New Zealand Prime Minister John Key publicly apologized Wednesday to a waitress who labelled him a "schoolyard bully" for repeatedly pulling her ponytail on visits to her cafe.

As women's groups expressed outrage, Key said he now realized his behavior was inappropriate but insisted he was merely "horsing around", not acting maliciously.

A co-pilot who spilt coffee on the instrument panel of the Serbian president's plane and then hit an emergency button while trying to mop it up, caused the jet to plunge, an investigation showed Tuesday.

President Tomislav Nikolic was forced to abort an official visit to the Vatican on Friday after one of the engines of the plane carrying him to Rome shut down.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's two-day visit to Pakistan has been replete with flowery rhetoric extolling mutual love between both countries, but the name chosen for a new joint think tank has left some social media users in titters.

Dedicated to research on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $46 billion dollar plan linking China's restive west to the Arabian Sea, the newly inaugurated Research and Development International (RANDI) organisation has been widely pilloried because its acronym sounds like "whore" in Urdu and Hindi.

A 65-year-old Buddhist monk  being held by police is accused of looting graves for skulls to be used in black magic rituals, authorities said Tuesday.

The monk, who was disrobed on April 19, allegedly raided two cemeteries near the northeastern city of Udon Thani with accomplices.

Banking giant HSBC apologised for a website blunder on its Hong Kong page which directed unwitting visitors to a pornographic site, reports said Tuesday.

In a statement published on Monday, the bank said the link to the external website had been removed from its community projects page and made an apology.

An upstate New York woman has taken on the post-winter pothole problem in her hometown by filling in the eyesores with pansies.

After months of severe weather left the streets of Schenectady pocked with pavement craters and city public works crews scrambling to fix them, some residents began filling in the holes themselves.

A 38-year-old woman's quest to find her birth mother ended in a surprising place - the company where she works.

WKBN-TV in Youngstown reports http://bit.ly/1ztZr15 that La-Sonya Mitchell-Clark requested records that were made available recently by the Ohio Department of Health. She learned her mother's name is Francine Simmons. She looked her up on Facebook and saw that she worked at InfoCision, the teleservices company where she works.

The New England Aquarium wants its endangered African penguins to get a little steamy.

Aquarium experts are playing matchmaker behind the scenes to encourage eight pairs of African penguins to breed more chicks.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was caught on video downing a beer in a few seconds at a Sydney pub, prompting comparisons to another drink-chugging former leader and sparking a debate on social media.

The video, reportedly recorded on Saturday night, showed the leader knocking back a glass of Australia's Victoria Bitter in about six seconds as a large crowd surrounding him yelled "scull" repeatedly.

Breaking from decades of "Just Say No"-type messaging about marijuana use, Colorado law enforcement officials are starting a new campaign designed to promote safe marijuana use.

The revised campaign starts this weekend, when tens of thousands are expected at public rallies and concerts in observation of the 4/20 marijuana holiday. A few things to know about the new effort, along with some backstory: