The skeleton of an 18ft-long woolly mammoth which roamed Earth up to 50,000 years ago has fetched £150,000 under the hammer at auction.

A private collector sold the extremely rare Ice Age piece of natural history through Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, West Sussex.

It was sold to a UK based private collector in a telephone bid which with the buyer’s premium amounted to £189,000. At 11.6ft tall, the near-complete skeleton, which comes complete with impressive-looking curved tusks, was the highlight of a sale which attracted international attention.

Happy homecoming for Joules

A dog that was stolen from its owner for fighting a year ago has been reunited her after being found 150 miles away.

Joules, a Staffordshire bull terrier, disappeared from Liz Wilson-Roberts’ family home in Middlesex last year. She was found straying in Yeovil, Somerset, by a member of the public and taken to Wyndham Hill veterinary surgery.

Enforcement officers scanned Joules, who had recently had puppies, for a microchip and found she was registered to a property in Middlesex.

Words of wisdom by woman, 101

A 101-year-old former teacher was given a standing ovation after she gave an inspirational talk to a group of unemployed people about surviving difficult times.

Annie Murphy spoke for 90 minutes without notes about Nelson Mandela, the Miners’ Strike and women’s struggle for equal opportunities to a group in Gateshead. She wanted to support people who are struggling to find work by sharing her experiences, having lived through war and the worst recessions of the 20th Century.

Born in 1913, her education began at Chopwell School, Gateshead, aged five, but her alcoholic father, who returned from the First World War with shell shock, wanted her at home.

Russian plane is no pushover

A Russian plane was given some unexpected assistance when frozen brakes meant it was unable to move on to the runway – by several of its passengers.

When a Tu-134 due to fly from the Arctic town of Ingarka to Krasnoyarsk, 800 miles to the south, got stuck when its chassis brakes froze, some of its passengers were apparently so desperate to get home they disembarked in temperatures as low as -52C and helped push.

An amateur video posted online shows several dozen men pushing the plane by leaning on both wings until it moved. Russian authorities, however, were not amused and prosecutors have launched an investigation into a possible breach of safety regulations.

YouTube video is just Thai trick

It has been a bad year for tourism in Thailand, and at first glance it looked like a new YouTube video was adding to the misery.

The video, called I Hate Thailand, drew more than one million views within days of being posted last week – but it turned out it was produced by Thailand’s tourism authority using a counter-intuitive strategy after the country’s image was battered by a military coup in May and the brutal murders of two British tourists in September.

The five-minute video shows an angry British tourist who says his bag was stolen: “I hate this place. I hate Thailand,” he tells a handheld camera. After mouthing off to a policeman, he meets an attractive Thai woman and finds reasons to like Thailand. In the end, he gets his bag back too. Tourism bosses say it aimed to depict “the renowned Thai hospitality”.

Ring dropped in sewer is found

A 1920 wedding ring which got dropped down a church toilet in southern Oregon has finally been found by sewer workers.

Pat Hanson said the ring, which belonged to her mother, fell off her finger as she has lost weight recently due to a fall.