Fire breaks out at fire station

We didn't start the fire... Oh hang on, we did

A blaze broke out at a fire station in Japan after a firefighter left a cooking stove burning as crew members left the station to respond to emergency calls.

Most of the duty staffers were out on a call when their colleague, alone at the station and cooking dinner for the crew, was himself called out.

In his haste to respond to the call, he forgot to turn the stove off, said Seiji Hori, a Nagoya City Fire Department official. Ten fire trucks from other stations put out the fire, Hori added.

"We are an institute that should be in a position to educate people about fire, so we are extremely sorry that such an incident happened," Hori said, adding that they would consider ordering-in for dinner from now on.

Vicars hit the catwalk for Christian fashion show

Vicars are turning to the catwalk to show off their clerical couture

Forget Christian Dior and say hello to Christian gear.

Vicars have taken part in a catwalk show to model a new range of clerical couture.

As Kanye West and Mischa Barton took in Jean-Paul Gaultier at Paris fashion week, members of the Christian Resources Exhibition watched colleagues strut their stuff in formal wear by the likes of J Wippell Ltd and Shinglers of Sutton.

There was also a 'leisure section' featuring socks embossed with the holy lamb.

'Women clergy have brought a fresh look,' said designer Juliet Hemingway at the Exeter show.

Dolphins 'are the chefs of the sea'

Now sir, how would you like that cooked?

Dolphins are the chefs of the seas, having been seen going through precise and elaborate preparations to rid cuttlefish of ink and bone to produce a soft meal of calamari, Australian scientists say.

A wild female Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin was observed going through the same series of complicated steps to prepare cuttlefish prey for eating in the Spencer Gulf, in South Australia state.

"It's a sign of how well their brains are developed. It's a pretty clever way to get pure calamari without all the horrible bits," Mark Norman, the curator of molluscs at Museum Victoria and a research team member, told the Canberra Times newspaper.

The research team, writing in the science journal PLoS One, said they repeatedly observed a female dolphin herding cuttlefish out of algal weed and onto a clear, sandy patch of seafloor.

The dolphin, identified using circular body scars, then pinned the cuttlefish with its snout while standing on its head, before killing it instantly with a rapid downward thrust and "loud click" audible to divers as the hard cuttlebone broke.

The dolphin then lifted the body up and beat it with her nose to drain the toxic black ink that cuttlefish squirt into the water to defend themselves when attacked.

Next the prey was taken back to the seafloor, where the dolphin scraped it along the sand to strip out the cuttlebone, making the cuttlefish soft for eating.

Norman and study co-author Tom Tregenza, from the University of Exeter, said the behaviour exhibited between 2003 and 2007 was unlikely to be a rarity.

"In addition to our observations, individual bottlenose dolphins feeding at these cuttlefish spawning grounds have been observed by divers in the area to perform the same behavioural sequence," they said in the study.

"The feeding behaviour reported here is specifically adapted to a single prey type and represents impressive behavioural flexibility for a non-primate animal."

A separate 2005 study provided the first sign dolphins may be capable of group learning and using tools, with a mother seen teaching her daughters to break off sea sponges and wear them as protection while scouring the seafloor in Western Australia.

The mammals used the sponges "as a kind of glove" while searching for food, University of Zurich researcher Michael Krutzen told New Scientist magazine.

Other researchers have observed dolphins removing the spines from flathead fish prey and breaking metre-long Golden Trevally fish into smaller pieces for eating.

Death faker foiled by traffic cop

If one of these pulls you over, you'd better hope you haven't been dead for 20 years

A man who faked his death 20 years ago off has been found after he was stopped for having a faulty number plate.

Bennie Wint admitted he staged his drowning death in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1989.

He left a grieving fiancée and a daughter from a previous marriage. Since his faked death, he has remarried and had another child in North Carolina.

Wint told police he faked his death because he was "paranoid" about his drug-related activity.

He was pulled over because the lights on his licence plate was not working.

He gave a false name to the police officer that did not come up on databases.

Police sergeant Stacy Wyatt said: "I found it suspicious and believed it to be a false name."

