A Russian betting firm wants to buy soothsaying World Cup octopus Paul and hire him as a bookmaker with a salary of $5,000 a month, local media reported yesterday.

“He will be one of our 120 staff employees,” Oleg Zhuravsky, co-owner of Bet League, told Soviet Sport newspaper.

Mr Zhuravsky added: “Our specialists receive around $3,000 a month. So we will pay Paul $5,000.”

Paul earned superstar status by correctly predicting the results of all of Germany’s games, including its semi-final defeat to Spain. He also was right in forecasting Spain’s victory in the final.

Mr Zhuravsky said he was ready to pay the Sea Life oceanarium attraction in the German city of Oberhausen, where the eight-legged oracle lives, as much as €100,000. (AFP)

TV presenter shoots wife dead

An Egyptian TV presenter killed his wife after a domestic argument in which she accused him of having an affair.

Ehab Salah, a news anchor for Egyptian state TV, called police after he shot dead his 35-year-old wife, Magda Waheed, at their house in Cairo and confessed to the crime.

Ms Waheed was angry that Mr Salah had come home at 3.30 a.m. and quizzed him over whether he was still having an affair with another woman.

“When he said yes, she slapped him... He ran into the bedroom, got out his handgun and shot her in the head,” her sister who was at the scene told police. (AFP)

Danish PM in charity ride

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen took off yesterday for a 187-kilometre leg of a charity bike ride to raise funds for children with cancer.

The bike ride Team Rynkeby is organised every year between Denmark and Paris to raise funds for children with cancer.

Mr Rasmussen, who is 46, took part in the ride in 2007 and 2008, when he was respectively Health and Finance Minister, and again in 2009 as Prime Minister. (AFP)

Flood death toll rises

A woman died after being swept away by raging waters in Romania, becoming the twenty-sixth person killed by flooding and storms in the past month, officials said.

The victim in her 50s was rescued by local residents in Belin and taken to hospital but died several hours later.

Prime Minister Emil Boc said that the cost of the damage caused by the floods which have hit Romania since June 21 would run into several hundred million euros.

He said that 37 out of Romania’s 41 regions had been affected and 6,979 houses damaged, with 1,033 of them needing to be completely rebuilt. (AFP)

Scooter scare

A pensioner on his way to the bank had to be rescued by police after ending up on a busy A-road on his mobility scooter.

Police were inundated with calls about the elderly man trundling along the A27 trunk road near the Shoreham flyover in West Sussex. A quick-thinking van driver pulled up behind him and followed with hazard lights flashing to alert other motorists until police arrived. (PA)

Student success

A student became a bus driver to fund her way through university.

Portsmouth University graduate Louisa Burton, 22, would drive her fellow students home from pubs and clubs in her night job, which was aimed at covering her tuition fees and living costs.

Miss Burton did her bus driving training in her home town of Inverness at the age of 18, making her the youngest bus driver in Scotland. (PA)

Praying in the wrong direction

People in the world’s most populous Muslim nation have been facing Africa, not Mecca, while praying.

Indonesia’s highest Islamic body admitted it made a mistake when issuing an edict in March saying the holy city in Saudi Arabia was to the country’s west.

It has since asked followers to shift direction slightly northward during their daily prayers. (PA)

Company is a pest

A man is suing a pest control company for £100,000, claiming his hearing was damaged when it used explosives to remove rodents on his neighbour’s property.

Michael Lester, from Oregon, says the firm failed to warn people and then disregarded his request warning to stop the blasts that were rattling his doors and windows.

Mr Lester said he has suffered from continuing ringing and buzzing in his ears. (PA)

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