And Finally...

One of the men on trial over the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace has admitted he used it the day before it was stolen, a court has been told.

The fully functioning 18-carat toilet, created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, had been on display at the Oxfordshire country house where Sir Winston Churchill was born.

It was taken in an "audacious" five-minute raid in the early hours of 14 September 2019 by thieves who drove through locked gates and used sledgehammers to smash their way into the property.

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The day before the toilet was stolen, Jones and the same woman spent around 90 minutes at the palace on what was a Friday, the trial heard.

Asked by prosecutors why he had taken a half-day off work rather than waiting until the weekend, he admitted it was unusual for him, but "was interested to go and see it".

Questioned if he "took advantage of" the gold toilet's "facilities", the defendant said yes, and described it as "splendid".

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The toilet artwork, entitled America, weighed approximately 98kg, was insured for $6m (£4.75m) and was made from gold worth about £2.8m.

It is believed to have been broken up after it was stolen.

King Charles' bodyguards have sparked a buzz on social media, with many speculating that they might be wearing 'fake hands'.

Over the years, rumours have swirled about bodyguards using fake hands and arms to discreetly conceal weapons like an FN-P90 rifle under their coats, ready for action if needed.

Now, a TikTok has gone viral of King Charles on a visit to Cornwall with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.

King Charles led Sir Keir Starmer on a tour of his eco-friendly, sustainable housing project, but it wasn’t the duo that grabbed viewers' attention in the video.

It was the king's bodyguard and his unusual hand position, that got people talking. The bodyguard held his hands in-front of his body in a very still position, which prompted people to believe that his hands weren't real.

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However, previously a security expert of 30 years debunked myth of the use of fake arms in security.

Will Geddes, one of the world's leading specialists in counterterrorism, kidnapping, direct action groups, personal security, and close protection services, explained why the decoy arms are not used for the Royal Family.

Speaking to the Metro, Will revealed that while this tactic might be used in the US, it wouldn't be employed by guards in the UK.

He said: "They definitely aren’t fake hands; I can understand why some people might have thought they were because of what looks like an incredibly tight grip but they definitely aren’t.

"It isn’t a tactic that is used at all in the UK, there might be all sorts of other tricks and stunts that security officers use to make sure high-profile individuals are kept safe, but this wouldn’t be one of them."

He explained that while close protection officers in the US tend to be more quick to react, making such a theory believable there, the risk level in the UK makes it highly unlikely.

Buy a set of earplugs, maritime charity advises those hoping to sleep near Cornwall’s Longships Lighthouse

The two didn't believe the officers when they were informed that they were wildlife officers and bragged and their illegal hunts, their uncle's illegal hunts, and showed officers an illegal turtle skeleton they had in their bag.

Last Sunday, FC Taxi Duisburg II and SV Rot-Weiss Mülheim were preparing to go head-to-head in the lower divisions of German football.

As officials usually do, referee Stefan Kahler, who was due to take charge of the clash, was going through his pre-match checks.

While Kahler was conducting the license checks, a Taxi Duisburg’s player’s son was reportedly running around the field of play before he approached the ref.

And he certainly did not expect what happened next.

According to the official's report he could not take charge of the match after he was bitten by the child.

He wrote: "While I was checking the FC Taxi players' ID, a small child was doing warm-up exercises alongside the players.

“He came closer and closer to me, then suddenly - to my complete surprise - gave me a sharp bite in my left testicle.

"I did not start the game, because of the pain I was in and the situation.

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According to German outlet WAZ the medical condition of the referee is still unclear.

Doctors in the Indian capital, Delhi, have performed a life-changing surgery on a 17-year-old boy to remove his "parasitic" twin that was attached to his abdomen.

A parasitic twin is an underdeveloped conjoined twin that relies entirely on the host twin for survival.

They are extremely rare, with less than one case occurring, external per 100,000 births.

The teenager who had a fully developed extra set of limbs and a pelvis - sustained by a chest artery - underwent a two-hour surgery at Aiims hospital in Delhi.

Dr Asuri Krishna, who led the team of specialists, said the surgery was particularly challenging because of the patient's age.

