A California couple faces child endangerment charges after police say they tried to sell their six-month-old baby for $25 (€20) outside a Walmart store.

Salinas police spokesman, Officer Lalo Villegas, said yesterday that Patrick Fousek and Samantha Tomasini (pictures) were arrested on Wednesday morning, hours after Mr Fousek allegedly approached two women outside Walmart and asked if they'd like to purchase his child.

The women initially thought Mr Fousek was joking, but when he became persistent, they became suspicious and reported it to the police.

Mr Fousek and Ms Tomasini were arrested at their home. Officers said the couple appeared high on methamphetamine and the house was in disarray. (PA)

Do not disturb: Man lays dead for 4 years

Relatives took literally a Dutch man's instructions not to be disturbed when he went to his bedroom: they let him alone and his body was found in bed four years later, police said Wednesday. The man, 50 at the time of his death, lived with four siblings aged between 44 and 71 in the northern village of Minnertsga.

"He was used to being obeyed and very quick to anger," police spokesman Wouter De Vries told AFP.

Though they frequently passed by the bedroom door, no one dared to open it and look in, Mr de Vries said. The body was only discovered when the landlords decided some work needed doing in the room.

"A decomposing body produces a very strong smell, and it's really remarkable that his brothers and sisters don't seem to have noticed anything," the police spokesman said, while adding that crime was not suspected for the moment. (AFP)

Buried in the wrong grave

The remains of a murder victim buried in the wrong grave were exhumed yesterday to allow a widow to be laid to rest in the plot alongside her late husband.

The body of Daniel Hastelow, 26, was buried in a reserved grave at Walsall Wood churchyard in the West Midlands last November, after a vicar forgot to mark out the correct space.

The grave had been reserved by widowed parishioner Jean Best, who was granted a faculty - or official permission - by the church.

The exhumation, which began at 6 a.m., yesterday and took around two hours, was ordered by Judge Marten Coates, the Chancellor of the Diocese of Lichfield, in a hearing at Warwick Crown Court on April 6.

The case was taken to the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Lichfield following failed attempts to find a solution acceptable to both Mrs Best and Mr Hastelow's family.

A spokesman for the Diocese said Mr Hastelow's body was reinterred in a different grave in the churchyard, which was closed while the exhumation and reburial took place. (PA)

Murano objects seized

Italy's financial police seized yesterday more than 11 million glass objects that were being sold in stores in Venice as artisanally-blown Murano glass, even though most of them were made in China.

"Between glasses, keychains, small masks, necklaces, pendants and other similar products, the seized items were worth almost €13 million," the head of Venice's financial police General Walter Manzon said. Gen. Manzon believes about half of the glass products sold in and around Venice under the Murano brand are not "made in Italy."

The products were imported from China and sold by three Italian companies - two from the island of Murano - which would place Murano labels on the objects or mix them with legitimate goods. (AFP)

Organ trafficker arrested

Police have arrested a Yemeni suspected of involvement in organ trafficking, a phenomenon which has lured 200 victims in the poor Arab country, the Interior Ministry said yesterday.

The ministry said on its website that the suspect, named as M.M.A. al-Moussaghari, 26, had confessed to having become a trafficker after he himself had sold one of his kidneys to a hospital in Egypt last year.

He had "persuaded a number of Yemenis to sell their organs, taking a commission," it said, adding that some 200 Yemenis had sold organs, mostly kidneys but also corneas, for between $5,000 and $7,000 each.

In April, a judicial source said Yemen's public prosecutor was questioning six of 12 people - Yemenis, Egyptians and Jordanians - suspected of belonging to an international gang accused of organ trafficking.

An investigation has uncovered the involvement of "a doctor who works in one of the most prominent hospitals in Egypt", according to the source. (AFP)