YouTube has secured an agreement with the UK societies that collect royalties for 50,000 composers, songwriters and publishers to legitimise the use of recorded music on Google’s popular video-sharing website.

The agreement to license 10m pieces of music to YouTube – in return for a flat fee which has not been disclosed – is the first of its kind, said Steve Porter, chief executive of the MCPS-PRS Alliance. “This is the first fully formed agreement,” he said, although some US collecting societies had reached interim arrangements with YouTube.

The agreement marks another milestone in YouTube’s attempts to win over owners of media content, who have expressed alarm at the amount of material available on the site that is either pirated or that generates no revenue for the companies that created it.

Israeli police arrested a woman who stole a pair of Crocs shoes when she returned to the store hours later to exchange them because they did not fit her son, a police spokesman said Friday.

“The store clerk identified her from security camera footage and called us,” said Amos Shimoni, police spokesman in the northern town of Safed.

“Instead of exchanging the shoes for another pair, she exchanged them for a criminal record.”

A wealthy Russian tried to buy a U.S. B-52 bomber from a group of shocked American pilots at an airshow near Moscow, a Russian newspaper reported Friday.

The unidentified Russian, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by bodyguards, approached the U.S. delegation and asked to buy the bomber, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said.

An astounded member of the U.S. delegation said the bomber was not for sale but that it would cost at least $500 million if it were to be sold on the spot.

“That is no problem. It is such a cool machine,” the Russian was quoted as saying by the newspaper, which said its reporter overheard the conversation. The bomber was not sold.

Russia’s new rich, who built fantastic fortunes trading commodities and contacts after the fall of the Soviet Union, have made a name for themselves as ostentatious purchasers of everything from British football clubs to Faberge eggs.

A woman set fire to her ex-husband’s penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said Wednesday.

Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was “difficult to predict.”

The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat, something common in Russia where property costs are very high.

“It was monstrously painful,” the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. “I was burning like a torch. I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

A handcuffed woman being transported for treatment after she was taken into custody by sheriff’s deputies jumped out of a moving ambulance, ran into some woods and vanished, according to Orange County sheriff’s deputies.

Investigators said Lisa McCoy, 34, was picked up Wednesday on an outstanding warrant. She was wanted for failure to appear on a petty theft charge.

When McCoy was taken into custody, she complained she was having a panic attack, police told Local 6 News.

Deputies handcuffed the woman and an ambulance was called to take her for treatment.

Officers said a paramedic was supposed to be watching her during a trip to the hospital.

“He moved to the front to call in the transport and when he did that, that is when she jumped out,” Orange County sheriff’s Sgt. Roland Rivera said.

The woman fled into some woods near Turkey Lake and Sand Lake roads and vanished.

“We probably went to a half to three-quarters of a mile before it appears she probably caught a ride with somebody else,” Orange County sheriff’s Deputy Jeff Brown said. “Somebody gave her a ride out of the area.”

An Orange County sheriff’s deputy was supposed to be following the ambulance but he got stuck in traffic.

“(The agent) was probably 200 yards behind (the ambulance) when she jumped out and he lost sight of her,” Rivera said.

“That doesn’t say a lot about our county sheriff’s system,” a motorist on the scene said. “Obviously, my level of confidence went down a bit.”

McCoy is 5-feet 3-inches tall and has an American flag tattoo on her shoulder.

An Estonian man who was caught driving a car even though he is blind has been at it again, police said on Monday, and this time he faces jail.

Police first arrested the man, 20, a week ago.

“We arrested the same blind man driving his car again on Saturday in the town of Torvandi, near Tartu (in southern Estonia),” said Marge Kohtla, a spokeswoman for Tartu police district.

“He was drunk. There were three people in the car with him giving him instructions.”

She said police wanted the court to jail the man for 30 days and confiscate his car.

The owner of a stolen boat took to the air to find his $180,000 pleasure craft.

An hour and a half after Steve Boone rented an airplane and took off from Olympia Airport, he spotted the 34-foot boat, then followed it from above as it was towed along a highway until two people were stopped and arrested Thursday.