"Only 40-50 cases of parasitic twins have been documented in world medical literature and, in those cases, the surgery had been attempted on children," Dr Krishna told the BBC.

With insufficient medical literature to guide them, the team had to rely on their "intuition, skill and knowledge", he added.

Parasitic twins form when one foetus partially develops while attached to the other.

In this case, the teenager had two fully formed legs, buttocks and external genitalia - weighing nearly 15kg - protruding from his abdomen.

Remarkably, the parasitic limbs could feel pain, touch and change in temperature.

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The teen was discharged four days after being admitted. He is healthy and has suffered no complications from the surgery, Dr Krishna says.

A Colombian man has been caught trying to smuggle £8,000 worth of cocaine under a wig.

The drugs were discovered by police after the 40-year-old attempted to board a plane to Amsterdam, Netherlands, at Rafael Nunez International Airport.

Footage released by police showed the wig being cut off the man's head to reveal 19 capsules of the substance, which weighed 220g.

The man was arrested on suspicion of trafficking, manufacturing and carrying narcotic substances, the Colombian national police said.

The force said the bust had affected criminal finances and "prevented the sale of more than 400 doses of cocaine, valued at more than €10,000 (£8,296) in international markets".

A 23-year-old Keene woman was arrested Friday, accused of serially urinating on products in local stores.

According to information from the Keene Police Department, Kelli Tedford had posted "disturbing videos" to an internet site, some of them dating back to 2021.

In a recently recorded video, "Tedford recorded herself contaminating items in a local business with her urine," states the information, identifying the business as the Monadnock Food Co-op, which sustained a financial loss in excess of $1,500 in destroyed merchandise and cleaning costs.

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"It appears likely that similar historic incidents occurred in Keene and surrounding communities where Tedford contaminated items and/or surfaces with urine, as several videos appear to be recorded as early as 2021," states the information, which did not identify the previous locations.

A 14-year-old Brazilian boy died after injecting himself with butterfly remains — with police investigating whether it was part of a twisted online challenge, according to a report.

Davi Nunes Moreira started to vomit and then developed a limp after mixing a dead butterfly in water and injecting the liquid into his leg, according to the DailyMail.

The teen told his dad he hurt himself while playing — but then confessed what really happened when he continued growing sicker and was admitted to a hospital in Planalto, the report said.

His dad also found the syringe his son had used hidden under the boy’s pillow, according to the report.

Davi was rushed to another hospital in Vitoria de Conquista, the state of Bahia’s third-largest city, on Wednesday, but succumbed to his injuries.

The mysterious death — linked to possible toxins in the butterfly mix that caused his body to shut down as he went into septic shock — is making headlines across Brazil.

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However, authorities have not ruled out the possibility that the boy was participating in an unusual social media craze that proved fatal, the report said.

A husband is said to have murdered his wife with a “big a*** knife” when she was less than enthusiastic over his Valentine’s Day plans.

Taylor Meyer, 34, had put together a Paris-themed night for his partner Deborah, buying her a new dress and having their children draw pictures of the Eiffel Tower. His attempts are said to have been borne out of suspicions she was having an affair with a co-worker.

However when he unveiled the plans she “didn’t give a s***”, according to court documents . The evening allegedly ended with her being beaten with a wine bottle and then stabbed her 40 times, as their children - all aged under five - slept upstairs in their home in Jefferson, Louisville in the US.

Law and Crime reported he told investigators: “It was the hardest I’ve ever tried. She just didn’t give a s***.” An affidavit says: “For the last two months I’ve been staying home with the kids every Saturday night while she goes and f****s whoever and lies to my face about it.

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When she was dead he is said to have taken a picture of her body and texted it to the person she was allegedly sleeping with, adding: “Your fault.”

It started with a bizarre burning sensation in her feet. Over the next two days, the searing pain crept up her legs. Any light touch made it worse, and over-the-counter pain medicine offered no relief.

On the third day, the 30-year-old, otherwise healthy woman from New England went to an emergency department. Her exam was normal. Her blood tests and kidney function were normal. The only thing that stood out was a high number of eosinophils—white blood cells that become active with certain allergic diseases, parasitic infections, or other medical conditions, such as cancer. The woman was discharged and advised to follow up with her primary care doctor.

