Police in Greece say robbers near Athens have got away with everything including the kitchen sink, lifting a prefabricated home off its foundation and spiriting it away.

Police say the owner went to visit his 70-square meter vacation home on Monday in the coastal area of Rafina, 25 kilometres east of Athens, and discovered it was missing, along with its contents.

Police said on Wednesday they think the thieves used a crane to load the structure onto a trailer. They have been unable to locate the missing building.

Thousands of Athenians, including Greece’s prime minister, Caskets Karamanlis, have vacation properties in Rafina.

Ben Nyaumbe was working on the farm he manages at the weekend when the snake, apparently hunting for livestock, struck in the Malindi area of Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.

“I stepped on a spongy thing on the ground and suddenly my leg was entangled with the body of a huge python,” he told the Daily Nation newspaper.

When the snake coiled itself around his upper body, Mr Nyaumbe resorted to desperate measures.

“It waggled its ragged and scary tail on my mouth. I had to bite it as I struggled, one hand incapacitated,” he told the paper.

The python dragged him up a tree, but when it eased its grip, Mr Nyaumbe said he was able to take a mobile phone out of his pocket and ring for help.

When his supervisor came with a policeman, Mr Nyaumbe smothered the snake’s head with his shirt, while the rescuers tied it with a rope and pulled.

“We both came down, landing with a thud,” said Mr Nyaumbe, who survived with damaged lips and bruising.

The snake was stuffed into three sacks and driven to a bird and snake sanctuary, but it later escaped and remains at large.

A Russian karate expert has been charged with beating to death a 61-year-old woman and her son, whom he accused of infecting his wife with lice, an investigator said Friday.

The drunk 26-year-old burst into a neighboring room in his hostel Tuesday and used karate moves to kill the pair, state investigator Eduard Abdullin said by telephone from Kazan, a city 700 km (430 miles) east of Moscow.

“He literally beat them to death with his hands and feet,” Abdullin said. “The family were poor and drank a lot. He blamed them for infecting his wife and the entire corridor with lice.”

The 58-year-old husband of the dead woman was also badly beaten, but survived.

The suspect, who studied karate for seven years, faces life in prison if convicted, Abdullin added.

Police in Cleveland say a man called 911 because he felt he was in danger - then asked the dispatcher to hold on while he made a drug deal. Police Lt. Thomas Stacho said Tuesday that Alejandro Melendez was arrested after the call and was charged with possessing cocaine.

Police said Melendez called 911 late Saturday and reported that two men with guns were watching him.

Police records show he hung up, so the dispatcher called back.

Melendez answered and asked the dispatcher to hold on, but the dispatcher could still hear what was being said.

A voice can be heard on the recording of the call saying: “What you need? A 10-pack? You need a 10-pack? All right.” Police say “10-pack” is slang for a bundle of heroin.

The dispatcher called police, who found Melendez at the location he gave, had the dispatcher call his cell phone again, and said they found cocaine in his trousers.

There was no immediate indication Tuesday if Melendez, 20, had an attorney to speak for him.

A German teenager caught shoplifting tried to dupe police by lying about where he lived — but ended up in even more trouble when the address he gave turned out to be the home of an investigating officer.

The 18-year-old from Achim, a town of 30,000 in northern Germany, admitted he had lied when the officer explained that the address belonged to him, said police in nearby Verden.

“It was complete coincidence,” said a police spokesman. “The thief gave that address because he’d once lived in the house. The policeman was the guy who moved in afterwards.”

Respect to the pigeon in the background watching!

A Polish woman has become only the second person to give birth on London’s underground rail network since it opened 146 years ago, the transport authority confirmed on Friday.

Julia Kowalska was travelling with her sister on the network’s Jubilee line on December 19 when her contractions started.

She got off at a station in Northwest London, and gave birth to a healthy baby girl in the supervisor’s office, assisted by an ambulance crew.

The only other birth recorded on the 275-station underground network happened in 1924 when Marie Cordery was born at Elephant & Castle, operator Transport for London said.

China’s freezing northern city of Harbin is building what organizers say is the world’s largest Santa Claus ice sculpture.

The giant Father Christmas, 160 meters (525ft) long and 24 meters high, centers on an enormous face of Father Christmas, complete with flowing beard and hat.

Its huge size and unseasonably warm temperatures have made the job especially challenging, said Tang Guangjun, one of the sculptors.

“It is even bigger and higher than last year’s, and more difficult. The weather swings between warm and cold, so it becomes very wet and slippery on the ice. It is very dangerous for us,” he told Reuters Television.

Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province on the edge of Siberia, is one of China’s coldest places. Winter temperatures can drop to below minus 35 degrees Celsius (-31 F).

Every year the city plays host to a world-renowned ice festival. But the effects of global warming are taking a toll as the snow and ice now melt more rapidly than in the past.

Organizers said they had to artificially make snow for the Santa Claus sculpture.

Still, the sculpture has attracted thousands of tourists from all over the country who want to enjoy a white Christmas despite worries over the economic downturn.

Many said such tourism could help to boost the economy.

“It can stimulate the economy and consumption. When people feel happier, they will want to spend more, so it will lift the economy of the city and even the country,” said Li Qingsheng, a tourist from Beijing.

Officials in Harbin remained optimistic about the tourist outlook for the winter.

An estimated 800,000 tourists, 90 per cent of them Chinese, were expected to visit the ice festival, said Jia Yan, director of the local tourism bureau.

The festival traditionally runs from mid-December to early February.