Odd News

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - Chinese police have detained some 3,470 people so far this year during a crackdown on online pornography and closed thousands of pornographic websites, state media said on Saturday.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada condemned on Monday a series of elaborate hoax emails and a fake website story that claimed the country would cut emissions of greenhouse gases by a much greater amount than previously announced.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian family is turning heads with a rotating house that can guarantee a different view every time they wake up.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Karen Cordova, a 17-year-old high school student and part-time supermarket cashier, admits she sometimes texts friends while driving home from work late at night, lonely and bored.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police arrested a man who claimed to be a "secret agent" after a high speed chase in pursuit of a car with a blue flashing light on its roof.

LONDON (Reuters) - Lotus F1 principal Tony Fernandes has risen to Richard Branson's challenge for the loser of the two Formula One team owners next season to serve as a stewardess on the winner's airline.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Ding Junhui has donated 276 meat pies he was awarded for winning the UK snooker championship to a charity in his adopted home city of Sheffield, Chinese media reported on Wednesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's biggest retailer Tesco apologised on Tuesday after complaints that a Christmas card it sold was offensive to people with ginger hair.

LONDON (Reuters) - Richard Branson challenged aviation rival Tony Fernandes to a Formula One duel on Tuesday with the loser having to dress up as an airline stewardess.

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Inuit communities need funds to adapt to climate change in the Arctic, including measures to build communal deep freezers to store game because warming is reducing their hunting season, an Inuit leader said on Friday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The number of text messages sent in a single month in the United States increased more than 52 times in the six years since 2003, data compiled by the Census Bureau showed Tuesday.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A man who broke into an 89-year-old woman's Knoxville home and awakened her was scared off when a monitoring company answered her medical alert call. The Knoxville News Sentinel reported the woman told police she was awakened before dawn Tuesday by a loud noise. She said a man stood over her bed, shaking her by the arms and asking if she were all right.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Soviet captain Vyacheslav Fetisov will play his first professional game in more than a decade when he takes to the ice for his former club CSKA Moscow on Friday.

BOSTON - Police say a Boston man wanted for drug trafficking tried to conceal his identity by cutting the tips of his fingers to hide the prints. State Police spokesman David Procopio said Monday that Francis Viliar admitted to police that he paid someone $400 to slice off the fleshy pads at the ends of his fingers.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police arrested a man who claimed to be a "secret agent" after a high speed chase in pursuit of a car with a blue flashing light on its roof.

BETHEL, Alaska - Police arrested a 51-year-old man accused of attacking a relative with a rifle after driving home drunk on a snowmachine. The Tundra Drums reported that Hooper Bay police responded to a complaint of a man shooting a rifle inside a home Saturday night.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ordinary paper could one day be used as a lightweight battery to power the devices that are now enabling the printed word to be eclipsed by e-mail, e-books and online news.

BERLIN - German police have rescued four frozen walkers who called up from a waste container begging to be saved from roving wild boars. Police in Darmstadt, south of Frankfurt, said they received an emergency call at nearly 3 a.m. Sunday from a man who said he and three companions had fled into the container after being surprised by a group of boars during a nighttime walk in the woods. He said they didn't dare to emerge.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Robbers took advantage of Brazil's passion for football to steal about $6 million (3.7 million pounds) from a cash delivery firm, as the nation was transfixed on championship games, media reported on Monday.

TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - A French court has split the jackpot from a casino slot machine between the woman who put in the money and the man who pulled the lever, ending months of argument between the two.