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In a case report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors explain how they figured out the source of her fiery symptoms—worms burrowing into her brain. By this point, she was alert but disoriented and restless. She couldn't answer questions consistently or follow commands.

The doctors at Mass General, including a neurologist specializing in infectious diseases, quickly focused their attention on the fact that the woman had recently traveled. Just four days before her feet began burning, she had returned from a three-week trip that included stops in Bangkok, Thailand; Tokyo, Japan; and Hawaii. They asked what she ate. In Thailand, she ate street foods but nothing raw. In Japan, she ate sushi several times and spent most of her time in a hotel. In Hawaii, she again ate sushi as well as salads.

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Scanning for data on infections that can arise in the three places she visited and align with her symptoms, they came up with a list of 10 possible infectious causes: eight parasites and two fungal pathogens. They went through them one by one, crossing things off the list that didn't quite fit with everything they knew of her case. They ended with angiostrongyliasis, caused by the nematode (roundworm) Angiostrongylus cantonensis, also known as rat lungworm.

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Given the alignment of symptoms and the raw seafood and salads eaten in Hawaii, the doctors gave a presumptive diagnosis of central nervous system angiostrongyliasis. The diagnosis was confirmed with a genetic test for the parasite's DNA in the patient's cerebrospinal fluid (nucleic acid amplification testing).

There are no clear treatment strategies for angiostrongyliasis, and some can recover fully without treatment after the larvae die off. In this case, the patient and her doctors decided to use a 14-day combination of the immunosuppressive steroid prednisone and the anti-parasitic drug albendazole.

Fortunately, the woman's symptoms cleared with the treatment, and she was discharged from the hospital after six days.

A bungling burglar has been jailed after he was caught out by a Home Alone-style bucket trap.

The homeowners in Northumberland had set the snare after several recent reports of attempted break-ins in the local area.

They had rigged up a string with their house at one end, and a full bucket of water at the other, and shortly before 3am on 9 November last year, burglar Paul Howell fell prey to the trap.

He had attempted to gain entry to the house, in Bondicar Terrace in Blyth, but after springing the trap he fled the scene.

The overturned bucket led to the occupants checking their CCTV footage, and days later they reported the incident to Northumbria police.

Police officers recognised prolific burglar Howell, 56, from the footage, and arrested him at his home in Disraeli Street, Blyth.

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The court heard he had 108 previous convictions, including 25 burglaries dating back to 1986.

A 33-year-old Chinese woman, identified as Ms. A, was stunned when doctors discovered five lost contact lenses hidden behind her left eye. The unexpected event occurred while she was undergoing treatment for hemifacial atrophy at the Plastic Surgery Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing.

Ms. A initially sought medical attention to correct facial asymmetry caused by her condition, Doctors planned to perform autologous fat grafting to restore balance to her face.

However, during the procedure, they uncovered multiple contact lenses lodged in the space behind her eyeball, shocking both the patient and the medical team

For months, Ms. A had assumed that she had accidentally lost her contact lenses, little did she know that they had been trapped within the deep folds of her eye, Hemifacial atrophy, which causes the fatty tissue around the eye to shrink, had created enough space for the lenses to slide behind her eyeball unnoticed.

Doctors only discovered them when they injected fat behind her eye, which pushed the lenses out, despite wearing contacts for years, she had never experienced any discomfort or symptoms, making this case even more astonishing.

The Dallas Fort Worth International Airport says that a security notice for "Electronic Genital Verification" that has gone viral on social media is not real or an authorized notice. The notice, allegedly posted in bathrooms at the busy airport, says that genitalia "may be photographed electronically" to screen for "improper restroom access."

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The notice reads: "Security Notice Electronic Genital Verification (EGV): Your genitalia may be photographed electronically during your use of this facility as part of the Electronic Genital Verification (EGV) pilot program at the direction of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor. In the future, EGV will help keep Texans safe while protecting your privacy by screening for potentially improper restroom access using machine vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in lieu of traditional genital inspections.

