Ronnie Biggs, the notorious British Great Train Robber, has gone back into hospital suffering from pneumonia, his son said yesterday, weeks after the 79-year-old was told he would not be freed.
"It is the worst he's ever been. The doctors have just told me to rush there," his son Michael said.
Mr Biggs's family has long campaigned for his release, saying he is seriously ill and that keeping him in prison is inhumane.
But Justice Secretary Jack Straw turned down his parole bid earlier this month, saying he was "wholly unrepentant". At the time, he was in a prison hospital with a broken hip.
The Great Train Robbery saw a 15-strong gang hold up a London to Glasgow mail train in 1963, making off with 2.6 million pounds - a huge sum at the time - at a railway bridge north of London. Most of the cash was never found.
Mr Biggs played a minor role but was jailed for 30 years in 1964. He subsequently escaped from prison and went on the run for decades, ending up in Brazil before handing himself in to British authorities in a blaze of publicity in 2001. (Reuters)
'Obama is a US citizen'
A vocal group of conspiracy theorists known as "birthers" are riling the White House with their persistent claim that Barack Obama is not an American citizen and therefore ineligible to be president.
The claim that the United States' first African-American President was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, first emerged during his presidential campaign, but it has garnered more media attention in the summer "silly season", a traditionally slow news period when many Americans are on vacation.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs looked exasperated at his briefing on Monday when a reporter asked him, "Is there anything you can say that will make the birthers go away?"
"If I had some DNA, it wouldn't assuage those that don't believe he was born here," Mr Gibbs replied. "But I have news for them and for all of us: The President was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the 50th state of the greatest country on the face of the earth. He's a citizen. (Reuters)
Couple miss Capri after GPS blunder
Two Swedes expecting the golden beaches of the Italian island of Capri got a shock when tourist officials told them they were 650 kilometres off course in the northern town of Carpi, after mistyping the name in their GPS.
"It's hard to understand how they managed it. I mean, Capri is an island," said Giovanni Medici, a spokesman for Carpi regional government, said yesterday. "It's the first time something like this has happened."
The middle-aged couple, who were not identified, only discovered their error when they asked staff in the local tourist office on Saturday how to drive to the island's famous "Blue Grotto." (Reuters)
Serial bigamist getssuspended sentence
A former model who wed five men without divorcing any of them was handed a suspended jail sentence on Monday by a British court after being charged with bigamy.
Emily Horne, 30, married four men by the age of 23, changing her name on marriage certificates to avoid detection, a court in Manchester heard.
Ms Horne, a former glamour model who had roles in adult movies, only told husband number five that she was already married when they set off on their honeymoon in 2007.
Judge Mushtaq Khokhar des-cribed Ms Horne as a "manipulative woman" who had "undermined the institution of marriage".
But the judge said he had decided not to jail her because she had made progress in the last six months since being prescribed medication for a personality disorder.
Ms Horne, who has bipolar disorder, was handed a 10-month suspended prison sentence, after admitting to bigamy at an earlier court hearing. (AFP)
Flight grounded by coffee maker aroma
The electrical smell that caused a Southwest Airlines flight to make an unexpected landing on Sunday was caused by a coffee maker in the back of the aircraft, a company spokesman said.
The coffee maker was in the back galley of the Boeing 737 plane. The aircraft was examined and put back into service by 12:30 p.m. EDT (5:30 p.m. British time) Sunday, said Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz.
"Anything that might have touched the burner might have caused the electrical smell," Mr Mainz said. He added that the problem was "fairly unusual," although it was not the first time it has happened.
Flight 693 bound for Orlando, Florida, departed from Bradley International Airport in Connecticut at 7:21 a.m. EDT Sunday (12:21 p.m. British time). The plane, which held 131 passengers and five crew members, landed at Long Island Islip MacArthur Airport shortly before 8 a.m. (Reuters)
Wheel falls off Virgin Blue plane
Australian budget airline Virgin Blue has checked its fleet of Boeing 737s after a wheel fell off a plane as it prepared for take-off.
Nobody was hurt in the incident on a Sydney-bound plane which was taxiing towards the runway at Melbourne airport, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said.
"The axle between the two wheels has fractured and that's caused the right front wheel to separate," a bureau spokesman said.
The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association said the incident, which is being probed by safety investigators, could have been catastrophic.
"In this case, we were lucky that the failure occurred on the ground. The release of the wheel assembly in-flight could have seen a loss of aircraft," association secretary Steve Purvinashe said.
"Unless action is taken, future incidences could be much more serious." (AFP)