He listed Wint as a "John Doe", but Wint soon opened up and admitted he had been on the run since 1989.

Man 'rides white horse through snow while drunk'

This is a man in the snow, minus a horse

A man has been accused of public intoxication while riding a white horse during a snowstorm in the northern Wyoming town of Cody.

Police say they cited 28-year-old Benjamin Daniels after they received a call on Sunday afternoon from a motorist concerned that a man was creating a road hazard by riding his horse on a street in conditions with poor visibility, the Billings Gazette reported.

Cody Assistant Police Chief George Menig says officers noticed Daniels was intoxicated after they stopped him to explain that drivers were having difficulty spotting his slow-moving white horse.

Menig said Thursday that Daniels was detained Sunday and released the following day. He will go before a municipal judge later. A friend of Daniels picked up the horse.

Cigarette burns home while owner at quit smoking meeting

Smoking is bad for you

A lit cigarette burned a home to the ground while its occupants were attending a meeting to help them quit smoking.

Officials have ruled that a blaze that destroyed a mobile home in San Luis Obispo, California was caused by a cigarette.

The mobile home was owned by 68-year-old Bill Lewis who lived there with his mother Chessie, who's in her 80s.

The fire was started by a cigarette left behind by Chessie on a table of a porch before the pair left for a meeting at the County Public Health Department to help her quit smoking.

No one was injured in the fire, which caused $200,000 worth of damage.

Blowfish testicles hospitalise diners

This is fish and chips. Not blowfish. And that thing you clicked on the last page was a jellyfish. We do have pictures of blowfish but we just don't want to use them

Blowfish testicles prepared by an unauthorised chef have made seven diners ill in Japan, and three remained in hospital after eating the poisonous delicacy.

The owner of the restaurant in Tsuruoka city, who is also the chef, had no license to serve blowfish and was being questioned on suspicion of professional negligence.

Blowfish, while extremely poisonous if not prepared properly, is considered a delicacy in Japan and is consumed by thrill-seeking gourmets.

The seven men ordered sashimi and grilled blowfish testicles at the restaurant on Monday night.

Shortly after, they developed limb paralysis and breathing trouble and started to lose consciousness - typical signs of blowfish poisoning - and were rushed to a hospital for treatment.

A 68-year-old diner remained hospitalised in a critical condition with respiratory failure and two others, aged 55 and 69, were in serious condition.

"It's scary. If you go to a decent-looking restaurant that serves fugu, you would assume a cook has a proper fugu license," police official Yoshihito Iwase said, using the Japanese term for blowfish.

Blowfish poison, called tetrodotoxin, is nearly 100 times more poisonous than potassium cyanide, according to the Ishikawa Health Service Association.

It can cause death within an hour and a half after consumption.

Three people died and 44 others were sickened by blowfish poisoning in 2007 - most of them after catching the fish and cooking it at home - according to the Health Ministry.

Armed robber foiled by spoon

This is what a spoon looks like, for anyone in the world who was in doubt

A robber has been foiled by restaurant employees who were armed with a spoon.

The workers used their might - and the might of the spoon - to subdue Joey Geracy, 39, who has been charged with armed robbery. He is accused of entering Williams Supper Club in Muskego, Wisconsin through a kitchen door and grabbing a teenage girl who worked there. He then demanded money.

Police said Geraci wore a motorcycle helmet and claimed he had a weapon. But his plan collapsed when a chef hit him with a large serving spoon before putting him in a headlock.

After staff held him to the ground, police eventually shocked him with a Taser.

Postman delivers...a baby

Postmen deliver letters...and children

A postman was forced to make a special delivery when his wife went into labour.

Graham Proctor was upstairs when Elena began having contractions at their home in Brentwood, Essex.

The sorting officer then single-handedly delivered baby Isabel on the bathroom floor.

'I am so proud,' said his wife.

Handcuffed prisoners foil their own escape

The prisoners ended up in a heap

It was less than a Great Escape. Two New Zealand prisoners who were handcuffed together as they fled a courthouse foiled their own getaway when they ran to opposite sides of a light pole, slammed into each other and fell to the ground.

