One of the main Jackass cast, Ryan Dunn, has died in a car crash in the US.
Police said Mr Dunn, 34, and a passenger in his Porsche died after the car left the road and burst into flames near the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester.
They said he may have been speeding.
Mr Dunn appeared on the MTV show that ran from 2000 to 2002 and its three movie adaptations.
The passenger has not yet been identified. (AP)
Ghoulish tastes
Aspiring ghouls and ghastly characters will be queuing up to work in the dungeons of one of Britain’s most famous tourist attractions.
Blackpool Tower is opening its historic underground cellars to the public, and actors are being sought to play a scary selection of tour guides.
The 158-metre landmark is transforming the cellars into dungeons and the most horrible episodes in Lancashire’s history will be brought back to life. Around 20 actors are needed to play roles including vikings, smugglers and witches. (PA)
Rare bats
A rare species of bat has been found breeding on the Isles of Scilly for the first time in 40 years.
A brown long-eared bat was found by University of Exeter biologist Dr Fiona Mathews and her team, a postgraduate student and the Wiltshire Bat Group. The senior lecturer said they were “surprised and delighted” by the find of the pregnant female bat.
The team was studying the mystery of the annual disappearance of the large common pipistrelle colony on St Mary’s. They found that the bats had moved to a new site. (PA)
Foreskin protest
A US activist campaigning against circumcision has been accused of anti-semitism for drawing a comic book featuring a superhero known as Foreskin Man.
Matthew Hess of San Diego drew the character, and his enemy Monster Mohel, to try to persuade legislators to outlaw the practice of ritual circumcision, common in the orthodox Jewish community.
In the comics Foreskin Man rescues infants about to undergo the procedure from the sinister Monster Mohel. But critics say the drawings include grotesque Jewish stereotypes similar to 1930s Nazi propaganda. (PA)
Rooney plot
Three people appeared in a British court yesterday accused of trying to blackmail Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney and his wife Coleen for £5,000 (€5,700).
Lee Platt, 28, Jennifer Green, 25, and Steven Malcolm, 42, were charged with blackmail and handling stolen goods during a brief hearing at a court in Manchester, northwest England.
The plot allegedly took place after the footballer’s wife lost her camera phone at an arena in Manchester after attending a concert by US band Black Eyed Peas in May last year. The trio are said to have demanded cash from Rooney and his wife after discovering a memory card containing up to 100 pictures of their young son Kai. (AFP)
Oldest prisoner
Prison authorities in India have released the country’s oldest inmate, 108-year-old Brij Bihari Pandey, who was convicted of a murder he committed at the age of 84, officials have said.
Mr Pandey, a Hindu priest, was freed on Friday by a court in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh on humanitarian grounds as prison officials were finding it difficult to provide regular medical treatment to the “oldest prisoner in the history of Indian prisons.”
“It was getting difficult to take care of a 108-year-old prisoner. We moved an application for his release and the court accepted it,” said S.K. Sharma, superintendent of Gorakhpur Jail, 300 kilometres (190 miles) from the state capital Lucknow.
Mr Sharma said the release was based on humanitarian grounds.
At the ripe old age of 84, Mr Pandey along with 15 others, many of them his nephews and family members, killed four people over the inheritance of a Hindu religious institution. (AFP)