World Briefs

A horse had to be rescued yesterday from a swimming pool it had accidentally wandered into.

The four-year-old horse, named Mischief, walked on to the swimming pool’s plastic covering on a farm next to its home in Godshill, New Forest, Hampshire.

A Fire Service spokesman said the owner kept the 14-hand horse calm until local vet Luke Gamble, of Pilgrims Veterinary Practice, arrived to sedate the animal, allowing firefighters to lift it out.

Fire crews from Fordingbridge attended the incident, supported by the local service’s new animal rescue unit.

Mischief was eventually released back to pasture land, the spokesman said. (PA)

Swallows phone

A crocodile in Ukraine who swallowed a mobile phone has refused to touch his food for a month and attempts to prompt nature to take its course have so far failed, vets have said.

The Nile crocodile named Gena, who will turn 15 next month, swallowed the phone when a visitor tried to take a picture of him last month. The ring tone could be heard from inside the reptile for several days afterwards.

Eduard Manukyan, a representative of the aquarium in Dnipropetrovsk, said that Gena’s condition was worsening by the day but staff fear an operation to extract the phone may be too dangerous.

“He moves around, goes into water but has not eaten for a month,” Mr Manukyan said. (AFP)

Longest web wait

The street with the slowest broadband speed in the country has been uncovered by new research.

Patience is a much-needed virtue for web-savvy residents of Railway Hill in Canterbury, Kent, in the UK where the average download speed is 0.13Mb, which means downloading a film would take about 48 hours.

Top10.com, which compiled the figures through one million speed tests carried out on its website, said the UK average speed is 6.21Mb, almost 50 times faster than in Railway Hill. (PA)

Bar roasts bear

A sports bar owner in the US is showing his support for the Green Bay Packers in their weekend’s game against the Chicago Bears in a very literal way - by roasting a bear.

Blake Montpetit of Tiffany Sports Lounge in St Paul, Minnesota, said he plans to cook a 180lb black bear.Mr Montpetit says he planned to serve the meat to customers, but the state health department rejected the plan because the meat is unprocessed. Instead, customers can take photos with the roasting bear. (PA)

Burial for Lenin?

A new poll sponsored by the pro-Kremlin party is asking Russians to vote on whether the time has come to bury Vladimir Lenin.

It is not clear whether the government intends to abide by the outcome of the United Russia party’s poll, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said that the fate of Lenin’s body will in the end be decided by the Russian people. (PA)

Lost and found

The glow of a mobile phone helped mountain rescuers find a father and son lost at night in Snowdonia.

The pair, 55 and 19, from near Llangefni in Anglesey, had left their torches in the car when they set out to climb up Idwal Slabs.

A spokesman for Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue said: “We spotted them using night-vision glasses and we got them to shine their mobile phone around which helped us get above them and then get a rope down to them.” (PA)

‘Thieves’ stranded

Three teenagers accused of robbing motorists stuck in the snow in Kansas have been caught after they got stuck in the snow themselves.Prosecutors announced robbery and armed criminal action charges on Friday against the trio aged 18, 17 and 16.

The Kansas City Star reported that police found the teenagers stuck in a snowdrift early on Thursday morning. (PA)

Obama mask

A man who robs banks wearing a rubber mask of US President Barack Obama has struck again, Austrian police have said.

The thief robbed a bank in the town of Handenberg in Upper Austria just before the bank closed at 6 p.m. last Friday, police said.

Police believe the same man, disguised by his Obama mask, has been carrying out such bank raids for the past two years. (AFP)