Dog fired
The United Kingdom's only lifeguard dog has been sacked.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has left Bilbo, a 14-stone Newfoundland dog, without a job. Bilbo has previously assisted in saving three lives.
The RNLI, which has taken over the lifeguarding operation in Sennen in Cornwall, England, cited dogs were banned from the beach and Bilbo would fail the resuscitation test as the reasons for letting him go.
Head lifeguard and owner, 54-year-old Steve Jamieson, is outraged.
He said: "It's a scandal, an absolute disgrace. Bilbo has had fantastic support. He's had 6,500 hits on his website, been on TV, and I've written a book about him."
Bilbo assisted rescues by swimming around struggling bathers until they grabbed the float fixed to his harness and paddling them to safety.
Gourmet jail
An exclusive restaurant has opened in an Italian jail.
The cutlery is plastic and the waiters sport more tattoos than other eateries, but the Fortezza Medicea top-security prison serves excellent food and the wine flows freely. For several nights a year, part of the prison in Volterra, Italy, is converted into a restaurant. Diners pay £30 for a table.
Inmate Arena Aniello - who has served 15 years for homicide, but is also a waiter at the restaurant - said: "It is not just a distraction, it is more than that. (Prison life) is like a photocopy machine, the day is always the same. So this is a great thing."
The initiative is one of several in Italy aimed at teaching inmates job skills for when they are released.
Heaven's angels
A former United Kingdom minister has had a motorcycle hearse built for bikers' funerals.
The Rev Ray Biddiss designed the glass and chrome black coffin-shaped carriage with a steel deck. The carriage is pulled by a three-wheel bike on which grieving relatives can ride in a pillion.
Biddiss, 54, a former minister at Pellon Baptist Church in Halifax, Northern England, has also been a lifelong biker. He believes people should give their last goodbye in the way they choose.
Biddiss left the church in 2003 to become a civic celebrant - someone who organises civil funerals.
During one funeral, he had to ask anyone easily shocked to leave before punk legend Sid Vicious' expletive-filled version of Frank Sinatra's My Way played.
Fishy toilet
A restaurant in China has caused uproar for keeping fish in its urinal.
The Changchun city restaurant keeps around 20 carp in a four-metre-long trough in the men's toilet.
The idea has come under fire for being "disrespectful to China's fish culture" and condemned as unhygienic.
The restaurant refutes this, and a spokesperson said: "The water is running, and each day we change the water at least twice and add oxygen. It's not much different to a fish tank."
The restaurant also said it does not use the fish in any of its dishes. A sign above the trough reads, 'please urinate here'.
Restaurant diner Mr Wang said: "If they didn't have the sign here, I would have thought it was a new fish tank."
Stomach twin
Greek doctors recently discovered a girl's embryonic twin in her stomach.
The nine-year-old girl was taken to Larissa General Hospital in Athens with stomach pains. Doctors examined the girl before performing surgery to remove the two-inch-long growth. It was only later they realised it was her embryonic twin.
The embryo was a formed foetus with a head, hair and eyes, but no brain or umbilical cord, said Dr Andreas Markou, head of the paediatric department.
The girl has since made a full recovery.
A case where one twin absorbs the other in the womb occurs in approximately one in every 500,000 live births.
Chocolate clue
A United States burglar was caught after police got his DNA from a chocolate bar left at the scene.
The 39-year-old man left a half- eaten Snickers bar on a counter when he robbed the Cato Animal Hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in January.
Police submitted the remains of the chocolate, peanut and caramel bar for lab testing and were able to obtain a DNA sample.
Brian D. Bass now faces com-mercial burglary and theft charges. The hungry burglar also ate two cans of Vienna sausages at the crime scene.
Grave situation
An American man was shocked to find another person buried in his grave.
David L. Bingham attended the cemetery to see his mother's grave in 2006 - only to find a filled grave next to it, already bearing his name.
Bingham was planning to be buried next to his mother - but after he has died.
It was later revealed, an administration error led to another man bearing the same name as David Bingham being buried in the spot.
Bingham said the cemetery admitted its error and offered to move either his mother or the other body. The cemetery also suggested it bury Bingham's cremated ashes in his mother's grave, but he maintains none of these options are acceptable compensation.
Raging bull
A bull broke into a German family's home and embarked on an 8,000-pound rampage.
The raging bull broke into the house through the back door, wrecked the living room and exited through the front door, after the property owner managed to open it.
Miraculously, none of the family was hurt.
Austin Clow, of Melba, Idaho, tries to wrestle a steer to the ground during the Idaho District II High School Rodeo on Sunday at the Caldwell Night Rodeo grounds. Clow was awarded a 'no-time' as the steer outfought the cowboy within the time limit. - AP
