Prison officers say a miniature toy helicopter was used to try to drop drugs into a Kent prison.

Guards raised the alarm after the remote control toy was seen zooming over the walls of Elmley Prison at night time.

They spotted the 12-inch long craft on CCTV screens and saw it had a small load slung underneath the fuselage.

The Sun quoted a prison source as saying: "Using a mini-helicopter to get contraband into jails is unprecedented.

"It was pitch black and the officers were sweeping the area using special CCTV cameras when they spotted it. They nearly fell off their chairs.

"They sounded the alarm right away because the helicopter was heading straight for the accommodation blocks."

Staff at the Category C jail in Sheerness, Kent, rushed to the six accommodation blocks but found no sign of the toy or its cargo.

The Sun’s source added: "It could have been drugs or a mobile phone in the package. It is possible it was a dummy run." (The Sun)

ShareThis

A woman has been charged with murder after allegedly setting her husband’s genitals on fire because she thought he was having an affair.

Prosecutors told the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Monday that 44-year-old Rajini Narayan confessed to neighbors that she set her husband on fire on December 8, 2008, after she saw him hug another woman.

She was initially charged with endangering life and arson but the charges were upgraded to murder after her 47-year-old husband, Satish Narayan, died from his injuries last week.

Prosecutor Lucy Boord said Narayan told neighbors she was a "jealous wife" but she hadn’t meant to kill him when she doused the sleeping man’s genitals with an alcohol-based solvent and then set him on fire.

Boord quoted Narayan allegedly saying: "I just wanted to burn his penis so it belongs to me and no one else … I didn’t mean this to happen."

The husband jumped out of bed and knocked over the bottle of alcohol, causing the fire to spread and resulting in 1 million Australian dollars ($715 million) of damage to their town house and an adjacent property, the Adelaide Advertiser reported.

Narayan was remanded in custody for psychological assessment and will reappear in court Friday. She has been charged with murder, arson and three counts of endangering life, as the couple’s three children were at home during the incident. (Metro.co.uk)

ShareThis

A school has started to teach its pupils how to blow their noses.

The children, aged 5 to 11. at Broad Oak Primary School in Manchester have been shown a DVD telling them the right and wrong ways to act when they have a cold, reports the Daily Telegraph.

But one parent condemned the exercise as "a complete waste of time".

The parent added: "I send my kids to school to learn, not for someone to show them how to blow their nose.

"My lad said ‘Everyone knows how to blow their nose, we know to use a hanky not our sleeve’."

Pupils have also been asked to look at a Kleenex-sponsored website at home with their parents, called Sneezesafe, to help them understand cold germs and how they are spread.

Aimed at four-to six-year-olds, it tells the story of two schoolchildren characters who get colds, and how they try to stop them being spread.

Under the heading ‘Tissues to the rescue!’, children are told: "Nathan still has a runny nose, but now he knows that sniffing is not very nice. And Nathan is not going to wipe his nose on his sleeve. He’s going to blow his nose with a tissue.

"He holds the tissue to his nose, breathes in, then closes his mouth and blows his nose.

"Good boy, Nathan! You’ve blown your nose properly. The germs are in the tissue, not in the air or on your hands."

Sheila Marchant, headmistress at the school, said: "It is in the curriculum to teach children safe hygiene from an early age. And at this time of year, there are many cold and flu bugs around." (Daily Telegraph)

ShareThis

A motorist who paid a parking fine with a cheque written on toilet paper claimed a victory for common sense today after he escaped a further penalty.

Richard Roper, 63, of Long Melford, Suffolk, was instead ordered to spend just over an hour at the back of Sudbury Magistrates’ Court.

Mr Roper staged his "peaceful protest" after receiving a £30 ticket for illegally parking his car across two spaces in Sudbury.

But Suffolk Police took the matter to court to reclaim the £15 they said it would cost to process the unusual payment method.

My payment has been written on stationery which aptly reflects my feelings towards the system

District Judge David Cooper, who sniggered while listening to some of the evidence in the case, suggested the compromise punishment as a way of "clearing it all off".

