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Honeymoon killer's 'cabbie meet on CCTV'

(REUTERS)

CCTV film alleged to show honeymoon murder suspect Shrien Dewani paying for his wife's contract killing was described in detail, reports Daily Mail.

The security footage allegedly shows the millionaire Briton slipping a small white plastic bag to taxi driver Zola Tongo.

Tongo was jailed on Tuesday for organising the alleged "hit" on Dewani's new bride Anni in South Africa.

The two men met on November 16 - two days after Anni was found shot dead during an apparent carjacking and robbery.

Pet rat takes cigarette to bed, starts blaze

(AFP)

A pet rat named No Name triggered a fire in his cage when he stole a smoldering cigarette butt from an ashtray and took it to bed with him.

Miraculously, No Name survived the cage blaze and was found scampering around the floor at owner Nelly Banks's apartment in the town of Morecambe, the UK's Lancashire Evening Post said.

"He is a little pincher, he is always taking stuff and hiding it and this time he took one of my cigarettes and put it into his cage which is obviously flammable," the paper quoted Ms Banks as saying.

"He had beer cans and bits of paper and all sorts in there, so it did not take much to send it up.

"I don't know what he thought he was doing, it was about 3 am and I woke up and there was smoke everywhere."

A member of the local fire crew said he believed No Name was building a nest and managed to escape through an open door when he discovered his home was about to go up in flames, the Post said.

"He's in the dog house, but I’m too soft to be upset with him forever," Ms Banks was quoted as saying.

71-year-old jailed for wheelchair bank robbery

(AP)

A 71-year-old terminally ill man has been sentenced to 21 years in a California prison for rolling his wheelchair into a San Diego bank and holding it up with a replica BB gun.

Judge Jeffrey Fraser said today that Peter Lawrence could theoretically get out of prison at age 90, when he would no longer be a threat to the public.

According to City News Service, Lawrence told the judge he robbed the Chase bank of more than $US2000 ($2036) this summer because he felt hopeless after being diagnosed with a myriad of medical problems.

Defence lawyer Kenneth Kaminiski says his client did not want to harm anyone.

Mr Kaminiski says Lawrence wanted to get caught so he would not have to live on the streets.
 
 
Man survives in block of ice for 24 hours

(GETTY IMAGES)

An illusionist has survived trapped in a block of ice for 24 hours.

Klaus 'Mr Freeze' Fox wore just shoes, trousers and a jumper while being caged in a two metre long and 70 centimetres wide space in the middle of a solid ice block in Spittal.

The magician, whose previous record were eight hours, had a mobile phone with him inside the block of ice to alert his girlfriend Sabrina Pichler in case of an emergency.

Hundreds turned up to watch Fox break his record.

 
Teenage girls 'assault' woman

(AGENCY)
 
Five teenage girls have been arrested for allegedly assaulting a 65-year-old woman in her home.

Police are hunting an alleged sixth assailant. The five teenagers were arrested following an aggravated assault at Aldinga Beach, about 50km south of Adelaide on December 6.

Police say the 65-year-old female victim was allegedly assaulted by six girls who had gone to her home looking for another teenage girl.

"This incident is not a random attack and all parties are known to each other,'' police said in a statement yesterday.

Police have arrested a 17-year-old girl from Mount Compass and four 16-year-old girls - from Aldinga Beach, Seaford, Morphett Vale and Aldinga.

Police say they know the identity of the sixth suspect.

The teenagers will appear in the Christies Beach Youth Court on April 8, 2011.
  
 
Library book returned 74 years later

(FILE)

A library was surprised to be handed back a book that was loaned out in 1936, and even more shocked when the 95-year-old woman returning the aged tome offered to pay back the full $2,701 overdue fee, reports The Sacramento Bee newspaper.

Hazel Severson, 95, from Sacramento, California, explained how a friend found a book that her late husband had borrowed from an Amador County library in 1936 while sorting through things for a garage sale.

Mrs Severson told the newspaper that she and her husband Howard were newlyweds back when he took out the hardback, Seaplane Solo, about Sir Francis Chichester's 1930 solo flight cross the Tasman Sea.

Luckily for Mrs Severson the library didn't charge her the fee, though it did accept a small donation when she handed the book in.

Miley Cyrus topless controversy

(GETTY)

DAYS after raunchy pictures of her were flashed across the net, there are new claims teen sensation Miley Cyrus has posed nude for a magazine.

The 15-year-old Hannah Montana star is said to appear topless and wrapped in what appears to be a satin bedsheet in the June issue of Vanity Fair.

Some parents reacted with outrage over the weekend when the television program “Entertainment Tonight” began showing commercials promoting the scoop pictures taken by Vanity Fair photographer, Annie Leibovitz.
Screen grabs of the photo quickly popped up online sparking fresh debate about her suitability as a role model to millions of young Disney fans.

Cyrus, heroine to a legion of young fans and who earned $18.5 million last year, has had a series of scantily clad photos leaked from MySpace leaked on the internet.

The Hannah Montana series have been championed as one of the few entertainment sanctuaries for children, complicating matters. Last month, Cyrus was chosen favorite television actress at Nickelodeon’s “Kids’ Choice Awards.”

More than 3 million viewers regularly watch “Hannah Montana,” most of them age 6 to 14.

Titanic under 'attack'

(AGENCY)

Bacteria scooped from the wreckage of the Titanic almost 20 years ago have been confirmed as a new species in the December issue of a microbiology journal, reports CNN website.

The bacteria, found on the ship's "rusticles" (rust formations that look like icicles), are eating the Titanic.

The strain, dubbed Halomonas titanicae was initially designated BH1T in honor of the researchers who discovered it, then-graduate student Bhavleen Kaur and Dr. Henrietta Mann at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

"The BH1 cells stuck to the surface of these [small metal tags] and eventually destroyed the metal. So we knew we had a bad bacteria,” Mann is quoted as saying on the Dalhousie University website.

"In 1995, I was predicting that Titanic had another 30 years," said Mann, who still works at the university, according to CBS News. "But I think it's deteriorating much faster than that now ... Eventually there will be nothing left but a rust stain," she is quoted as saying.

The metal-eating bug presents a dilemma for scientists, claims the website.

"Letting it proceed with its deterioration is also a learning process," said Kaur, who now works with the Ontario Science Centre, according to National Geographic. "If we stop and preserve it, then we stop the process of degradation," Kaur is quoted as saying.

The findings were published in the December 8 issue of the  International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

The Titanic, heralded in its day as the largest passenger ship in the world, sank on its maiden voyage in 1912, killing more than 1,500 people. The wreckage was found in 1985 by an expedition team more than 2 miles deep in the Atlantic Ocean.

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