News you can lose: untimely nap nets gigantic bank error

Quirky news items from around the world.

After falling asleep with his finger on the "2" key of his computer, a German bank clerk accidentally transferred €222,222,222.22 to a pensioner's account.

The amount should actually have been only €62.40, a tribunal ruling on whether another more senior employee who did not spot the error should be fired, was told.

The worker claimed he had been napping for an instant while pushing the number two.

After hearing that the bank had discovered the error shortly after, the tribunal ruled that the employee should keep his job.

Jail 'better than Xbox'

After being placed under house arrest as an alternative to prison, a teenager called police begging to be locked up because he was "sick of playing Xbox".

The youth told police he would rather spend the last month of his 11-month sentence behind bars because he had "run out of Xbox games to play".

Police in Whangarei, New Zealand, agreed to lock him up after he threatened to go outside to look for other forms of entertainment.

The truth is out there

A Chinese farmer who claimed an encounter with aliens from another world has been arrested for attempting to fool his neighbours.

Police said the man - identified only as Mr Li - had posted a story on a Chinese website saying he had caught the alien while trapping rabbits.

He also posted photos of the "creature" on the internet.

After learning the "alien" was nothing more than rubber glued to chicken wire, police detained Mr Li for five days for "fabrications that disturbed public order".

The farmer admitted: "I just wanted other people to believe that aliens existed."

Pest control under fire

Attempting to kill bedbugs by using a combination of a hair dryer and a heat gun, a New Jersey man instead burnt down his house and hospitalised four firemen.

Police say the man accidentally ignited the second floor of his house with the heat gun, which is normally used to strip paint and can reach 1,000 degrees.

Authorities said the man had been trying to "heat" the bugs out of his house.

Call out the hounds

London mayor Boris Johnson has called for hunting on the streets of the capital to deal with a plague of urban foxes.

The mayor said he was aware that packs of hounds might cause "massive outrage" among animal lovers, but added: "I don't care."

His anger was sparked by what he believed was an attack on his cat by a fox. He said: "I wanted to go out with my .22 and blaze away."

Black mark on quarry

A lake has been dyed black to stop people swimming in it.

Council officials in Derbyshire, England said that, while the former quarry looked a "lovely turquoise", the water quality was equal to bleach and the lake contained an abandoned car.