Jailers nabbed them as they struggled to their feet.

Their escapade on Wednesday was captured by a CCTV camera at Hastings District Court on New Zealand's North Island.

The footage shows the two men trying to make a break for it - but apparently forgetting they were joined at the wrist.

Hastings police Senior Sgt. Dave Greig said one inmate, Regan Reti, 20, had just been sent to prison for more than two years after being convicted of assault.

The other inmate, Tiranara White, 21, was in custody for allegedly stealing a car and violating parole.

"As they were being led from the Hastings police cells ... they made a bolt for freedom," Greig said.

"They fell over and they were sprayed with pepper spray. But they got up and ran out of the court onto the street, across the road to a car park," he said. "That's where they met the pole - it was all over, rover."

The pair were back in court Thursday, facing fresh charges of escaping from custody. Police said Reti, who pleaded guilty to the charge, had a month added to his prison term.

White did not enter a plea. He will remain in police custody while a psychiatric evaluation is carried out.

Grainy footage of the escapade shown on TV One News was billed as "one of the worst escape attempts ever seen."

Pair arrested after returning to crime scene

A police car. Who's driving that thing?! No one. It's parked

Two people have been arrested for allegedly stealing tyres and rims from a car.

Nothing strange in that, you might think. Except that this pair went back to the scene to check if they had been spotted.

John T West, 20, from Sacramento and Ashley Sorensen, 20, from Auburn are accused of stealing two tyres and rims off of a Toyota parked in a driveway.

They put the tyres on their own car and then drove back to the scene of the crime. They told authorities they wanted to "see if the lady had called the cops".

Well, their hunch was right. The victim had called the police and an officer was in the driveway when he noticed the vehicle drive by.

After searching the area he found the car at a mobile home park, sporting two Toyota tyres and rims.

The pair have been charged with theft.

Defendant smears lawyer in faeces

A mistrial was declared at a court in San Diego after a suspect in a robbery smeared human faeces on his lawyer's face and then threw more at the jury.

Weusi McGowan, 37, became enraged when Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser refused to remove Deputy Alternate Public Defender Jeffrey Martin from the case.

During the break, McGowan produced a plastic bag with fecal matter and smeared it on Martin's hair and face. He then flung the bag towards the jury, hitting the brief case of juror No. 9.

"That juror didn't even see it coming," said prosecutor Christopher Lawson.

After lunch, the judge dismissed the jury and said the defendant would have to find a new lawyer.

McGowan's bail was raised from $250,000 to $1 million, as he was branded a danger to the community.

The prosecutor said the defendant had wiped human faeces on himself in the past.

McGowan is charged with kidnapping for robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and other counts and could face assault charges in connection with the attack on his lawyer and the jury.

McGowan is accused of hitting a man with a rock in a sock in October 2007.

Blowfish testicles hospitalise diners

This is fish and chips. Not blowfish. And that thing you clicked on the last page was a jellyfish. We do have pictures of blowfish but we just don't want to use them

Blowfish testicles prepared by an unauthorised chef have made seven diners ill in Japan, and three remained in hospital after eating the poisonous delicacy.

The owner of the restaurant in Tsuruoka city, who is also the chef, had no license to serve blowfish and was being questioned on suspicion of professional negligence.

Blowfish, while extremely poisonous if not prepared properly, is considered a delicacy in Japan and is consumed by thrill-seeking gourmets.

The seven men ordered sashimi and grilled blowfish testicles at the restaurant on Monday night.

Shortly after, they developed limb paralysis and breathing trouble and started to lose consciousness - typical signs of blowfish poisoning - and were rushed to a hospital for treatment.

A 68-year-old diner remained hospitalised in a critical condition with respiratory failure and two others, aged 55 and 69, were in serious condition.

"It's scary. If you go to a decent-looking restaurant that serves fugu, you would assume a cook has a proper fugu license," police official Yoshihito Iwase said, using the Japanese term for blowfish.

Blowfish poison, called tetrodotoxin, is nearly 100 times more poisonous than potassium cyanide, according to the Ishikawa Health Service Association.

