Canada's post office and police are trying to track down a "rogue elf" who wrote obscene letters to children on behalf of Santa Claus.

The Ottawa Citizen said at least 10 nasty letters had been delivered to little girls and boys in Ottawa who wrote to Santa this year care of the North Pole, which has a special H0H 0H0 Canadian postal code. Return letters from Santa are in fact written by an 11,000-strong army of Canada Post employees and volunteers.

"We firmly believe there is just one rogue elf out there," a Canada Post spokesman said. Canada Post's popular "Write to Santa" programme - which last year delivered more than a million letters to children in Canada and around the world - has been shut down in Ottawa until the offender is caught.

40th birthday miracle crash

Three people celebrating a 40th birthday with a joy flight had a miraculous escape after their pilot was forced to crash-land his plane on a quiet Australian road, despite losing the aircraft's wings on the way down. All four walked away from the crash with minor cuts and bruises after their single-engine Piper Warrior stalled and plummeted to earth, losing its wings on power lines as fuel spilled into trees alongside the road and burst into flames.

"I thought they'd all be dead. All that was there was three metres of metal, no wings, nothing," said a witness on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne.

Over 65s turn vicious

Crimes by older people in Japan jumped threefold this year compared with a decade ago, domestic media reported yesterday.

About 45,000 people over 65 were prosecuted between January and November, nearly half of them for shoplifting. Assaults by older people rose to 1,700 from just 100 in the same period a decade ago.

"Crimes by elderly people are increasing... faster than the population is ageing," said Osamu Nasu of the Police Policy Research Centre at the National Police Academy.

An increase in the number of isolated older people who do not socialise may be contributing to the rise in crimes, he said.

Japan's population is ageing faster than in any other country. About 20 per cent of the population was over the age 65 in 2005, and the proportion is expected to double by mid-century.

Man bites rabid dog

Upset that a stray rabid dog was fleeing with a duck from his compound, a man in India caught the animal, wrestled with it and bit it hard in the throat before it was beaten to death.

The dog had become a menace to villagers in Pakakkadavu, in the Kollam district of Kerala state, which has a large stray dog population. The 65-year-old man wrestled with the dog in a ditch near his home and bit it so hard that it bled from its neck while one of his hands was in the grip of the animal's mouth. Neighbours separated the two and beat the dog to death. The man was being treated for rabies.

'It's over' by text message

U R dumped - one in seven say they have suffered the same fate as Britney Spears' ex-husband and been told it's all over via text message or e-mail, a survey said yesterday.

While hiding behind technology might appear a cowardly way of splitting up, it contrasts with the four per cent who simply drop all communication with their lovers without notice.

"Most of us send e-mails and texts everyday, so it comes as no surprise they are now being used to ditch someone - however distasteful this is," said Rob Barnes from moneysupermarket.com, which carried out the survey.

Captives traded for oil

Political prisoners in former East Germany were traded for oil, copper and silver before reunification, and human trade with the West formed a lucrative economic linchpin, the author of a new study said. Between 1963-1990, the West German government paid a total of about €1.8 billion, in goods for the release of nearly 32,000 prisoners and 2,000 children from the communist East.

German historian Matthias Judt, who has scoured records of state bank accounts, has discovered that the goods were traded on international commodity markets with profits mainly used to service debt in the stricken East German economy.

The bribe money was supposed to be used for purchasing Western consumer goods for East Germans, but only 11 per cent of the money was used in this way according to Judt.

Embassy gamblers get jail card

Two Singaporean men were jailed and fined for running an illegal gambling den in the Senegal consulate in the city-state.

The pair, who were jailed for about a month each and fined $27,780, told the judge their clients thought the laws of the West African state, and not Singapore, were applicable in the consulate.

The consulate could not be reached for comment.

Running an illegal casino in Singapore is punishable with a fine and up to three years in jail.