QUIRKY WORLD ... Political rivals united by fear of ‘horrible creatures’

ENGLAND: Tory prime minister David Cameron and Labour shadow chancellor Ed Balls have finally found some common ground — they are both scared of rats.

Cameron confessed his fear of the “horrible” creatures in an interview with Heat magazine.

Asked whether he had any phobias, Cameron replied: “I’m not very keen on rats. We had one in our kitchen once, it came in through the cat flap. It was horrible, and I kind of found it in the middle of the night.”

“Can’t even look at them,” Balls recently told the Evening Standard.

Behind bars

USA: Police in Pennsylvania are looking for a burglar with a sweet tooth.

Whoever broke into Corky’s Pizza Shop stole more than 100 chocolate bars and eight cookies.

The shop is in the borough of Pleasantville in Armstrong County, about 150km north-east of Pittsburgh.

Tree house

ENGLAND: One couple have had a lucky escape after a 6m tree fell on their home during the stormy weather.

The tree crashed down at the front of their house in Worsley in Greater Manchester just after midnight, but the pair managed to get out safely.

Greater Manchester firefighters spent three hours with a chainsaw breaking the tree down and making the house safe.

Wrong side of the tracks

USA: The Tennessee town of Trimble is home to about 600 people and has an interesting plan for economic development — booze, bikes, and rock ’n’ roll.

Michael Ballard, owner of Full Throttle distillery, says the only thing standing in the way is what he calls the state’s stuffy law restricting how spirits must be made so they can be marketed as ‘Tennessee Whiskey’.

His barrel house is being built next to railway tracks where freight trains thunder by five times a day. He says the “locomotive agitation” of his ageing whiskey will be much more of a selling point than the charcoal mellowing required under the state law.

Crocodile clip

MEXICO: A police officer in Mexico is being prosecuted for killing a crocodile with bursts from his assault rifle in the state of Sinaloa.

The case is based on a video clip posted on YouTube that shows a blue-uniformed man standing beside a water treatment pond in the city of Ahome, waiting for the crocodile to appear.

Once it has been baited in, the man opens up with automatic weapons fire. There are federal charges because crocodiles are a protected species in Mexico.

Stone dead

USA: A Pennsylvania man was helping decorate his mother-in-law’s tombstone when it suddenly toppled over, pinning him underneath and killing him.

The 180kg stone fatally injured Stephen Woytack, 74, of Scranton, said Edward Kubilas, caretaker of St Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery in Throop.

Woytack was kneeling next to the grave marker while his wife tied on a cross on the other side. The stone toppled without warning in the soft spring ground.

A police officer and ambulance helped Kubilas wrestle the rest of the 1.2m stone off Woytack, but it was too late to save him.

Wayfaring warbler

ENGLAND: A tiny songbird that makes its home in forests routinely undertakes non-stop flights of up to 2,700km across open ocean, scientists have confirmed.

The heroic flight of the blackpoll warbler, which weighs just 12g, is “on the brink of impossibility” researchers, who attached tiny trackers to the birds.

Experts had long wondered about tantalising clues suggesting the bird was capable of migrating between North and South America.

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