A Banksy mural which targets the issue of Government surveillance has been sold and will be removed from the property it was painted on, a scaffolding company has claimed.
The creation shows three 1950s-style agents, wearing brown trench coats and trilby hats, using devices to tap into conversations at a telephone box. It appeared overnight on a street in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, just a few miles from GCHQ, where the UK's surveillance network is based.
Residents saw a group of men packing away a large white tarpaulin in Fairview Road in April, before driving off in a maintenance van. The celebrated Bristol artist later officially confirmed the piece on a link titled Q&A on his website.
Toying around with stuffed iguana
Animal welfare officers were called out to rescue an iguana stuck up a tree – only to discover it was a stuffed toy.
A woman spotted what looked like a lizard in a tree near Miller Academy in Thurso in the Highlands. She alerted the Scottish SPCA, who broke it to the concerned caller that it was a cuddly toy which had been nailed to a branch.
Senior inspector Audrey Gunn said: “The lady was shocked when I told her it wasn’t a real iguana as she thought she’d seen it blink. I think someone must have nailed the toy to the tree as a joke and I can see why it fooled her.”
Mysterious fisher cat sighted
A mysterious long-haired critter which has been sighted on the streets of a Bronx neighbourhood for several months has been identified – it is a member of the weasel family called a fisher or fisher cat.
Zoologists said the short-legged, furry-tailed creature might have come down the River Hudson from upstate New York. The fisher preys on rats and squirrels, but is not a threat to humans.
Fishers were found in Manhattan when the island was first settled, but the fur trade pushed them north and into the Adirondacks, and trapping them was banned in the 1930s. The fisher population is now booming in the north east and a trapping season has been reinstated.
Burgled couple use Haribos rings
A couple whose wedding rings were stolen days before they were due to be married tied the knot with Haribos instead.
David Norris, 43, and his new wife Natalie Norris-Lee, 39, banished the heartache of being burgled by placing a ring-shaped chewy sweet on one another's fingers during their wedding on Sunday.
Mr Norris said the couple then gobbled the jellies before they melted – to cheers from the congregation gathered at St Laurence's Church in Meriden, Warwickshire.
After months carefully planning the ceremony, the then groom and bride-to-be had laid out their wedding bands and other gifts in the kitchen at their Northampton home on the Friday night, ready to travel the next day.
But when they awoke on Saturday morning, they found thieves had stolen everything.