Odd News

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An elderly man who went out to fetch a morning newspaper ended up driving nearly 400 miles after getting lost and taking a wrong turn onto a major Australian highway, police said on Wednesday. The man, 81-year-old Eric Steward, eventually stopped and asked for directions after driving for nine hours, from the New South Wales country town of Yass to Geelong in the southern Victoria state.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Pirates of the Caribbean" star Johnny Depp was named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" on Wednesday, reclaiming a title he first won in 2003.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian member of Parliament learned the hard way on Tuesday that insulting a rival legislator by Twitter is not a good idea, especially if you're sitting around the same table at the time.

LISBON (Reuters) - He wiggled, jiggled and even dropped his trousers, but a thief trying to break into a supermarket in Portugal stayed stuck fast in a tiny window until he was rescued by police and the fire brigade.

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, has a theory about why governments and people are so reluctant to talk about hygiene: it isn't cool.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Herman Van Rompuy, the European Union's new president, may not be very well known around the world but he's already winning fans in Japan -- as a poet rather than a politician.

RALEIGH, N.C. - A North Carolina doctor could lose his medical license after a patient complained he made cutting criticisms, including telling her she was fat. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported the North Carolina Medical Board will decide if Dr. Earl Sunderhaus of Asheville overstepped the bounds of professional decency.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New fossils unearthed in what is now the Sahara desert reveal a once-swampy world divided up among a half-dozen species of unusual and perhaps intelligent crocodiles, researchers reported on Thursday.

ROME (Reuters) - An art collector has found a tooth, thumb and finger of the renowned Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who died in the 17th century, Florence's History of Science museum announced on Friday.

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.

LONDON (Reuters) - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes might have thought twice about naming their daughter Suri if they'd known that it means "pickpocket" in Japanese, "turned sour" in French, and "horse mackerels" in Italian.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's football chief has joined in the chorus of protestors wanting the noisy vuvuzela trumpet to be banned from next year's World Cup in South Africa.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - The Alabama Supreme Court says a woman who thought she had hit a jackpot worth almost $42 million at the Victoryland electronic bingo center will end up empty handed. The court ruled Friday that an electronic bingo machine that showed Sherry Knowles had won $41.8 million obviously malfunctioned and that she was actually due no more than $2 from the operation in Macon County.

ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported on Monday.

WICHITA, Kan. - Wichita police arrested a pregnant woman after she allegedly robbed homes after asking residents for help. Police said the woman, who is eight months pregnant, had been telling people in west Wichita that her car broke down and she needed to call someone for a ride.

INDIANAPOLIS - An 18-year-old is in police custody after he warmed up a bottle for a crying baby inside the house he was allegedly robbing. Indianapolis police arrested the suspect at Arlington High School on Tuesday after receiving a tip from a television viewer saw surveillance video on a newscast.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's former Olympic marathon gold medallist Naoko Takahashi has decided to become a vegetable farmer.

CONWAY, Ark. - A man accused of using a squeegee to hit another man during a fight over who was first in line at a gas pump was due in court on charges. The man, Hector Chavez, 21, was to be arraigned Friday in Faulkner County Circuit Court on a second-degree battery charge.

PARIS (Reuters) - A French Internet company that planned to throw envelopes of cash to passers-by from a bus stop had to cancel the publicity stunt for security reasons after thousands of people turned up, police said on Saturday.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish police have arrested two North Korean diplomats on suspicion of smuggling 230,000 cigarettes into the Nordic country, the Swedish Customs Office said Friday.