A Staffordshire bull terrier puppy in the UK needed emergency surgery after swallowing a two-foot long metal lead, his Middlesbrough owners said yesterday.

The playful nine-month-old ate the metal chain after grabbing it while the dog’s owner was on the phone.

Although the dog showed no sign of ill-health, it was taken to the local PetAid hospital for a check-up.

After the puppy was X-rayed the vet saw the true picture.

The chain was just lying in the stomach and luckily had not passed into the intestines.

The puppy had an operation to remove the lead and it was soon back to full health. (AP)

No LOL matter for texting juror

A juror in the US was not LOL after the judge caught him texting during an armed robbery trial.

When the lights were dimmed for the showing of video evidence in the Oregon trial, the judge saw a glow on the juror’s chest.

He cleared the courtroom and held the texter in contempt and sent him to prison. (PA)

Playing poker... at school

Children should have time to play poker, drive go-karts and climb trees, a leading British headmaster has said.

The twin pressures of examinations and health and safety mean that today’s youngsters are left with little time to develop life skills and enjoy their childhood, according to Christian Heinrich, who is the chairman of the Boarding Schools’ Association.

Mr Heinrich accused private senior schools of being more interested in a child’s intelligence than their other abilities, and attacked the tests used by many of these schools to decide which pupils to admit.

The headmaster believes that children must be allowed time to play and take risks without punitive health and safety rules. (PA)

Has anyone lost a head?

Anyone lost a giant head made of Styrofoam and fibreglass?

That is what officials at an upstate New York college are asking after the men’s crew team found the unusual object floating in the Hudson river.

Officials at Marist College in Poughkeepsie say the team was practising when the coach spotted a large object floating near the river’s west bank. He hooked a rope to it and towed it to the team’s dock on the east bank.

The object turned out to be a seven-foot-tall replica of a man’s head made with Styrofoam and fibreglass.

The head has the appearance of a Greek or Roman-style statue and college officials believe it is a theatre prop. (PA)

World War I postcard revealed

A captured World War I soldier’s postcard home has emerged 95 years after it was sent from a prisoner of war camp in Germany.

Charles Jeffries sent the card from a camp in Limburg an der Lahn on April 30 1918 to let his family in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, know that he had been taken prisoner.

The card is printed in a mixture of German and English and headed: “I am a prisoner of war in Germany.”

His granddaughter Pat Nicholls, 78, of Cambridgeshire, had the card in a file of family memorabilia and has revealed it to local historians in her village.

She is trying to find out more about her grandfather, who was born in 1890 and died in 1953. (AP)