Police in northern Germany are trying to catch a stray parma wallaby that has been roaming the city of Bredstedt since its escape from a zoo on Saturday.
One of two wallabies that hopped away from the zoo was recaptured on Sunday, but the other remains on the loose, a police spokesman said yesterday.
The 50cm tall animal has been sighted a couple of times but has so far managed to outrun the police. It is neither carnivorous nor dangerous, officials said.
Man with homegrown cannabis acquitted
The Dutch high court on Tuesday acquitted a man charged with illegally growing marijuana who said the drug helped ease pain from his multiple sclerosis.
Growing marijuana is illegal in The Netherlands but sales of it and other cannabis-related soft drugs in coffee shops have been tolerated for decades, making them a major tourist attraction.
Pharmacies are allowed to sell limited quantities of cannabis only if the buyer can provide a doctor's prescription.
The man suffered some negative side-effects after taking pharmacy cannabis, and then decided to grow his own marijuana, the Dutch high court said in a statement.
Turkish Hotel fires all male staff
A small hotel on Turkey's Mediterranean coast has fired all its male employees for repeatedly having affairs with foreign female guests.
Pelin Yucel, manager of Image Hotel in Marmaris, said her 27-room hotel now only employs female staff.
"We had been facing the same problem every year but after the last incident we decided to run the hotel with only female staff," she said.
"The last straw was when I saw our bartender, who was a very decent man, walk out of the bathroom with a British tourist," Ms Yucel was quoted in the media as saying.
Apologises for not smoking pot
The leader of Canada's Green Party, unveiling an election platform that includes a proposal to legalise marijuana, apologised yesterday for not having smoked pot.
"I am not a fan of marijuana use. I have to confess this - I know all politicians are asked. I've never used marijuana. I apologise," said Elizabeth May, who won extra attention this year by being allowed to join the televised national leaders' debates.
The Greens' platform proposes to allow the sale of marijuana to adults through licensed distribution outlets, generating about C$1 billion ($925 million) annually in taxes.
The more high-profile part of the party's platform would impose C$36 billion to C$37 billion a year in carbon taxes on fossil fuels as part of a programme - similar to a more modest plan proposed by the Liberal Party - to shift taxation from income to consumption.
Togo confirms bird flu outbreak
Laboratory tests have confirmed a fresh outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in Togo after around 4,000 poultry died at a village in the small West African state last week, the government said yesterday.
Tests conducted in Ghana on samples from dead chickens taken from the village of Agbata, on the eastern fringes of the capital Lome, showed the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus.
After the outbreak, Togo, which reported several cases of H5N1 last year, had imposed a quarantine on the village.
The H5N1 strain, which has swept through bird populations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has killed 245 of the 387 people infected globally so far.
Britain's pubs braced for more closures
Britain's cash-strapped pubs groups, faced with the toughest trading conditions for years, look set to accelerate pub closures as the government turns the screws and presses ahead with planned tax rises.
The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) has said closures across the UK are running at five a day, up a third on last year, with close to 1,900 of the country's 57,000 pubs set to shut this year if the current rate continues.
The industry is angry with the government for pressing ahead with tax rises when it is facing the toughest trading conditions for years with pressure on household budgets, last year's smoking ban, cheap alcohol offers in supermarkets, and the miserable summer weather encouraging drinkers to stay at home.
No such thing as a safe tan, researchers say
There is no such thing as a safe tan, US and British researchers have said.
They said in their review of published studies that tans and skin cancer both begin with DNA damage caused by exposure to ultraviolet light but many people, especially the young, ignore or are unaware of this danger in a quest for a bronzed body. "The signals in the cells that induce sun tanning appear to be DNA damage," said Dorothy Bennett, a cell biologist at St George's, University of London.
"DNA damage is the first step in getting a mutation in cells that could lead to cancer, so there can't be anything like a safe tan." Getting some sunshine is important because ultraviolet light spurs the body to produce vitamin D. But people need far less ultraviolet exposure for this than it takes to tan, she said.
"A lot of young people don't know about the scientific evidence," she said. "Anything that causes mutations in your cells increases your risk of cancer."
The World Health Organisation estimates that as many as 60,000 people each year die from too much ultraviolet light, mostly from malignant melanoma - the deadliest form of skin cancer.