MAGPIE:BERLIN POLICE officers arrested each other as robbers made off with the cash after holding up an off-licence.
Two crooks threatened a female employee with a machete at the cash-and-carry off-licence in the city’s Charlottenburg- Wilmersdorf district. When the woman opened the till and handed over €5,000, the shop’s silent alarm went off. Plain-clothes policemen arrived at the store minutes later but ended up being arrested when uniformed officers stormed in seconds afterwards.
The crooks escaped and police have issued an apology over the mix-up.
“We all thought the uniformed police had caught the crooks and when the plain-clothes cops tried to tell them who they were, the uniformed police told them to keep quiet,” said shop manager Heinz Huber.
“They knew they had made fools of themselves and the real thieves were long gone.”
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The police officers’ firemen colleagues in Lower Saxony aren’t much better, it seems.
They have been branded the worst in the world after their own fire station burned to the ground.
All six fire engines were destroyed in the blaze in Syke and it took 250 firemen from nearby towns to bring the inferno under control.
“A fire service that can’t even keep its own fire station and engines safe doesn’t exactly inspire confidence,” commented one local.
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A couple who became stranded overnight on Ben Nevis mountain in Scotland in a fierce storm got engaged, fearing it could be their last night alive together.
The climb left Stefan Senk (29) and Beth Davies (25) with no time to descend before darkness. They sheltered in a narrow crevice overlooking a 305m (1,000ft) drop as temperatures plummeted below zero and galeforce winds tore their protective blankets to shreds.
Fearing it may be their last night together, Mr Senk proposed to Ms Davies as they shivered close to hypothermia in the rain.
“At one point,” said Ms Davies, “Stefan turned to me and said something about getting married if we get through this. I said yes immediately.”
As dawn broke, they managed to get a signal on Ms Davies’s mobile phone and texted her mother, who alerted mountain rescue.
Back in the safety of their hotel, Ms Davies reminded her boyfriend, an IT programmer, of his proposal. “All I said to him was, ‘I suppose now you’d better get me a ring then’, and he did,” she said.
The couple are planning to get married in March 2010.
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A man in Utah in the US had his gun confiscated after he accidentally shot a lavatory bowl in a restaurant toilet.
The 26-year-old’s handgun went off as he was hitching up his pants, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Nobody was badly hurt in the incident, in Centreville, Utah, but a woman in a neighbouring toilet complained of chest pains.
Police confiscated the man’s firearm, for which he had a permit. “He was a little shook up, so we just wanted to take it right then and allow him time to gather himself before releasing it to him,” said a police spokesman.
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In Washington, meanwhile, the excitement is reaching fever pitch as the first family-elect prepares for the big day:the arrival of the first mutt.
Media heavyweights have been running up-to-the-minute opinion polls on the issue, the latest coming this week from Fox News and Associated Press.
AP’s running online poll suggests that, by a margin of two to one, popular sentiment wants the Obamas to have a non-pedigree dog.
This indicates that the Labradoodle may be nosing ahead. While not strictly speaking a mutt, the Labradoodle, bred initially in Australia as a hypoallergenic guide dog, is nonetheless a mixture of Labrador and poodle.
Fox News, on the other hand, would simply prefer if a dog, any dog, was president rather than Barack Obama . . .
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Tiny plastic figures of Barack Obama and British prime minister Gordon Brown relieving themselves in public became online bestsellers over Christmas.
They are among a host of politicians, sports stars and celebrities to be given the dubious honour of being turned into a caganer.
Catalonians traditionally celebrate Christmas by placing a caganer, which translates as "pooper", in a nativity scene.
Traditionally, caganers are small bearded men in full Catalan costume. This year, however, internet orders from the rest of the world, especially the US, made the Obama figurine the bestseller.
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And finally, and once more with feeling, some Bushisms as we bid farewell to the great man . . .
“This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating.” – April 23rd, 2002
“Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?” – January 11th, 2000
“They misunderestimated me.” – November 6th, 2000