that knocked out Greece's main civil aviation radar and snarled flights for over an hour over the weekend, a report said on Monday.

Top-selling Ta Nea daily said the balloon knocked out the "heart" of the Athens flight information region (FIR) radar that oversees Greek airspace.

Galaxy S3, iPhone 5 or HTC One? That's a tough question for Taiwan's Cabinet ministers.

Senior Taiwanese officials have been under scrutiny for the smartphones they use — specifically whether they support Taiwan's HTC Corp., which plays a big role the island's high-tech economy.

Philippine convicts who became famous for dancing to Michael Jackson's hits have added South Korean spice to their repertoire, with a performance of the popular "Gangnam Style" rap.

A video posted by prison authorities in the central city of Cebu on YouTube showed about 1,000 inmates clad in orange uniforms doing the horse-riding dance made famous by South Korean rapper Psy.

A joke by the satirical newspaper The Onion appears to have gotten lost in translation.

An Iranian news agency picked up — as fact — a story from the paper about a supposed survey showing an overwhelming majority of rural white Americans would rather vote for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than President Barack Obama. But it was made up, like everything in the just-for-laughs newspaper, which is headquartered in Chicago.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was mocked by the press on Thursday after U.S. chat show host David Letterman left him stumped on questions about British history and culture.

In an awkward appearance on Letterman's "Late Show" on Wednesday, filmed in New York, Cameron failed to guess the composer of the hymn "Rule Britannia" or the meaning of "Magna Carta", an early English charter of rights.

A Hong Kong tycoon who offered a $65 million "marriage bounty" to any man who can win the heart of his lesbian daughter has been inundated with applications from around the globe, a report said Friday.

Cecil Chao told the South China Morning Post newspaper that around 100 would-be suitors of his 33-year-old daughter, Gigi, had poured into his office since he went public with his offer on Wednesday.

Vladimir Putin has sent a Black Russian Terrier puppy to his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez, who joked the Russian strongman would receive a capybara, the world's largest rodent, in return.

The three-month-old puppy was given to Chavez by Igor Sechin, one of Putin's most trusted lieutenants and chief executive of Rosneft, Russia's largest oil company.

A Chinese man needed to be restrained after he tried to open the emergency exit thinking it was the toilet door during a flight to Hong Kong, an airline said Friday.

Crew of the Hong Kong Airlines flight from Bali, Indonesia, were shocked to see the 52-year-old man rise from his seat halfway through the journey and start pulling on the emergency door handle, the airline said.

Canadian and U.S. authorities have busted a cross-border cheese smuggling ring that brought Can$200,000 worth of mozzarella into Canada undeclared and without paying duties.

Four men, including two Canadian policemen, were foiled in the caper to also distribute the dairy products -- as well as chicken wings and pickles -- to pizzerias and other restaurants in southern Ontario for an estimated profit of Can$165,000, Niagara Regional Police said.

This week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined the ranks of those pranked by a Quebec radio station, his office confirmed Thursday.

Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel called Ban on Wednesday afternoon and pretended to be Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.