World briefs

Police are hunting a robber who used a goblin mask as a disguise during an early hours attack on a 55-year-old milkman.

The offender drove off with the victim’s fully laden Dairy Crest milk van after kicking him in the face in Church Warsop, Nottinghamshire.

A police spokesman said the attacker, about six feet tall and of slim build, was wearing dark clothing and a grey fancy dress mask. (PA)

Car crash creates store headache

When John Barberini exited the Interstate 25 highway and crashed his car into a small town convenience store last December, he created a massive lingering headache for the 200 people of Chugwater, Wyoming.

The crash started a fire that burned down the Horton’s Corner store, which was the only place for miles around to get petrol, the town’s lone grocery store and one of its biggest employers.

The fire cost a dozen people their jobs. As for the petrol problem, four months after the fire people still have to make a round trip of at least 48 miles to fill up. (PA)

Twinning ceremony for phone boxes

A small English village is to hold a ceremony to twin its former phone box with another phone box 150 miles away.

The kiosk in Marden in Wiltshire, is to be twinned with a kiosk in Thurlestone, near Kingsbridge, south Devon.

Organiser Lalu Carter said the Wiltshire kiosk was being linked with a redundant K6 phone box in her parents’ village in Devon as a “bit of fun”.

Fitted with shelves, the redundant Marden kiosk, which was bought from BT for £1, is used by the village as a “swap shop” for every-thing from books to vegetables. (AP)

Final reunion with long-lost dog tag

A New Jersey man has been reunited with the dog tag he lost in France during World War II.

Ninety-year-old Willie Wil-kins served in 1944 in the Army’s Quartermaster Graves Registration Units, retrieving the dead bodies of Ameri-can soldiers.

The dog tag was handed to him by Anne-Marie Crespo, who found it in 2001 while digging near an olive tree in her garden in France. Through the French government she contacted Mr Wilkins’s daughter Carol, who said it is a miracle that her father got his dog tag back. (PA)

Child cruelty hoarders sentenced

A British couple who filled their home with junk were yesterday given suspended prison sentences for child cruelty in what is thought to be the first prosecution for hoarding.

Ambulance man Duncan Scott and his partner Claire Anderson, were told by a furious judge at the Old Bailey that they were lucky he was not jailing them immediately.

The couple, from Bedfordshire, pleaded guilty to four charges of child cruelty by providing inappropriate living conditions for four children.

The court heard that there were piles of clothes in the bedrooms and toys and other items from car boot sales all over the house. (AP)