500 days in jail for illegal parking
An Austrian woman has begun a 500-day jail sentence for ignoring parking tickets and failing to pay a fine of around €24,000.
The 38-year-old civil servant from the city of Graz was jailed after ignoring 700 attempts by local authorities to notify her of the fines over a two-year period.
Bank thief flushes away his freedom
A hapless thief drilled his way into a French bank at the weekend, but missed the safe and instead found himself in a lavatory where he was promptly arrested.
The 21-year-old broke into a building adjoining a branch of Banque Populaire in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.
Tortoises worth €39,000 stolen
Ten rare tortoises have been stolen from a private museum in Singapore, its third theft in two years.
The thieves escaped with tortoises worth €38,692 that were on display at the Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum.
Child (4) dies in washing machine
A four-year-old girl in California died after she climbed into a washing machine that began tumbling.
A police spokesman said Kayley Ishii's 15-month-old brother either bumped or pushed the start button.
Tea slows beetles' attacks on trees
A dose of herbal tea can slow the march of beetles killing millions of acres of pine trees .
But instead of brewing a cuppa, US Forest Service scientists have found sprinkling tiny flakes containing the pheromone verbenone over lodgepole pine forests cuts the number of trees attacked by bark beetles by two thirds.
Man jailed for nude wife photos
A man was jailed in New York for posting nude photos of his ex-wife on the internet.
Thomas Gillen, was sentenced to two-and-a-half to five years after admitting identity theft and criminal contempt, Queens district attorney Richard Brown said.
