Burglars dig a 15-metre tunnel
“Every little helps” says the sign at Tesco where a gang spent months digging away at a 15-metre tunnel to help themselves to the shop’s cash machine.
Spurning the traditional bank robbers’ tools of balaclava and sawn-off shotgun for the shovel and pick, detectives say the complex tunnel structure would have taken serious planning and weeks of laborious digging to carry out the raid in Salford, Greater Manchester.
And police have not ruled out this latest tunnel raid to two others in the area by the raiders dubbed locally as Mole in the Wall gang.
Staff opened the shop on Liverpool Road in Salford to peer into a hole in the ground where the gang had broken in. (PA)
Toddler survives three-storey fall
A California toddler survived a three-storey fall, saved by a couple who were moving into a new home and threw a mattress under the boy before he plunged to the ground, fire officials and local media said.
The couple called emergency responders after spotting the three-year-old as he was about to make his fall in a Los Angeles suburb on Sunday. They had already plucked him from danger by the time rescuers arrived, the Burbank Fire Department said in a statement.
Konrad and Jennifer Lighter told local television station ABC7 they saw the child clamber out an apartment building’s third-floor window and dangle over an alley from a cable. They quickly set down the box spring mattress they had been carrying and positioned it as best they could. (Reuters)
Gun tattoo mistaken for real thing
Police armed with assault rifles descended on as man’s home after members of a tree removal crew he had told to clear off his property reported that he had a gun.
Smith, who works nights, was asleep when the tree crew who needed to trim branches near power lines, woke him up at about 10am. He went outside shirtless and yelled at the workers to leave.
Turns out the “gun” the tree crew had seen on Michael Smith of Norridgewock, Maine, was just a life-sized tattoo of a handgun on his stomach, which looks like a firearm tucked into his waistband. (PA)
Golfers urged to swing with care
Golfers are urged to swing with care after US scientists proved that titanium-coated clubs can cause course-side vegetation to burst into flames.
Fire officials said results confirm a suspicion investigators have had for years, that titanium clubs were likely the true cause of at least two blazes on California golf courses, including one that burned 12 acres in 2010.
Professor James Earthman at the University of California, Irvine, said the clubs can produce sparks if hit upon a rock. And the sparks will burn for more than a second, which is plenty of time to ignite a fire. The local fire authority is now giving golfers permission to “improve their lie” – that is, to move their ball away from rocks and dry vegetation. (PA)
Gibberish woman is a celebrity
A 19-year-old Finnish supermarket cashier with millions of internet fans of her language imitation YouTube video is heading for America hoping her gibberish hit will open up a new career.
In two weeks, Sara Maria Forsberg’s What languages sound like to a foreigner video has drawn more than nine million viewings, transforming her into a sought after celebrity that prompted the mayor of her hometown of Pietarsaari to hand her the town keys as a gesture of appreciation.
Mayor Mikael Jakobsson says she “likely is the most famous person ever” to have been born in the coastal town of 20,000 inhabitants. Her agent Jere Hietala said that Forsberg was headed for Los Angeles on March 29 after “numerous advertising related companies” had been in touch. (PA)