Austrian police said Friday they have arrested a serial thief accused of some 850 robberies over the past four years, with a particular interest appearing to be women's knickers and bras.

The 36-year-old admitted pilfering around 15,000 Euros ($21,000) in 270 thefts in the past 18 months, mostly from pubs, crimes which due to his "professionalism" often went unnoticed, police in Linz in northern Austria said.

A 50-year-old Croat, who had to get medical help after inserting an anti-aircraft shell in his anus, sparked a police probe and risks charges if similar weapons are found at his home, local media said Friday.

The man was admitted to a Zagreb hospital after apparently "experimenting in a sex game" with the explosive 20mm cannon shell which got stuck, the Slobodna Dalmacija daily reported.

Lawn-chair balloonist Kent Couch boarded a plane Thursday for the start of a journey that he hopes will end in Iraq with a safe launch and landing beneath a huge cluster of party balloons.

Couch made headlines worldwide in 2008 when he flew a specially rigged lawn chair supported by more than 150 helium-filled party balloons from the parking lot of the gas station he owns in Bend, Oregon, to an Idaho field. The trip spanned 235 miles.

A one-month old baby, said to hold a diploma, was on the Nigerian government payroll, officials have discovered, exposing the levels to which corruption runs in Africa's most populous country.

The name of the infant was recently found on the payment voucher of a local government council in northern Nigeria during an exercise to fish out ghost employees from a bloated workforce, Garba Gajam, justice commissioner for Zamfara State told Agence France Presse late Wednesday.

Calling somebody "bald" is not derogatory and does not constitute libel, South Korea's top court ruled Thursday.

A 30-year-old man only identified as Kim living in the southern port of Busan was charged last year with defamation after calling another man named Park "bald" during an online chat.

The skeletal remains of three people were found in a house in northern Japan, police said Friday, amid reports a family suicide could have gone unnoticed for up to a year.

The bodies were discovered in a two-storey house in Sendai after court officials visited the premises as part of a dispute the occupants had with the landlord over rent, Kyodo news reported.

A hospital in south China has suspended four medical workers for mistakenly diagnosing a stillbirth and disposing of a baby that was alive, state press said Friday.

Health authorities in Guangdong province have launched an investigation into the incident on October 26 at the Nanhai Red Cross Hospital in Foshan city, the Beijing News said.

A British man who allegedly faked his own death and made off with the life insurance payout has been arrested in Australia, police said Thursday.

Hugo Jose Sanchez, 47, also known as Alfredo, was taken into Australian Federal Police custody overnight in Sydney, the force said, ending a six-year manhunt.

An inmate at Raoushe police station’s jail set fire to his mattress at dawn Thursday after the guards prevented two of his drunken friends from visiting him, the National News Agency reported.

NNA also said that the two men broke a window at the station for failing to meet their friend.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel joked ahead of a crunch summit on the Eurozone debt crisis Wednesday that she loved Greeks "when they act reasonably".

Asked at an event marking 50 years since Germany invited Turks as "guest workers" to fill a yawning labor market gap, Merkel was asked if she didn't long for the days when integration of Turks was a major worry on her political agenda.