Amish delinquent takes police on buggy-speed chase

Police have arrested an Amish teenager who tried to outrun them in his horse and buggy. After running a stop sign and a low-speed chase, Levi E Detweiler, 17, eventually overturned the buggy in a ditch. He was caught while trying to run away from the scene of the crash. Cattaraugus County CID in New York state later charged Detweiler with possession of alcohol, overdriving an animal, second degree reckless endangerment, failure to stop at a stop sign and failure to yield to an emergency vehicle.

Children were left in tears after a stunt sent a donkey hundreds of feet into the air on a parasail. The animal was set aloft to draw more visitors to a private beach resort on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. On landing, it was dragged several metres though the water. A local newspaper reported: "It was put up so high into the sky that the children on the beach cried and asked their parents: "Why did they tie a doggy to a parachute?" Police say the beach owners may now face charges of animal cruelty.

Two prisoners escaped from an Argentine jail after they realised that a guard in one of the watchtowers was actually a dummy. Prison officials blamed staff shortages, which meant only two of the 15 towers could be manned at any one time. Instead they placed a prison officer's cap on a football to give the impression to mimmick a guard. The escaped convicts, who were serving sentences for armed robbery, first jumped a wire fence and then climbed the perimeter wall. They are still on the run.

A local authority in Britain is under fire for spending Dh213,282 on a "virtual town hall" on the website Second Life. Tameside Council, in Greater Manchester, also rented an island in the virtual world, hoping that it would draw attention to its services for young people. The project was eventually abandoned because no one was visiting. John Bell, leader of the council's Conservative opposition, said: "They want to get in the real world, not a virtual one."

An invasion of spiders saw a cargo ship being turned away from the Pacific island of Guam. Dockworkers reported "thousands of spiders", some as big as one dirham coins, pouring out of crates being unloaded from the vessel, which had arrived from South Korea. The ship was ordered to return to its home port. Joseph Torres, the director of Guam's Department of Agriculture, said: ""There's only two animals that curl my skin. Spiders and snakes."

The wife of Japan's new prime minister has complained that he is a bad cook with no sartorial sense. Mrs Nobuko Kan, 64, also says that her husband is a poor public speaker and does not have sufficient leadership skills. In a book, she says Naoto Kan is "more of a No 2 or No 3 person rather than being on the top. Even as a family member I could not give him even a passing grade for his delivery of a policy speech," she wrote. Mr Kan, 63, has said that he is "too scared" to read the book.