As most Americans celebrated Christmas Day with warm feasts and crackling fires, members of the country’s oldest Polar Bear Club cast off their sweaters for an icy plunge into the Atlantic.

A few dozen men and women of all ages took part in a special Christmas edition of the monthly tradition, gathering on a windy beach at Coney Island on a five degree Celsius winter’s day.

A guitar-playing Santa Claus added some holiday cheer to the ritual, which saw club members wade into the freezing water at a seaside promenade in front of the New York Aquarium, in a tradition dating back more than a century.

Up, up and away

A large model of an American jet fighter has mysteriously disappeared from a small Dutch museum.

Its owners are hoping pranksters rather than scrap metal thieves are responsible.

Edwin van Brakel, chairman of the Museum Vliegbasis Deelen, said it was a mystery how thieves managed to move the 30-foot- long, one-ton model of a Lockheed Starfighter.

Freelance father

Federal officials in the US have issued a warning to a man who has been donating his sperm to women who want children.

Trent Arsenault claims his internet trade got three women pregnant last month, a record for the 36-year-old father of 14 from California. The Food and Drug Administration has now told him he is facing a $100,000 fine or up to a year in prison for ignoring regulations requiring blood screening tests.

‘Christmas star’ is debris

A ball of light streaking across the night sky in northern Europe on Saturday at a time when many imagined that Father Christmas was doing his rounds was nothing more than Soyuz rocket debris.

“The ball observed ... above Belgium, The Netherlands, France and Germany was the return of the last stage of the Soyuz rocket launcher,” Belgium’s Royal Observatory has said.

Videos were posted on the internet showing the ball of light trailing a long tail. The Belgian observatory solved the mystery when it linked the sighting to the crash of a Russian satellite on Friday.

The Soyuz-2.1B rocket carrying the satellite crashed into Siberia minutes after its launch due to rocket failure. On its way down, it created the streak of light seen in the European sky.

A fragment of the Russian satellite hit a residential house on a street named after cosmonauts.

Branching out

Police investigating a burglar alarm in Michigan used a thermal imaging device to find a fleeing suspect hiding in a pile of leaves.

When the burglar realised he had been spotted he ran off again - and jumped into a river.

Police arrested him after he went to a nearby motel to change his clothes.