And Finally

A politician has received a surprise birthday cake while in the dock. Julius Malema, leader of South Africa's Economic Freedom Fighters party, was in court in the city of East London charged with firing an automatic rifle in 2018.

People who antagonise alligators will face tougher penalties under a new law. The South Carolina House of Representatives has passed a bill to raise penalties for those who also try to feed the animals.

The hourly tolling of two church bells has enraged a woman who is suing her council to have the practice stopped. Retired secretary Martine Wephre lives five metres from St Didier church in Aujeurres, north of Dijon in France. She said the tolling of the bells has driven her mad.

A student has been caught with a Bluetooth device surgically implanted in his ear to enable him to cheat in a medical exam. The Indian man used the device during his last attempt at passing a test. It was linked to a phone in a hidden pocket of his trousers.

The Queen's representative in Canada has told anti-vax protesters to stop asking her to dissolve the federal government. In a statement, the office of governor-general Mary Simon said it was aware of "misinformation" on social media encouraging citizens to contact the governor-general to "register v

A man who allegedly used an illegal signal jammer to stop his kids from going online at night is facing prosecution after inadvertently disrupting internet access for his entire town. France's National Frequency Agency (ANFR) launched an investigation after a mobile phone operator reported night-tim

The Calabrian mafia has allegedly been converting cocaine into “coal” to avoid alerting the authorities when importing the product from Colombia. The supposed scheme emerged after 65 people were arrested, including two police officers.

A nearly 140-year-old copy of writings by Friedrich Engels, the lifetime brother-in-arms of Karl Marx, has been returned to a library decades after it went missing. The 1883 collection of Engels' writings went missing in the 1960s after being borrowed from the city library in Mönchengladbach in

A police officer rapped by a judge for drinking a can of Coca-Cola while appearing in court by video link has been ordered to distribute 100 cans to local lawyers. The officer, who was giving evidence to Gujarat High Court in western India, was spotted sipping from the can at the start of the hearin

A courthouse dramatically went into lockdown after suspicious packages on its doorstep were reported to police – which turned out to be from Taco Bell. Police set up a perimeter around the federal courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama after employees raised the alarm, blocking adjacent streets to

Hundreds of people have volunteered to be locked up in a brand-new prison as part of a test run for the facility. The new prison in Zurich, Switzerland, has capacity for 241 remand prisoners, but authorities decided to test the facility on local volunteers before it opens in April, Swissinfo reports

The greatest hits of Barry Manilow have been weaponised against protesters by authorities in New Zealand. Anti-vaxxers have set up camp outside the country's parliament, which has started playing music on a loop through its speakers in a bid to disperse them.

A right-wing US politician with a penchant for conspiracy theories has been widely mocked after appearing to confuse the Nazi Gestapo with "gazpacho" – a chilled Mexican soup. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has faced social media bans for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, excoriated "Nan

A security guard has been sacked after defacing a valuable Russian painting by drawing eyes on its blank-faced figures with a ballpoint pen. The guard took a pen to Anna Leporskaya's avant-garde painting Three Figures on his first day working at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in the city of Y

Jurors in a high-profile criminal case in Quebec have been supplied with cannabis to pass the time until they reach a verdict. The jury has been sequestered while considering kidnapping charges brought against a local businessman. The jurors are staying in a hotel and will not be allowed to return h