World Briefs

Police in Australia have charged a man for drink driving in a motorised wheelchair after he was found to be six times over the legal alcohol limit, local media reported yesterday.

Police in the tropical northern Queensland city of Cairns said the man had a blood alcohol reading of 0.31, and was so drunk he was asleep at the controls of his motorised wheelchair in a turning lane of a major highway.

"It beggars belief," Police Inspector Bob Walters told the Cairns Post newspaper, adding wheelchairs, bicycles, horses and skateboards were all considered to be vehicles under the state's road laws.

Other motorists on the four-lane highway had to swerve to avoid the wheelchair, police said.

Camper thief caught on eBay

A German camper who tried to buy a tent after his was stolen, stumbled upon the original on eBay along with information leading to the arrest of the thief, police said yesterday.

They said the 45-year-old from the western city of Bochum spotted a picture of the tent that disappeared from his cellar a fortnight ago while trawling the internet auction site on Sunday.

"Bigger even than his delight at getting the tent back, was his surprise when he discovered in the course of the transaction that the seller lived in his apartment block," the police in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia said.

They arrested the man's 19-year-old neighbour and found several other stolen items in the suspect's home.

Work-shy buffaloes add to woes

With a planting deadline looming, rice farmers in cyclone-hit parts of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta have hit a problem - donated oxen and water buffaloes are refusing to work because they are stressed.

"Thanks to donors and arrangements by the government, we are getting buffaloes and oxen, and in some cases small tractors and tillers, almost free of charge," said Ko Hla Soe, a farmer in Dedaye, 50 kilometres southwest of Yangon.

"Now, to our surprise, the problem is that most of the buffaloes and oxen will not work hard. They cannot immediately be used effectively," he told Reuters.

As well as leaving 134,000 people dead or missing when it ripped into the delta on May 2, Cyclone Nargis killed around 200,000 farm animals, 120,000 of which were used by farmers to plough fields in the former Burma's "rice bowl".

The military government and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has identified replacing these draught animals as a priority to allow farmers in the devastated areas to start growing their own food again.

Eight-year-old steals car and goes on rampage

An eight-year-old boy stole a car before going on a rampage through the streets of a southern Serbian town, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, the police said.

After jumping into the car - a Zastava 101 - the boy only identified by the initials V.P. promptly steered it onto a pavement and struck a passer-by pushing a pram in front of the town hall in Leskovac.

His apparent test of his driving skills soon came to an abrupt end when the boy crashed the car into a nearby tree, damaging the vehicle.

The pavement victim was in shock, but not injured. The boy was detained by the police before placing him under the watch of childcare authorities.

Ancient Greek games revived

Some 600 people clad in tunics raced barefoot in the ruins of an ancient stadium over the weekend in a revival of games held in antiquity at Nemea, 120 kilometres southwest of Athens.

Two races were staged for the runners aged from 10 to 80, one of 100 metres and the other of 7.5 kilometres. No medals were awarded but crowns of palm branches and wild celery were presented to the winners.

The event was organised by the Society for the Revival of the Nemean Games, founded in 1994 after more than 20 years of excavation at Nemea by an archaeological team from the University of California at Berkeley headed by Steven Miller.

The new games, held every four years since 1996, are a form of popular education in history, according to the organisers, as well as a counter to the commercialism of the modern Olympics, which they say "have become increasingly removed from the average person".

"The Society for the Revival of the Nemean Games believes that there is scope for the average person to participate in such an international athletic festival where no records will be kept and no medals awarded," according to its website.

Hotel offers cash for press coverage

The hotel hosting the official non-accredited media centre for August's Beijing Olympics is offering cash to reporters in return for positive media coverage. The Gehua New Century Hotel, which describes itself as "China's first five-star hotel with a media-cultural theme", has promised journalists up to 1,000 yuan (€94) for articles about it.

It is common practice in China for local media to be paid "travel expenses" of 200 to 300 yuan for attending news conferences - in effect an incentive given that most taxi journeys in the city cost less than 50 yuan.

Hush money has also been paid to reporters by coal mine owners and, in some cases, colluding local officials to cover up fatal accidents.