Stolen in error

A man was fined A$400 (pounds 190) by a court in Southport, Australia, for what his solicitor described as "the worst attempted robbery of all time". The court was told that the defendant had drunk a four-litre cask of wine and a quarter of a litre of methylated spirits before breaking into the offices of an insurance company. He stole a calculator, thinking it was a video cassette recorder. Apart from that, he had no memory of the incident.

Surface mail

A man in Abu Dhabi has stuck more than 4,000 postage stamps on his white gown to turn himself into a walking stamp album. Ahmed Rashid Abdullah al-Sawalih, 42, wants to travel around the world with his stamp collection to promote philately and world peace.