An estimated 8,000 Santa Clauses charged through the streets of the English city of Liverpool yesterday, though many wore unusual blue costumes rather than the traditional red.

The Santa Dash round the northwestern city saw crowds of runners dressed up in full Santa suits with hats and white beards, but some stripped down to their festive-coloured shorts to get round the five-kilometre course.

Besides The Beatles, the port city is famous for its two Premier League football clubs, Liverpool and Everton, whose colours are red and blue respectively.

Other Santa dashes took place across Britain and Ireland yesterday.

Letters from outer space

China’s post office is hoping to boost business by allowing customers to send letters postmarked from space.

E-mails will be sent to a computer aboard Tiangong-1, a spacecraft currently orbiting the earth, and rerouted to a special China Space Post Office branch on the ground in Beijing. The e-mails will then be printed, placed in space-themed envelopes, stamped with a new galactic postmark and sent on in the mail.

The gimmick, which features China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, as head of a so-called “space post office”, is the latest initiative devised by the postal service to drum up business as more and more Chinese go online.

Flesh-eating banana fears

Rumours of flesh-eating bananas in Mozambique have sparked a plummet in the sale of the fruit, prompting the health minister to reassure people of its safety.

“From the work conducted by the Ministries of Agriculture, Health and Trade and Industry, it was concluded that there is no record of entry of any infected banana in the country,” according to a joint statement.

An e-mail and text message hoax warning people against eating bananas for the next three weeks went viral as people feared being infected by necrotising fasciitis, or skin-eating disease. The bacteria can destroy skin, fat and tissue covering the muscles.

A brief taste of freedom

A prisoner at a Swiss jail had a brief taste of freedom on Saturday after hoisting himself on to the prison roof and leaping on to a surrounding wall several metres away.

The athletic inmate at Sion jail completed his escape by stealing a car he found nearby which had the keys left in the ignition, police in the Valais canton said.

The 22-year-old Tunisian, who was in custody for alleged theft and handling stolen goods, was later tracked down in a neighbouring canton about 40 kilometres away. He was remanded after being treated for leg injuries, police said.