"At this time images collected will be used solely for model training purposes and will not be used for law enforcement or shared with other entities except as pursuant to a subpoena, court order or as otherwise compelled by legal process. Your participation in this program is voluntary."

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been speaking to people who have lost their voices. Both Joyce Esser, who lives in the UK, and Jules Rodriguez, who lives in Miami, Florida, have forms of motor neuron disease—a class of progressive disorders that result in the gradual loss of the ability to move and control muscles.

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“To say this diagnosis has been devastating is an understatement,” says Joyce, who has bulbar MND—she can still move her limbs but struggles to speak and swallow. “Losing my voice has been a massive deal for me because it’s such a big part of who I am.”

AI is bringing back those lost voices. Both Jules and Joyce have fed an AI tool built by ElevenLabs recordings of their old voices to re-create them. Today, they can “speak” in their old voices by typing sentences into devices, selecting letters by hand or eye gaze. It’s been a remarkable and extremely emotional experience for them—both thought they’d lost their voices for good.

But speaking through a device has limitations. It’s slow, and it doesn’t sound completely natural. And, strangely, users might be limited in what they’re allowed to say.

Joyce doesn’t use her voice clone all that often. She finds it impractical for everyday conversations. But she does like to hear her old voice and will use it on occasion. One such occasion was when she was waiting for her husband, Paul, to get ready to go out.

Joyce typed a message for her voice clone to read out: “Come on, Hunnie, get your arse in gear!!” She then added: “I’d better get my knickers on too!!!”

“The next day I got a warning from ElevenLabs that I was using inappropriate language and not to do it again!!!” Joyce told me via email (we communicated with a combination of email, speech, text-to-voice tools, and a writing board). She wasn’t sure what had been inappropriate, exactly. It’s not as though she’d used any especially vile language—just, as she puts it, “normal British banter between a couple getting ready to go out.”

Joyce assumed that one of the words she’d used had been automatically flagged up by “the prudish American computer,” and that once someone from the ElevenLabs team had assessed the warning, it would be dismissed.

“Well, apparently not, because the next day a human banned me!!!!” says Joyce. She says she felt mortified. “I’d just got my voice back and now they’d taken it away from me … and only two days after I’d done a presentation to my local MND group telling them how amazing ElevenLabs were.”

Joyce contacted ElevenLabs, who apologized and reinstated her account. But it’s still not clear why she was banned in the first place. When I first asked Sophia Noel, a company representative, about the incident, she directed me to the company’s prohibited use policy.

There are rules against threatening child safety, engaging in illegal behavior, providing medical advice, impersonating others, interfering with elections, and more. But there’s nothing specifically about inappropriate language. I asked Noel about this, and she said that Joyce’s remark was most likely interpreted as a threat.

An adventurous cat had to be collected from London Waterloo station by her owner after taking a train into the capital from Surrey.

Michael Hardy, from Weybridge, says his two-year-old cat Tilly is known for straying, having caught buses before and even climbing behind the bar of his local pub.

Even so, he was taken aback when he received a call from a ticket office worker about Tilly's 17.7-mile (28.5km) trip into the city.

Mr Hardy said: "What the hell is my cat doing in Waterloo getting on trains and going for a ride?"

A male stripper caused a stir at a Middlesbrough care home this week, when he replaced the residents' usual "knit and natter" session with a striptease.

Max Hunter was a care home manager before he became a stripper and decided to offer the elderly residents a show.

"I spoke to the gang here and the ladies said a resounding 'yes please'," said Astune Rise care home's manager Caroline Bowstead.

"I've never seen a reaction like it at any event we've done."

A video of the event shows Mr Hunter gyrating with the home's residents and stripping off his uniform down to his underwear.

The residents twirled pants and props as Mr Hunter danced in the living room of the care home, which was decked out in red shimmer curtains.

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"Everybody was smiling and that's beautiful."

"I loved his backside," added resident Betty Hughes.

Police bodycam footage shows the moment officers used a capybara costume to carry out a drug raid in Peru's capital Lima.

The Escuadron Verde (Green Squad) police group is a specialised unit of the Peruvian National Police who often disguise their agents in fancy dress during festivities such as Valentine's Day, Halloween and Christmas.

