Five things you might have missed last week

1. It's torture, sir

Educationists were outraged by a study guide for secondary-school pupils which says having to do cross-country runs could be child abuse. Co-ordination Group Publications, which sold 30,000 of the booklets to schools, said the suggestion was "light-hearted".

2. Doctor, doctor

Reports of attacks by Europe's most poisonous spider, the yellow sac, caused panic in Austria. In Linz, 190 people raced to hospital convinced they'd been bitten, but only eight showed true symptoms.

3. Homing instinct

When someone left the handbrake off on an X30 bus in Southend, Essex, its homing instinct took over. The bus rolled downhill, smashed through the glass wall of a brand-new, £2m bus station and came to rest in the waiting area.

4. Not a gag

A 23-year-old Serb gulped down nails, spoons, pegs and eventually a knife with an eight-inch blade to win a drunken £10 bet. Watching friends thought Ratko Dankovic was slipping the items into his clothing, until he collapsed. "He must have been really drunk to have managed to get it down his throat without gagging," said one.

5. Dead donkeys

Much of the railway network in southern France came to a standstill, thousands of travellers found their journeys disrupted and the state company lost millions of euros, after two donkeys strayed on to a line near Montpellier and into the path of a train.

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