Police helping a German man track down a nuisance caller discovered his tormentor for two years was a faulty card payment system in a hairdresser’s shop.

The 58-year-old man in Frankfurt did not recognize the Hamburg number that kept ringing him and had it blocked.

After several months, he got tired of paying for the blocking service and the calls began again on working days.

Police traced the number to a Hamburg hairdresser whose payment system dialed the man whenever it accepted a card. Staff were oblivious to the problem, which is being fixed.

“When he picked it up he got no answer, and there was no response when he called back either,” said Frankfurt police spokesman Manfred Fuellhardt on Tuesday.

A Russian man trying to sleep off a night of after-work drinking failed to notice a six-inch (15-cm) knife in his back - until his wife woke him up.

Yuri Lyalin, 53, took a bus home, ate breakfast and apparently slept like a baby before his spouse noticed a handle sticking out of his back.

He was rushed to casualty but doctors found no vital organs damaged.

Mr Lyalin shrugged the episode off but the drinking partner who stabbed him faces trial, Russian media report.

“Unique and intriguing the case may be, but the accused faces a severe punishment,” said Pavel Vorobyov, a deputy prosecutor in the northern city of Vologda.

‘We were drinking’

Mr Lyalin, an electrician, had spent the evening drinking with a watchman at his workplace when they got into an argument, Interfax news agency reports.

The morning found him waking up in the watchman’s office but instead of going back to work, he decided to take the bus home.

At home, Mr Lyalin had some sausage from the fridge and lay down to sleep, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper says.

After a couple of hours, his wife noticed the handle sticking out of his back and called an ambulance.

Viktor Belov, a surgeon who treated him, found a kitchen knife in Mr Lyalin’s back but “by good fortune, it had gone through soft tissue without touching vital organs”.

His alleged attacker reported the crime to the police himself, Interfax adds. Mr Lyalin apparently feels fine and bears no ill-will.

“We were drinking and what doesn’t happen when you’re drunk?” he was quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda as saying.

Thieves dressed as policemen talked their way past guards at Johannesburg’s High Court, then locked them in a bathroom and stole highly sensitive documents, a police spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

About six armed men in police uniforms convinced security guards they were at the court on Sunday night to look into a rape case, spokeswoman Julia Claassen said.

Once inside the building, the robbers disconnected surveillance and alarm systems, tied up the guards in the toilets, broke into a safe and left with the court documents.

“Police in the area outside the court noticed the men leaving and there was an exchange of gunfire,” said Claassen, adding the gang had still managed to escape.

Claassen did not give details about the stolen papers, but local media reports said one of the documents was linked to the case of a senior state prosecutor who is under police protection.

South Africa suffers from one of the highest levels of crime in the world, sparking public anger at the inability of authorities to ensure safety.

Impressive eh? It actually took several cuts, this is what happened in the first:

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The general manager of a Shanghai chemical company was jailed for two years on Thursday for selling fake tablets of the male impotence drug Viagra on the Internet, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Yu Bohuai made a profit of over 60,000 yuan ($8,585) in 2006 and 2007 by selling 14,030 fake tablets to clients abroad and in Shanghai. He was arrested last July.

Viagra is marketed by Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it to treat impotence in 1998.

A chimpanzee that had escaped from a Bastrop research center in March snatched a tranquilizer gun from an animal attendant, leapt from a truck bed and threatened a police officer by flailing its arms before being shot several times, according to documents released Friday.

On March 12, Tony, a 140-pound, 171/2-year-old chimpanzee got out of the play area by jumping more than 15 feet from a jungle gym and grabbing the top of a corral wall. Tranquilizer darts failed to subdue him. A University of Texas police officer eventually shot and killed the animal.

According to a memo from UT police to executives at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which manages the Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, the officer who shot Tony watched the animal take a tranquilizer gun from an animal attendant who was trying to capture the animal according to university protocol.

The memo was obtained by the American-Statesman through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The police report does not name the officer, who has returned to duty, said Wendy Gottsegen, a spokeswoman for the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

“The officer was approximately 100 yards from the area and saw an attendant in one of the truck beds with a dart/tranquilizer gun,” the report said. “After what appeared to be unsuccessful attempts to tranquilize the chimpanzee, the animal jumped into the truck bed and lunged at the animal attendant. The chimpanzee took the attendant’s dart gun away from him and discarded it.”

When the truck sped up, the chimpanzee either fell off the truck or jumped from it, according to the report. The officer, who had been watching Tony from property adjacent to the Keeling Center, said Tony started coming toward him, the report said.

“The chimpanzee started flailing its arms. The officer shouted at least twice that he was going to shoot,” the report said. “In fear for his safety, the officer then fired several times, striking the chimpanzee.”

The officer slipped and fell backward while firing his gun, but the chimpanzee kept coming toward him, the report said. The officer fired again but he did not count how many times he shot at the animal, the report said. The officer remembers “hearing each shot but not counting them because the threat was still coming at him,” it said.

Tony collapsed into nearby brush. Tony’s escape was the second of three by chimpanzees at the Keeling Center since November. Jake, a 17-year-old chimp, has escaped from his enclosure twice — once in November with another chimp and again Wednesday — but each time he was quickly recaptured. The center this week vowed to tighten security.

The Brazilian government has begun producing condoms using rubber from trees in the Amazon.

The health ministry says the move will help preserve the largest rainforest in the world.

It will also cut dependence on imported contraceptives, which are given away to fight Aids.

The Brazilian government has one of the biggest programmes in the world to distribute free condoms in the fight against the disease.

The new state-run factory is in the north-western state of Acre, and will initially produce 100 million condoms a year, which will be known by the name Natex.

Officials believe that not only will it generate income for Amazon residents, but it will involve using a product which is widely available and can be obtained without destroying large areas of the rainforest.

The latex will come from the Chico Mendes reserve, an area named after the famous conservationist and rubber tapper who was shot dead in 1988 by local ranchers.

The factory will benefit at least 500 families and provide 150 jobs in the town of Xapuri which has a population of around 15,000 people.

The health ministry says the condoms will be the only ones in the world made of latex harvested from a tropical forest, and will reduce the reliance on foreign imports.

The Brazilian government says it is the world’s largest single buyer of condoms, purchasing more than a billion of the contraceptives in recent years to give away free as part of the country’s national programme to combat Aids.

The policy, which is at its most visible during the Carnival period, has often been criticised by Catholics bishops who say it only encourages promiscuity.