The head of the unit, Col Pedro Rojas, has said: "On this occasion, Valentine's Day, lover's day, we sought to camouflage ourselves with the character of the capybara."

Peruvian police have previously dressed their officers up as Marvel characters Spiderman, Captain America, Thor and Black Widow to carry out a drug raid.

A humpback whale briefly swallowed a 24-year-old kayaker last Saturday during a father-son excursion out on the icy waters around Chile’s southernmost Patagonia region.

The terrifying moment, captured on camera by the kayaker’s father, showed the whale surfacing in the Strait of Magellan and gulping Adrian Simancas for a few moments before releasing him.

In the video, verified by CNN, Adrian’s father, Dell, is heard yelling to his son, who had been spat out of the whale, to “grab the boat.” Adrian then swims towards his dad’s pack raft and holds onto it as they pull away.

• Aaron Kosminski was found to be a 100% DNA match to Jack the Ripper
• Historian Russell Edwards made the discovery
• A descendant of Kosminski made the revelation possible

Historian Russell Edwards says he has identified Jack the Ripper as Aaron Kosminski through a DNA match of a shawl found at the scene of one of his murders.

Kosminski was a Polish immigrant who came to Whitechapel, England, in 1881 alongside his brother. He became a barber once in the British capitol.

Edwards told the “Today Show Australia” that he came to purchase the shawl in 2007 after it was purported to be at the scene of the murder of Catherine Eddowes.

Kosminski, who was aged 23 at the time of the murders, has long been considered a suspect. He had schizophrenia and was in a mental asylum at the time of his death in 1919.

A teen has been banned from Teesside play parks ahead of a trial for an alleged sex act involving a rocking horse and a branch.

Callum Green, 18, appeared before Teesside Magistrates' Court on Monday afternoon where he pleaded not guilty to the common law charge of outraging public decency, in a Hartlepool play area.

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The charge reads: "You, in a public place committed an act outraging public decency by behaving in an indecent manner, namely inserting parts of a "rocking horse" inside yourself whilst masturbating, then pulled a branch off a tree and penetrated yourself."

A Sydney restaurant owner who sells gag fortune cookies has been told to censor her products after an awkward factory mix-up.

Nahji Chu, the owner of popular Vietnamese restaurant Lady Chu in Potts Point, in Sydney's inner-city, put through an order of profanity-laced fortune cookies for Valentine's Day.

She was shocked and slightly tickled to receive a response from her manufacturer who said they were no longer accepting "offensive" language after her messages were mistakenly mixed into other customer orders.

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In an email, the manufacturer said their other customers were "quite upset" to find Chu's messages inside their custom cookies at the end of last year.

"As a result, management have decided to no longer accept customised orders with offensive or expletive words," the email read.

Chu was told she could order empty cookies from her supplier and insert the funny messages herself.

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Some of Chu's fortune messages include, "The year of the Snake bears good fortune! Your divorce is coming soon" and "I only married you for your money you ugly c---."

In this week’s episode, I dive into a fascinating linguistic quirk of the sports world—why do so many American hockey players sound like fake Canadians?

My obsession with this topic started with research from linguist Andrew Bray. He noticed the phenomenon of “fake Canadian” accents while studying hockey lingo. While he originally set out to analyze hockey slang for its own sake (e.g. “biscuit” for puck or “celly” for celebration), he found himself asking an even bigger question: Why do American players seem to take on Canadian-esque speech?

Bray recorded his conversations with players, analyzing their vowel shifts and pronunciation. He confirmed that many American hockey players adopt features of Canadian English, but not quite enough to pass as actually Canadian. Instead, they end up in this uncanny valley: they sound just Canadian enough for other people to notice, but not enough to blend in. This could be a case of linguistic mirroring, which is when people unconsciously adjust their speech to fit into a social group. Since hockey has such a strong Canadian identity, American players may be picking up on those speech patterns as part of the sport’s culture.

Bray isn’t the only person out there studying “Hockey English.” In fact, one study suggests that even Canadian players are accused of sounding more Canadian than they’re supposed to.