Math whiz, dead for 450 years, gets TV bill
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German mathematician who died 450 years ago has been sent a letter demanding that he pay long-overdue television license fees, residents at his former address said on Wednesday.
Germany's GEZ broadcast fee collection office sent the bill to the last home address of Adam Ries, an algebra expert who bought the house in 1525. A club in his honor was set up at the property four centuries later.
"We received a letter saying 'To Mr Adam Ries' on it, with the request to pay his television and radio fees," said Annegret Muench, who now heads the club.
Muench returned the letter to the GEZ with a note explaining the request had come too late because Ries had died in 1559, centuries before the invention of television and radio. She nonetheless received a reminder a few weeks later.
This was not the first time the GEZ had sent a bill to those in the afterlife. Last year, a school named after poet Friedrich Schiller received a reminder asking him to declare all radios and televisions in his home and pay the corresponding fees.
Prisoners used nail clippers to escape
SASKATOON, Saskatchewan (Reuters) – Six high-risk prisoners escaped a Canadian jail last summer after spending four months chipping a path to freedom with nail clippers and other makeshift tools, according to a government report released on Thursday.
The prisoners, four of whom faced murder charges, used their tools to remove a heating grill and steel plate and win access to a brick exterior wall.
While some inmates played cards at a carefully positioned table to block the guards' view, others chipped away at the wall, finally breaking through with a steel shower rod. They then used braided blankets and bedsheets to scale a wall of the compound and escape.
"Idle hands are the Devil's tools," said the Saskatchewan government report, referring to the fact that prisoners at the Regina Correctional Center had little to do in the unit, which was built in 1964 and housed prisoners awaiting court dates.
"They tend to gravitate toward doing whatever they can get away with."
The report team made 23 recommendations, all of which the Saskatchewan government accepted on Thursday. The government will spend C$87 million ($68 million) building a new center in Saskatoon for prisoners awaiting court dates and C$9.4 million to bolster security equipment in prisons.
The report said at least 87 prison workers had supervised the six prisoners' unit without detecting the escape preparations. Some guards had suspected something was being planned, but they did not interview the prisoners.
"It was shocking," said Saskatchewan Corrections Minister Darryl Hickie, a former police officer and prison worker.
Man arrested for attempting to smuggle 44 reptiles in suitcase
Australian customs police got more than they bargained for after finding 44 reptiles including a rare Albino Carpet Python in a traveller's luggage.
The incredible haul of beasts allegedly found in the 24-year-old's luggage at Sydney airport on Friday included 24 shingleback lizards, 16 bluetongue lizards and three black headed pythons.
They were detected during x-ray screenings of the man's luggage after he checked in for a flight to Bangkok.
Customs estimates all the reptiles in the smuggling attempt would have fetched £90,000 on the black market.
Australian customs police got more than they bargained for after finding 44 reptiles including a rare Albino Carpet Python in a traveller's luggage.
The incredible haul of beasts allegedly found in the 24-year-old's luggage at Sydney airport on Friday included 24 shingleback lizards, 16 bluetongue lizards and three black headed pythons.
They were detected during x-ray screenings of the man's luggage after he checked in for a flight to Bangkok.
Customs estimates all the reptiles in the smuggling attempt would have fetched £90,000 on the black market.
The reptiles have been transferred to Sydney Wildlife World where they have undergone health checks and are being cared for.
The alleged smuggler has been charged with attempting to export native species without a permit which carries a maximum penalty of £49,000 or 10 years behind bars.
Women Finds Cat in Second Hand Couch
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) â The mysterious mewing in Vickie Mendenhall's home started about the time she bought a used couch for $27.
After days of searching for the source of the noise, she found a very hungry calico cat living in her sofa.
Her boyfriend, Chris Lund, was watching TV on Tuesday night and felt something move inside the couch. He pulled it away from the wall, lifted it up and there was the cat, which apparently crawled through a small hole on the underside.
Mendenhall contacted Value Village, where she bought the couch, but the store had no information on who donated it. So she took the cat to SpokAnimal CARE, the animal shelter where she works, so it could recover, and contacted media outlets in hopes of finding the owner.
Sure enough, Bob Killion of Spokane showed up to claim the cat on Thursday after an acquaintance alerted him to a TV story about it. Killion had donated a couch on Feb. 19, and his 9-year-old cat, Callie, disappeared at about the same time.
Swimming lessons, horse riding and Scrabble - with lions!
THIS certainly ranks among the more unusual swimming classes in the world - a lion giving a man a good cuddle while they splash around together.
Zoologist and animal behaviourist Kevin Richardson raises and interacts with some of the most dangerous animals known to man and has developed some exceptionally personal bonds with his students, playing, sleeping and even swimming with animals – and Meg the 185kf lioness certainly enjoys her swims.
Here they enjoy a swim in the Crocodile River near Johannesburg, South Africa.
Click for more pictures of the unlikely duo cuddling up to one another in the water, and for more bizarre and cute pictures from the lion world. You’ll never play Scrabble well with a lion watching over you, that’s for sure…