Game of cat and mouse blacks out city

A cat chasing a mouse in Tirana?s main power station caused a 72-hour blackout across parts of the Albanian capital, the electricity company said on Friday.

«A cat and a mouse ran into the high-voltage cables,» a company spokeswoman said, showing pictures of the electrocuted animals. «We took pictures because we?ve never had anything like this.»

Albanians complain bitterly about the power cuts that have plagued them for decades, and are mostly blamed on drought and the dilapidation of the communist-era grid. Most homes and shops in Tirana rely on petrol generators.

?After you - I?m just here to rob the place!»

A man politely waited his turn in a queue at a busy central Sydney post office before jumping over the counter, grabbing money from two tills and running off, police said on Thursday.

Police said the man dropped some of the money and a large knife as he escaped, pursued by post office staff, following the Wednesday afternoon robbery in the heart of Sydney?s central business district. Police are hunting the man, said to be in his 20s.

«World?s most obese man slims down

Mexico?s Manuel Uribe, once the world?s most obese man, is now vying for a different record: the human who has lost the most weight. Uribe, who weighed as much as a small truck at more than half a tonne, is dieting while confined to a reinforced bed that he has not left for the past six years because he is so heavy.

He has lost 518 pounds (235 kilos) since March 2006 on a diet of grapefruits, egg-white only omelets, fish, chicken, vegetables and peanuts. Now weighing 717 pounds ? the size of three hefty men ? Uribe is still unable to move his swollen legs but hopes to get out of the house next month for only the third time in six years to celebrate his 43rd birthday.

He will still be in bed, hauled onto a tow truck for a trip to the mountainous countryside outside his home city of Monterrey in northern Mexico. It will be a rerun of a failed attempt in March that was thwarted when his bed hit an overpass. «It?s a miracle I?ve got this far. I was going to kill myself two years ago when my wife left me, but God sent me excellent doctors,» said Uribe, his torso still huge with flaps of puffy white skin and sagging, fatty bulges.

Rosalie Bradford, an American woman who died in 2006, recorded the greatest weight loss for a female after she shed 907 pounds. The record for a man is held by Jon Brower Minnoch who lost 924 pounds, according to Guinness World Records.

Wedding day fireworks land groom in jail

Bridegroom Kedir Mohamed wanted his wedding day to go with a bang and decided to celebrate by letting off firecrackers after the ceremony.

However, it turned into damp squib when he was arrested for disturbing the peace in Bechena in northern Ethiopia on Sunday, the weekly Reporter newspaper said.

The reception was cancelled and the newly-wed spent his wedding night in police custody.

«Snake man» slithers out of prison cell

A man has escaped from his Austrian jail cell by squeezing through a food hatch in the door, police said on Wednesday.

The 19-year old Kosovan, who weighed less than 121 pounds, was being held at the prison in Linz for entering the country illegally, police spokesman Alexander Niederwimmer told APA news agency.

How he got through two further doors or possibly over the prison wall is being investigated, said Niederwimmer, calling the escapee «a snake man.»