Police called to investigate a strange smell in a block of flats found a horse jammed into a ventilation shaft 12 storeys up.

"How on earth someone managed to get a horse's body 12 storeys up and why someone would put it there though we have no idea."

A homeless woman has been arrested in Japan after living undetected for almost a year in a man's cupboard.

The man contacted police and, after an exhaustive search of the property, officers found the woman hiding in the top of a built-in cupboard designed to store bedding and mattresses.

Horikawa told police that she had nowhere to live and had first taken up residence in the cupboard, in a room that the man rarely used, when the owner of the house had gone out and not locked the door.

A police spokesperson in the Bavarian town of Krumbach said law enforcement is investigating the couple for possible child trafficking, even though the 23-year-old woman of the duo insists the post was a joke.

"Offering my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long and can be used either in a baby carrier or a stroller." Not that the price matters one way or the other, but the parents offered to sell the child for one euro ($1.57).

Todd Davis has dared criminals for two years to try stealing his identity: Ads for his fraud-prevention company, LifeLock, even offer his Social Security number next to his smiling mug.

Now, LifeLock customers in Maryland, New Jersey and West Virginia are suing Davis, claiming his service didn't work as promised and he knew it wouldn't, because the service had failed even him.

"There's nothing on my actual credit report about uncollected funds, no outstanding tickets or warrants or anything," he said. "There's nothing to indicate my identity has been successfully compromised other than the one instance. I know I'm taking a slightly higher risk. But I'll take my risk for the tremendous benefit we're bringing to society and to consumers."

A cow was left unhurt in Switzerland after a head-on collision with a car which left the vehicle destroyed.

The animal rolled on to the bonnet of the car and was catapulted over the roof but then immediately got to its feet.

"I couldn't believe it when I saw it just standing there and looking at me afterwards. I thought it should have been dead. Instead it just mooed at me."

The effect is pretty much the same as on the main Icanhascheezburger site. Except that, perhaps, the tone is a little bit meaner. One thing that it got me thinking as I waded through the submissions, is just how far will the site's administrators go in poking fun at politicians and the people who, er, love them.

The answer to that remains to be seen. But, with a stock of Pundit Kitchen submissions that already lampoons both sides of the political spectrum, I dare say the 2008 election season is finally underway.

A Mexican boy glued his hand to his bed because he did not want to go back to school after the Christmas break.

His mother Sandra found him watching television with his hand stuck to the bedstead. "I don't know why he did it," she said. "He is a good boy."

Police and paramedics eventually managed to free him unharmed, and he was only a few hours late for school.

Diego had got up early to fetch some industrial-strength glue from the kitchen.

As if there needed to be another reason to be wary of chat rooms geared toward meeting people and having flirtatious, cyber-relations with them, doing so can now put you at increased risk of identity theft. CyberLover.ru, a new site out of Russia, boasts that buyers of its software will be able to trick unsuspecting marks into handing over their personal information.

The bot is able to simulate a number of different personalities, ranging from "romantic lover" to—this is not a joke—"sexual predator".

"The program can find no more information than the user is prepared to provide," an employee identified as Alexander told Reuters. "If you have someone who is ready to hand over secret information to the person they are chatting to after having known them for all of five minutes, then in that case a leak of information is possible."

One of the regulars of the Scoobynet.com board paid £180+£30 for a Wii from eBay and when it didn't turn up he contacted the seller, Miss Hightee H. Butzlaff.

She told him that he could call the cops if he wanted too, but she didn't live in the UK so ner.

While many people would have thought that Hightee H. Butzlaff was a joke name, the buyer had managed to get some of her personal details including her phone number, and address.

The denizens of Scoobynet did as much searching as they could on the woman. They found pictures of her in her underwear, hobbies, religion.

Apparently, Hightee started to feel a bit less cocky and offered to remove the pictures if she refunded the money.

But it is starting to look like the horse has well and truly bolted and the boy racers cannot be stopped.

A schoolboy was given an unexpected surprise for his 16th birthday when a stripper turned up in his drama class.

The stripper - dressed as a policewoman - had been booked by the boy's mother, who had apparently asked for a "gorilla" to mark her son's big day.

On arriving halfway through the lesson, the stripper walked the unnamed boy around the class on all fours like a dog.

To the soundtrack of Britney Spears, she then spanked him 16 times - once for each year - before stripping down to her bra and knickers.

It was only when she asked the schoolboy to rub cream on her that the shocked teacher called a halt to the show.