Archaeologists in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey have found the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1,200 B.C., the time of the legendary war chronicled by Homer.
Ernst Pernicka, a leading German professor of archaeometry leading excavations on the site in Turkey, said the bodies were found near a defence line within the city built in the late Bronze age. "If the remains are confirmed to be from 1,200 B.C. it would coincide with the Trojan war period. These people were buried near a mote. We are conducting radiocarbon testing, but the finding is electrifying," Prof. Pernicka said.
Ancient Troy, located in the northwest of modern-day Turkey, was unearthed in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann, the German entrepreneur and pioneering archaeologist who discovered the steep and windy city described by Homer in the Iliad. (Reuters)
Priest arrested for bank robbery
A parishless Polish priest has been arrested on suspicion of armed bank robbery, police and prosecutors said yesterday.
Police spokesman Jacek Michalowski said that the 37-year-old was believed to have carried out a raid last Monday on a bank in Szamotuly in western Poland.
"The robber threatened a cashier with a knife. He got away with several thousand zlotys," Mr Michalowski said. One thousand zlotys is worth around 250 euros.
The man was arrested near Szamotuly an hour after the robbery, and told officers he was a priest from Bialogard in northwestern Poland.
"He's a priest but he doesn't currently have a posting. He did indeed work previously in Bialogard," the regional prosecutor's spokesman Magdalena Mazur-Prus told Poland's PAP news agency.
"For the moment, we don't know why he carried out the robbery," she said. (AFP)
Policemen in nude traffic dash
A drunken bus-load of elite Australian police officers were caught with their pants down when a motorist reported a "nudie run" at a traffic intersection, officials said yesterday.
The men, members of the explosives and hostage negotiation squad, were using an unmarked police bus to travel from a stag party cruise on Sunday afternoon, Commissioner Bob Atkinson said. They stopped at least four times at traffic lights across Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, to run naked around the bus in a prank known as a Chinese Fire Drill. At least one of the officers was on duty, in a scandal which comes after a Queensland policeman was suspended for allegedly urinating in public.
Commissioner Atkinson acknow-ledged their remorse but said it was not an appropriate way to let off steam, particularly not using a police vehicle. (AFP)
Cat shot 13 times in head
An Australian cat named Smokey survived 13 shots to the head from an air rifle and then found his way home after what police yesterday called a "shocking" act of animal cruelty.
The nine-year-old cat turned up on his owners' doorstep bleeding from his head last week, three days after he went missing from the family home in Maryborough, Victoria.
A medical examination revealed 13 pellets lodged in his head and face. Sergeant Craig Pearse said it was remarkable Smokey had managed to get home after his ordeal.
The distressed feline had to be heavily sedated while 11 of the pellets were removed, he said, adding that Smokey was expected to recover.
Animal welfare advocate Hugh Wirth said the incident was "utterly disgraceful", and that Smokey's tormentors deserved jail. (AFP)
Jailed for lucky licence plate fight
Five men have been jailed in Beijing for up to 16 months for fighting over a "lucky licence plate" containing the number eight, China's traditional number for good fortune.
The men allegedly armed themselves with knives and clubs and beat anyone who came near a machine issuing new licence plate numbers at a Beijing vehicle registration centre. Several people were injured, one of them seriously.
The incident occurred in July last year as plates with "8888" as the last four digits were about to be issued.
The ringleader, identified only as Xu, had lined up four cars for new plates and paid his four accomplices a total of 10,000 yuan (€945) to guard the machine and ensure he got the numbers he wanted.
The number eight in China is considered a lucky number as the word sounds like "wealth" or "prosperity." (AFP)