QUIRKY WORLD ... A daily look at some of the world’s stranger stories
A woman faked her own kidnapping to extort a €900 ransom from her husband, in a region of the west African nation plagued by abductions.
Police arrested the woman and her accomplice, a motorcycle taxi man who helped her stage it, after tracing the bank account given for her husband’s payment of 200,000 naira (€900) to the taxi man himself.
“They have confessed to the crime and we are corroborating our investigation to be able to charge them in court,” said Ebere Amarizu, a police spokesman in Enugu said.
Kidnapping for ransom is rife in southern Nigeria, particularly in the oil-producing Delta region, in the ethnic Igbo area to the north of it, where Enugu lies, and the commercial hub of Lagos. Police usually suspect the victims collude with their abductors.
The multimillion-euro criminal enterprise pushes up the insurance and security costs for businesses, including foreign oil majors who have often been targeted in the past.
A 72-year-old hunter lost in a California forest survived for 19 days by eating squirrels and lizards and covering himself with leaves to stay warm.
Gene Penaflor was found in Mendocino National Forest by other hunters who carried him to safety on a makeshift stretcher. Penaflor had fallen and struck his head, then awoke disoriented amid thick fog and was unable to work out where he was.
A giant skeleton of a dinosaur which last roamed Earth more than 150m years ago is set to fetch up to £600,000 (€707,000) at a British auction next month.
The 17m-long specimen of the long-necked Diplodocus longus is believed to be the first UK sale of a large dinosaur skeleton, according to experts.
The 6m-tall female skeleton, nicknamed Misty, was found almost completely intact in 2009 by the sons of paleontologist Raimund Albersdoerfer near a quarry in Wyoming in the US. Albersdoerfer had been taking part in an excavation at a privately-owned quarry when he sent his sons to dig nearby “to get them off his back”.
Noise experts are investigating a low-frequency drone that is driving residents mad.
People in the industrial Waterside area of Southampton Water in Hampshire have been plagued by the noise for months, with some sleeping with family and friends miles away to avoid the racket which starts at around 10pm.
New Forest District Council is trying to find the cause of the noise that has led to some people needing sleeping tablets, the Southern Daily Echo reported.
“Within the last week we have received approximately 10 complaints relating to a low-frequency noise in the Waterside area,” a spokeswoman said. “The complaints refer to the noise similar to that of a low-frequency drone, which has been occurring during the night for several months.
A 29-year-old woman survived with minor injuries after her car was twice hit by trains in Utah.
She was fleeing from police at speeds of up to 161km/h when she drove under the arms of a level crossing and smashed into the side of a train.
Her car came to rest on the other set of tracks and another train rammed into it less than a minute later.
Censors broke up the screening of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest film after discovering a character cursing in Arabic.
Cinemas in the United Arab Emirates had to withdraw Escape Plan, and cut the offending words. The revised version was back playing within hours.
The film features Stallone and Schwarzenegger trying to escape from a futuristic, fortified prison.
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