Offbeat

Bank error, court says pay it back

 An unemployed Greenlander who suddenly found himself a krone millionaire thanks to a bank error and began giving away the cash was ordered to pay it back by the Danish supreme court.
Angut Kleist, nicknamed “Greenland’s Robin Hood” by the media, was also sentenced to 100 hours community service after the court ruled Friday that he was not a crook but had succumbed to temptation.
Kleist found in 2008 that his account had mistakenly been credited with 1,335,370 krone (180,000 euros) and hastened to spend it, the Greenland newspaper Sermitsiaq reported Saturday.
Before the error was discovered Kleist had spent 421,500 krone, giving the windfall away to family, friends and even homeless people begging outside the supermarket in his village of Nanortalik in southern Greenland.
He claimed he thought that the money might have come from winnings on a German lottery but the supreme court ruled that he had no basis for this belief.

Bare-breasted protesters brave Davos chill

Three radical Ukrainian feminists braved the subzero chill at the Swiss ski resort of Davos on Saturday, going topless to protest against the World Economic Forum “gangsters”.
The three activists arrived at the security checks at the congress hall’s entrance where they undressed, revealing slogans painted across their upper bodies including “Gangster Party in Davos” and “Poor Because of You.”
They also brandished signs saying “Crisis Made in Davos” and were arrested after they attempted to scale the metal fences.
The Ukrainian group called Femen, whose slogan is “We Came, We Undressed, We Conquered,” specialises in eye-catching stunts in which they protest topless, using their bodies to draw attention to sexual exploitation.
Femen activists have previously protested outside the Parisian home of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
In November, one activist also managed to sneak past security to partially strip in front of the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s Basilica just after the pope’s Sunday Angelus.

On the beat 22 years, no driving licence

A policeman from the former communist East Germany has been doing the rounds in his squad car for 22 years without a valid driving licence, a police spokesman told AFP on Friday.
The oversight was discovered when the officer, who has not been named, found he had to wear glasses and had to change his licence which, it emerged, was valid only for tractors and motorbikes, said spokesman Bernard Wessner.
“The man was in the police force during the communist times when policemen did not necessarily do the rounds in a car,” said Wessner. “After the Berlin Wall fell, no one noticed he didn’t have a licence.”
The officer in question faces a fine and a demotion.