WEEKLYPEDIA

MoD sued after helicopter crew allegedly buzzed Eastbourne mansion to ogle sun-bathing au pair and downdraught caused 250,000 in damage to glass roof.

Slough council bans 5 November bonfire on the grounds that it would conflict with their "Cleaner, Safer, Greener Slough" campaign.

Gang accused of trying to get Bank of England to honour 28bn- worth of forged notes - nearly three-quarters of all money in circulation.

Devonshire firefighters take half an hour to remove traffic cone from head of small boy who thought it made him look like Harry Potter.

US school with zero-tolerance policy on weapons expels girl for having butter knife in her lunch-box.

Malaysian farmer proposes marriage to employee 32 years his junior and, when she turns him down, kidnaps her instead.

Florida man who spent 18 years in jail for crime he didn't commit gets $360,000 compensation but is immediately sued for child maintenance he didn't pay while in prison.

German shoplifter caught just a few hundred yards from the store after trying to make his getaway in a cement mixer.

Five crayfish seen scuttling down street in Stuttgart after escaping from restaurant.

hero of the week

When Karen Cline married in 1980, she and her husband had very little money - not even the $150 to pay their wedding photographer for the pictures. All they had was one snap taken by a friend. Then, one day last week, an old man walked into the Ohio diner where Karen worked. He was Jim Wagner, who took their wedding photos. He had found the album when having a clear-out, tracked Karen down, and was giving her the pictures, 27 years on.

verbatim

"These fines send a clear message"

The wise words of Supt David Parkinson after Luana De Faveri, a barmaid at the Premier Hotel, Pinjarra, Western Australia, was fined 450 for entertaining patrons by crushing beer cans between her bare breasts and hanging spoons off her nipples.

"Why do you have Coca-Cola tattooed on your chest?"

What a Thai barman said to Vince Mattingley of Watford. This was a shock to Mr Mattingley, because he had been walking around for the past 26 years under the impression that the Chinese characters inked on his torso spelled his name. Not so. He had asked the staff at his local Chinese restaurant to write the characters for his name, but they instead wrote out those for the soft drink.

"I don't know where we are, and Mom's not acting normal"

The 911 emergency call made by the eight-year-old son of Paulette Spears from a car that led to his mother being arrested for drink driving. Ms Spears assured the dispatcher that all was well, but when the boy called again, and his mother bit his hand to try to get the phone, police moved in.

"The cats have not been harmed, just relocated ... you have virtually no chance of getting them back"

An anonymous letter to the local paper by a Southampton catnapper. In it, he claimed responsibility for capturing six cats in Bramley Crescent, Sholing, and for getting a lorry driver friend to dump them 25 miles away. This was, he wrote, revenge for damage the pets allegedly did to his garden. Police are now investigating.

law report

Dean Kuehnen Jr v Andria Castellano. Manhattan Supreme Court. In December last year, these two became engaged. Mr Kuehnen, at the tender age of 21, was able to afford to buy her a ring worth $38,800, for which he got a platinum one topped with a square diamond surrounded by 160 tiny round ones. Then, last month, the engagement was called off. Ms Castellano, however, refuses to give back the ring, and so Mr Kuehnen is now suing her for its return. Convention has it that, if the bride-to-be breaks off the engagement, then she is obliged to return the ring. But word is that it was Mr Kuehnen who called the whole thing off. This is surprising. Andria Castellano is the grand-daughter of former Gambino crime boss Paul Castellano, which means that Mr Kuehnen not only broke off his engagement to a girl with ties to the Mob, but demanded the ring back as well.

Our verdict: Mr Kuehnen should withdraw the lawsuit, let her keep the ring, change his identity, alter his appearance, possibly fake his own death and move a very long way away.

online networking - a breakthrough

Until now, social networking sites such as Facebook have only allowed you to show off and insincerely collect "friends". But now, thanks to new applications Enemybook and its rival Snubster, you can add spite to your Facebook site's boastfulness. Devised by Kevin Matulef of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Enemybook sits on Facebook sites and lets users display those they hate and itemise all that's wrong with them. He got the idea after one of their contacts as a "Facebook friend" but "not a real friend". Snubster allows people to go further, putting others "on notice", setting them a deadline by which they have to redeem themselves, and, if they don't, listing them as "dead to me". And, who knows, in moves that would allow Facebook to totally replicate the psychology of the school playground, there may soon be software that would allow users to pinch each other, pull the girls' pigtails, borrow each other's crayons, and tell a grown-up when someone's been nasty to them.