It can cause death within an hour and a half after consumption.

Three people died and 44 others were sickened by blowfish poisoning in 2007 - most of them after catching the fish and cooking it at home - according to the Health Ministry.

Armed robber foiled by spoon

This is what a spoon looks like, for anyone in the world who was in doubt

A robber has been foiled by restaurant employees who were armed with a spoon.

The workers used their might - and the might of the spoon - to subdue Joey Geracy, 39, who has been charged with armed robbery. He is accused of entering Williams Supper Club in Muskego, Wisconsin through a kitchen door and grabbing a teenage girl who worked there. He then demanded money.

Police said Geraci wore a motorcycle helmet and claimed he had a weapon. But his plan collapsed when a chef hit him with a large serving spoon before putting him in a headlock.

After staff held him to the ground, police eventually shocked him with a Taser.

White House e-mail service crashes

Dear Mr Obama, my computer sucks

So the new White House finally gets its e-mail up and running smoothly, and then what happens? The entire system crashed on Monday morning.

The last e-mail from the White House press office before the breakdown arrived just before 9am on Monday, advising that President Barack Obama's event on energy independence in the East Room would be open to all media, instead of just the smaller group of reporters and photographers that typically follows the president.

The malfunction left inboxes in the White House complex and across town eerily empty.

Several hours later, at his briefing for the news media, press secretary Robert Gibbs apologized for being out of electronic touch.

"Our apologies if you've e-mailed any of us in the last two-and-a-half hours," he said. "Our e-mail system is not working so well.

So our apologies on that, and we'll endeavor to get you information from earlier in the day, hopefully in a little bit more of a timely manner, if we can get the e-mail to work."

Gibbs' assistants ultimately got the information out the old-fashioned way: on paper.

It was unclear if the system would be working again on Tuesday.

Jailed killer attempts to post his finger

The inmate cut off the digit in his cell

A notorious Australian serial killer who is serving a life sentence for the slayings of seven backpackers cut off his little finger in his prison cell and attempted to mail it to the country's top court.

Ivan Milat, 64, who was convicted in 1996 of murdering the young travelers, used a serrated plastic knife that came with his meal to sever the finger from his left hand on Monday, a spokesman for the New South Wales state Department of Corrective Services said.

Milat, who is housed in a maximum security cell at Goulburn Correctional Centre, 125 miles south of Sydney, then placed the severed digit in an envelope addressed to the High Court of Australia and handed it to an officer.

He was rushed to a hospital, but surgeons were unable to reattach the finger, the spokesman said.

The killer was returned to prison later Monday and appeared in good health, though he was refusing to eat.

Milat offered no clues as to what his motive was, the spokesman said, adding the incident is under investigation.

"It's the work of a desperate man and Ivan Milat is in the top echelon of desperate people," John Dunthorne, the department's southwest region assistant commissioner, told Australia's 2UE radio Tuesday.

Milat has attempted to mutilate himself before. In 2001, he swallowed three disposable razor blades, and later that year swallowed a spring from the toilet in his cell.

Milat killed three Germans, two Britons and two Australians between 1989 and 1992. Their bodies were later found in shallow graves in a remote forest southwest of Sydney.

Star Trek couple's space race

It's death Jim but not as we know it

The creator of "Star Trek" and his wife will spend eternity together in space.

Celestis, a company that specialises in "memorial spaceflights", has said that it will ship the remains of Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett Roddenberry into space next year.

The couple's cremated remains will be sealed into specially made capsules designed to withstand the rigors of space travel.

A rocket-launched spacecraft will carry the capsules, along with digitised tributes from fans.

The Roddenberrys' remains - and the spacecraft - will travel ever deeper into space and will not return to earth, company spokeswoman Susan Schonfeld said.

After Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, his wife commissioned Celestis to launch a part of his remains into space in 1997. She died on December 18, 2008.

Car not built to fly, flies onto roof

Emergency services had to rescue a man from his car after he managed to crash it into a church roof in Limbach-Oberfrohna, Germany, today.

The 23 year-old from Chemnitz was severely injured in the accident.