“I was in shock. It’s like somebody slapped me in the face,” said Boone, the owner of Northwest Harley-Davidson in Lacey.

Boone’s boat was being serviced at the U.S. Marine Sales & Service in Olympia when it disappeared Monday night.

“I never thought I’d see it again,” he said.

But a local realtor spotted the $180,000 pleasure craft at a gas station near Shelton. She noticed the couple towing the boat was using a pickup truck much too small for the load and questioned them.

“She’s thinking ‘why would somebody tow a boat this big with this little Nissan Truck?’” Boone said.

The couple mentioned that they were heading for Port Ludlow, about 60 miles north of Olympia. The realtor relayed the information to a friend of Boone’s, who then told the owner himself.

Boone chartered a small plane to fly along Highway 101.

About 10 miles south of Port Ludlow, near Quilcene, Boone said, he spotted the boat in a marina and had the pilot fly low twice to make sure it was properly identified.

“There it was!” he said.

Soon afterward, a vehicle began towing the boat on U.S. Highway 101 toward State Route 104, so Boone called Olympia police from the air as the pilot followed the rig for about 20 miles

“It was like following O.J. It was a little procession,” he said.

The vehicle was eventually stopped by Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies.

“About that time, we saw the lights flashing and they were done,” Boone said.

The couple who was caught towing the boat is in police custody. The pair is being investigated for involvement in other boat thefts in the area.

Boone said he has renamed his boat “No Escape”.

Vietnamese fishermen flying a Malaysian flag as a decoy while sailing in Malaysia’s northeastern waters gave the game away by mistakenly flying it upside down.

This is an unusual mistake, because “Stripes of Glory” as the flag is known at home, carries a blue rectangle in its top left corner emblazoned with a yellow crescent and star, while red-and-white stripes alternate on the rest.

Local fishermen became suspicious, and tipped off fishing authorities, who detained 13 crewmen after seizing 500 kg (1,102 lb) of stingrays, valued at 6,000 ringgit ($1,737), along with a fake fishing license, the Star newspaper reported.

“We believe the fishermen were in our waters since Sunday,” it quoted Munir Mohamad Nawi, a fisheries official in the northeastern state of Terengganu, as saying.

The Vietnamese are expected to be charged with encroachment under the fisheries act, and face a maximum fine of 100,000 ringgit, or two years’ jail, or both, if convicted.

Idiots.

It looks like a big flashlight — but it’s really a nonlethal weapon designed to make you sick.

Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., of Torrance, Calif., has been granted a contract by the Department of Homeland Security to develop what it calls the “LED Incapacitator,” according to a DHS online newsletter.

The handheld device using light-emitting diodes to emit super-bright pulses of light at rapidly changing wavelengths, causing disorientation, nausea and even vomiting in whomever it’s pointed at.

“There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” says IOS President Bob Lieberman. “Vlad [IOS top scientist Vladimir Rubtsov] calls it ‘the evil color.’”

Phase 1 of the contract — creating a working prototype — has already been completed, and Phase 2 will begin this fall as researchers at Penn State’s Institute of Nonlethal Defense Technology put the puke-saber through its paces.

Who’s going to clean it up?

A man who became the subject of a book called “The Radioactive Boy Scout” after trying to build a nuclear reactor in a shed as a teenager has been charged with stealing 16 smoke detectors. Police say it was a possible effort to experiment with radioactive materials.

David Hahn, 31, was being held Friday on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb County Jail after he was arraigned Thursday on felony larceny charges. Clinton Township police Capt. Richard Maierle said Hahn denied the charges.

A district court clerk on Friday said Hahn did not have an attorney. The Associated Press called the jail in an effort to speak to Hahn, but a sheriff’s spokesman said the jail does not give messages to inmates. His preliminary examination was scheduled for Aug. 13.

Investigators say Hahn was arrested Wednesday after a maintenance worker saw him stealing a detector from a ceiling in an apartment complex where he lived. They later found the other detectors in his apartment in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township.

Police say that Hahn’s face was covered with open sores, possibly from constant exposure to radioactive materials.