Mr Roper told the judge: "This is not a case of not wishing or refusing to pay but a case of the authorities refusing to accept my payment.

"What I did here, your honour, was done in good humour.

"My payment has been written on stationery which aptly reflects my feelings towards the system which I am unfortunately forced to support through my taxes."

Afterwards, Mr Roper, a retired managing director of a pharmaceuticals company, said: "I don’t consider it a punishment. It was a victory for common sense, really.

"At the end of the day, it wasn’t me refusing to pay the fine. It was them refusing to accept it." (Metro.co.uk)

ShareThis

A Chinese man performed a breathtaking stunt by driving a car across two steel cables suspended 150ft above a river.

Liu Suozhu, 48, of Henan province, completed the 750ft journey over Miluo River in Pingjiang city, Hunan province.

Liu, who is nicknamed the Car King in China, drove the motor from a platform in front of tens of thousands of cheering spectators.

During his 30-minute journey, Liu communicated with the performance host via radio, which was broadcast to the audience.

"The cables are a bit shaky, not very stable… the slope is very steep," the showman said, to more cheers from the crowd.

Liu says the last few minutes were the most difficult and dangerous because the steep slope blocked his rear view. He stopped several times during the last section of his journey. (Ananova.com)

ShareThis

A shopping mall in Olathe, Kansas, was evacuated after a woman robbed a bank with a box of chocolates.

The woman walked up to a cashier at the Capitol Federal Bank and said the box contained an explosive and demanded money.

She got away with an undisclosed sum, but after X-raying the package, the bomb squad discovered it contained chocolates and harmless wires. (metro.co.uk)

ShareThis

A man from Shanghai has been constantly blamed and harassed by his wife for not making enough money. He finally decided to rob people just so he could go to jail and avoid his wife’s nagging abuse.

29 year-old Linghua Wang works as a technician. He and his wife Xiao Feng have been married for nine years and have one daughter. Everyone knows Wang is a good father and husband, but his wife is not happy that he’s making so little money, and so she verbally abusing him by calling him names and making fun of him.

At first, he tried not going home to avoid his wife’s nagging but that didn’t work. Finally, he just couldn’t take it anymore. He walked in to the police station and lied that he robbed someone and ask to be taken to the jail. The police did not believe his story and refused to arrest him, so he decided to rob someone for real.

He pointed a toy gun at a taxi driver, told him that he’s a fugitive and demanded the driver’s money. The driver then screamed, which scared Wang away.

After his failed attempt, he tried again with a young couple. The young couple turned out their pockets and showed they had no real money. Wang desperately turned to a woman who was passing by and the woman replied calmly, “You can shoot me, but I only got 3 bucks”.

Wang, frustrated with failure, gave up, but was soon arrested for his many attempts.

“I intentionally kept doing this because that gives me enough evidence to be arrested so I can go to jail and not have to face my wife again.”

Wang is so afraid of his wife he cannot even ask for a divorce. Instead he chose to break the law and go to jail.

He was sentenced to four years for intentional robbery, but at least he is finally free from his wife.

In China, Shanghai men are well known as “Pa Lao Po”, which means “afraid of wives”. Shanghai women are the dominant ones in the family. (Weirdasianews.com)

ShareThis

A Japanese man arrested for making 388 prank phone calls to the local fire station between May 2006 and July this year said he did it because he was lonely.

"I live by myself and I was sad. I like the fire services and the police so I called them. I wanted them to come and look after me," the 58-year-old man was quoted as saying by the daily Yomiuri newspaper.

A police spokesman in Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo, said the man had been arrested on suspicion of obstructing the emergency services.

The Yomiuri said the man would phone the fire station shouting: "Fire! Fire! I’ve set gasoline and kerosene alight!"

After one such call in early July, local emergency services dispatched 10 fire engines, one ambulance and 35 firemen to the man’s house, the Yomiuri reported. (Reuters)

ShareThis

ShareThis