And Finally

The Google employee who was fired for claiming that the company's AI had become sentient has now said it has hired a lawyer. Blake Lemoine was suspended after telling the media that the tech giant's new AI, LaMDA, had achieved a breakthrough in consciousness.

A new tax on table football has sparked an outcry from beach café owners in Italy. The country's tax authority has reclassified table football as a form of gambling, requiring café owners to pay for permits or face €4,000 fines, Italy24 News English reports.

A trainee police officer who drew a red line on his Covid test to get time off work breached police standards, a tribunal has ruled. Ahmed Anwari used a red pen to manually alter his lateral flow test result before sending a photograph to Lancashire Constabulary.

Hundreds of kilograms of cocaine have been turned over to police by baffled supermarket workers after being discovered in shipments of bananas from Colombia. The drugs – totalling around 998 kilograms, worth nearly £70 million – were mistakenly delivered to a number of Czech superm

Having chosen the cheapest option, McDonald’s is to pay a record €1.25 billion to the French authorities to avoid prosecution for alleged tax evasion. The fast food giant will pay a fine of €508 million and settle a bill of €737 million for tax it failed to pay between 2009 and

A couple who took their neighbour to court over a "very minor” trespass which they refused to settle for £13,000 must now pay a £130,000 legal bill. Liz and Adam Peck refused the offer of a settlement from Debbie Ranford, a City banker, in a dispute relating to their home in Dulwic

Animal rights advocates have failed to persuade a court that an elephant named Happy who was captured at the age of one and brought to the US is legally a person. New York's highest appeals court ruled by 5-2 that Asian elephant Happy, who was born in the wild in Thailand, has not been illegally det

British peers have kicked up a fuss about the quality of the heavily subsidised food and drink available in the House of Lords. In letters and emails sent to parliamentary authorities and published by openDemocracy, members of the unelected chamber moaned about the quantity of salmon and quality of

A major insurance company has been ordered to pay £4 million ($5.2 million) to a woman who caught an STD after having unprotected sex in a man's insured car. A court in Missouri upheld the decision of an arbitrator requiring Geico to make the payment to the woman who they say contracted HPV, a

Only Fools and Horses character Del Boy is protected under copyright law as a "literary work", an English judge has ruled. The High Court in London was asked to rule in a dispute between the makers of the TV show and an "interactive theatrical dining experience" called Only Fools the (Cushty) Dining

A man who raps about robbing ATMs has been arrested on suspicion of robbing an ATM. Ladesion Riley, a 30-year-old from Houston, Texas recently released a YouTube video where he raps about frequently robbing ATMs out of state.

A police officer who had the words "PURE EVIL" tattooed across his knuckles has been sacked. Eric Weyda has launched an appeal against his sacking by Cincinnati Police Department four months after getting the ill-advised tattoos, WLWT5 reports.

Ancient artefacts worth around €4.7 million were destroyed by a man who was angry at his girlfriend, authorities have said. Brian Hernandez, 21, was arrested shortly after a late-night rampage through the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), which has no connection with him or his partner.

The Spanish government has approved a draft law that would impose fines on companies that leave callers on the phone for more than three minutes. Under the bill, firms will faces fines of between €150 and €10,000, with the figure rising to €100,000 for repeat offenders.

France has banned English gaming jargon in an attempt to preserve the purity of its language. The country's culture ministry said the video game sector featured too many English words.