An Australian tourist has died after being hit by a train as he headed back to his campsite from the Oktoberfest, Munich's annual beer festival.
Munich police said the accident happened as the inebriated Australian and a fellow tourist from New Zealand walked along commuter train tracks in the early hours.
A police statement said they apparently failed to notice an approaching train, which hit the Australian. His companion was not injured. (PA)
Post mortem prison sentence
A Florida woman was sentenced yesterday to a year and a day in prison for keeping her dead mother's body in a bedroom for years while collecting more than $230,000 in pension benefits.
Penelope Sharon Jordan, 61, of Sebastian, Florida, pleaded guilty to theft of government funds in June, the US Attorney's Office in Miami said.
Police said when they found the body in a spare bedroom in March, Ms Jordan told them her mother had been dead for at least six years. During the sentencing hearing, evidence indicated that Ms Jordan told her sister their mother had died before December, 2001.
An autopsy on the body found no signs of foul play.
Ms Jordan told the court she concealed her mother's death in order to continue collecting her Social Security and military pension benefits. Over a six-year period she received $61,415 in Social Security payments and $176,461 from the military pension. (Reuters)
Ireland to allot postcodes
Ireland plans to assign postcodes to each home in about a year's time, becoming the last European country to do so, in the hope of giving western Europe's worst performing economy a small boost.
The once-booming "Celtic Tiger" has been seeking ways to improve competitiveness and stop multinationals moving more production to lower cost centres such as eastern Europe.
"We're the only country in Europe which doesn't have a postal code... and we like that in a nostalgic way," Communications Minister Eamon Ryan said.
"But the reality is it's not efficient and it doesn't work well," Mr Ryan told public radio RTE yesterday. "We need to move to a new digital economy, postcodes are part of that."
Proponents say postcodes would not only make mail delivery more efficient but would also help other businesses that rely on the exact tracing of goods in the export-reliant Irish economy. (Reuters)
Licensed excuses
Family pets, a pigeon falling down a chimney and a sick magpie were among the things blamed by people who failed to pay for their television licences.
A TV Licensing spokesman said the range of excuses made by people when inquiry officers called ranged from the "sublime to the ridiculous".
Top of the list was "a pigeon fell down the chimney and broke the aerial so I have bad reception". Another excuse was: "I've not been making payments as a baby magpie flew into my house and I had to stay in and feed it until it was OK." (PA)
Reborn Ferris wheel
A Ferris wheel once owned by Michael Jackson is quietly touring the American Midwest after a liquidation sale scattered many of the rides from Jackson's Neverland Ranch in California.
Jackson reportedly purchased the Ferris wheel in 1990. It stayed there as Jackson was accused of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at the ranch in 2003.
He was acquitted two years later, but the scandal drove him from Neverland.
Co-owner Theresa Noerper said Archway Amusements bought the 65-foot Ferris wheel last year. The company began taking it on the seasonal fair and carnival circuit. (PA)
Smoking order
A judge has ordered a 19-year-old Hawaii man who pleaded no contest to starting a restaurant fire with a flicked cigarette to stop smoking for a year.
Makaio Bachman-Majamay was originally charged with third-degree arson for allegedly igniting the roof of the Wei Wei Bar-B-Q Restaurant in Pukalani in July last year. Lawyer William McGrath said his client did not mean to start the fire.
Mr Bachman-Majamay pleaded guilty to a reduced charge as judge Joel August ordered him to do community service and pay a $1,025 fine to fix the roof. He also told the teenager not to use tobacco for a year. (PA)