A demolition man stripping a fireplace from the former home of The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien stumbled across a postcard to the writer dated 1968, and hopes to sell it for a small fortune.
Stephen Malton, who runs Prodem Demolition in Bournemouth on the south English coast, was working in the house in the nearby town of Poole before it was bulldozed to make way for a new construction project.
"Before we demolish a house we do an internal strip out," Mr Malton said yesterday. "One of the main features was a fireplace, and upon removing that we came across three postcards. The third one was a postcard dated 1968 and addressed to J.R.R. Tolkien."
Mr Malton said research on the internet suggested that the carved wooden fireplace with marble inlay, a feature of the house when Tolkien lived there from 1968 to 1972, was already worth up to $250,000 (€160,000). "To tie in both the fireplace and the postcard, we are talking about a price of around $500,000 for the combined pair," the 42-year-old told Reuters by telephone.
US issues 'insulting' Berlusconi biography
The United States formally apologised to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi yesterday for distributing to reporters an "insulting" biography of him that said he was "hated by many".
The description was included in a thick press kit distributed to reporters travelling with US President George W. Bush from Washington to the Group of Eight summit in Japan that Mr Berlusconi was also attending.
The four-page biography, pulled from the Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, refers to Mr Berlusconi as "hated by many but respected by all at least for his bella figura (personal style) and the sheer force of his will".
Woman overpowers thief with tea and sympathy
A Japanese woman and her six-month-old baby escaped unhurt from a knife-wielding thief on Monday after the mother calmed him down with a cup of tea and a chat.
The 30-year-old Tokyo woman was walking along a corridor in her apartment building with her daughter when a man brandishing a knife demanded money, the Asahi newspaper reported yesterday.
When the housewife told him she had none, the man barged into her apartment. Hoping to calm him, the woman made the thief a cup of tea, whereupon he put his knife away and began a 20-minute monologue about his life.
The woman then gave the man 10,000 yen (€60) and ran outside to call the police from a pay phone, the report said. Police rushed to the scene, but the thief had fled and is still being sought.
Flush so as not to blush
A city in south Taiwan began training potty users this week to flush toilet paper instead of throwing it in the trash, to reduce 340 tonnes of stinky waste generated daily, local media and officials said yesterday.
"An old habit is to throw toilet paper in the trash can beside the toilet, which causes a major stink that's bad for public sanitation," city Environmental Protection Bureau Director Chang Hwang-jen told Reuters."Japanese and Western visitors who come to Taiwan find this Taiwan toilet habit to be quite poor," she added.
Taiwan's plumbing can now handle toilet paper without clogging the pipes, a break from the past, the city of Tainan told its 764,000 citizens at a news conference.
Russian who says he can raise dead
A Moscow court has convicted a man of fraud for preying on people mourning loved ones by saying he could resurrect the dead.
Grigory Grabovoy stood passively inside an iron cage as he was sentenced to 11 years in prison working hard labour in a case which has grabbed headlines around Russia.
"He used a special method of influencing people distressed by the loss of relatives or the illness of loved ones," the judge said as he found Mr Grabovoy guilty of 11 cases of fraud.
In one case from 2003 a man paid Mr Grabovoy 39,500 roubles (€1,085) to attempt to cure his dying parents and in another case a woman paid him 118,000 roubles to try to resurrect her two dead sons.
Blogger sentenced for 'extremist' post
A Russian man who described local police as "scum" in an internet posting was given a suspended jail sentence on Monday for extremism, prompting bloggers to warn of a crackdown on free speech online.
Savva Terentiev, a 28-year-old musician from Syktyvkar, 1,515 kilometres north of Moscow, wrote in a blog last year that the police force should be cleaned up by ceremonially burning officers twice a day in a town square.
Convicted on charges of "inciting hatred or enmity", Mr Terentiev was given a one-year suspended term, Russian news agencies reported.
Morales to farm coca if he loses recall
Bolivian President Evo Morales says he will go back to farming coca leaves if he loses an August 10 recall vote arising from a power struggle with right-wing governors.
Amid a conflict over demands for greater regional autonomy, Mr Morales, a leftist, and most of the country's nine regional governors are scheduled to face a recall vote that could force them out of office.
"If I get ratified I'll get to stay two-and-half years more. If (my mandate) is revoked I'll go back to... my coca land plot," Mr Morales said in a speech reported by the state news agency ABI late on Sunday. An ally of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and a fierce US critic, became the impoverished country's first President of indigenous descent in January 2006.