According to the police the driver missed a turn, ploughed on up a sloping field and then finally 'took off' to land in the church roof.

Goat arrested for Mazda robbery

A goat arrested? No kidding - it's the nanny state gone mad

Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of the attempted armed robbery of a Mazda 323.

Vigilantes took the animal to the police, claiming it was a criminal who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal the car.

Police have detained the goat in custody while they ponder what to do next.

Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed said: "The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car.

It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat

"They pursued them. However, one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat.

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical.

"It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat."

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation.

Curious locals have rushed to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

The campervan that turns into a two-seater

The German-designed Colim campervan can turn into a sleek city car

A new motorhome may be ideal for those trying to skimp on holiday costs during the credit crunch.

The vehicle doubles as a two-seater city car so tourists can cruise around town, and it's more fuel efficient than a traditional motorhome.

The Colim vehicle sleeps four people and has a top speed of 90mph. German designer Christian Susana hopes the 'sleek curves will appeal to women buyers'.

He is now looking for a firm to make the vehicle.

Cleaners find $100,000 in tyre

Three road cleaners picking up litter on an Indiana highway found an abandoned tyre - and discovered about $100,000 (around £73,000) inside.

Indiana state police suspect the cash, in denominations of $5 to $100, may be drug money. State Police spokesman Mike Burns says a drug-sniffing dog found the scent of drugs on the bills.

Police said the workers found the tyre on Friday in a ditch along Interstate 70 just east of Indianapolis.

Police say the tyre appeared to be from a large truck. It isn't clear how long it was in the ditch.

Detective Sgt. Keith O'Donnell commended the workers for their 'honesty and professionalism' in contacting police.

111-year-old reptile becomes a dad

A reptile in New Zealand has unexpectedly become a father at the ripe old age of 111 - after receiving treatment for a cancer which had made him hostile toward prospective mates.

The centenarian tuatara, named Henry, was thought to be long out of the mating game, until he was caught canoodling with a female named Mildred last March.

That consummation that resulted in 11 babies being hatched on Monday.

Tuatara are indigenous New Zealand creatures that resemble lizards, but are actually descended from a seperate lineage of reptiles that walked the earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago.

An endangered species, the hatchlings born at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery will provide a badly needed boost to the tuatara's genetic diversity, said the gallery's tuatara curator, Lindsay Hazley.

Henry was at least 70 years old when he arrived at the museum, 'a grumpy old man' who attacked other reptiles, including females. He stayed that way until a cancerous tumor was removed from his genitals in 2002, said Hazley.

'I went off the idea he was good for breeding,' Hazley told The Associated Press, but once the tumor was removed, 'he was no longer aggressive.'

The museum now has 72 of the reptiles after 42 hatchings in the past two years.

Hazley hopes to use Henry regularly in the breeding program that is helping expand tuatara numbers, after their population had been dramatically reduced by predators.

Tuatara are estimated to number about 50,000, most of them living in predator-free sanctuaries, including offshore islands.

A male Tuatara takes 70 years to fully mature but reaches sexual maturity about age 20.

While there's no scientific data on the life span of the ancient reptiles, 'they go beyond 100 well and truly,' Hazley said. 'They can be around for 150 to 250 years.'

Mexico creates record-setting cheesecake

If you've been trying to cut down on the calories in a New Year healthy-eating effort, then you might want to avoid Mexico City, where they've just made the world's largest cheesecake.

Chef Miguel Angel Quezada says 55 cooks spent 60 hours making the massive cheesecake - a 2-ton tribute to calorific excess, topped with strawberries.

The monster cake used nearly a ton of cream cheese, the same amount of yogurt, 350 kilograms of pastry, 250 kilograms of sugar and 150 kilograms of butter.

Carlos Martinez of Guinness World Records declared the cheesecake the world's largest on Sunday at an event sponsored by Kraft Foods.

While we don't want to take away from Mexico's fine achievement, it should be pointed out that there wasn't much competition for the title of world's biggest cheesecake - Guinness had no previous record for cheesecakes.

Organizers gave out 20,000 slices around Mexico City.