ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Chinese officials are probed over reported abuse of teen

BEIJING

Two Chinese village officials have been suspended from work after they were accused of handcuffing a 13-year-old girl and parading her down a street as punishment for accidentally splashing water on an official vehicle.

The county government of Hezhang in southwestern China’s Guizhou province said recently on its official website that it would investigate the online allegations against Kele village’s party chief Yuan Zehong and police officer Chen Song.

An unsigned account posted to China’s active social media Monday said Yuan and other village officials got into a verbal and physical scuffle with the girl’s aunt before handcuffing the teenager. It said the girl was publicly paraded for 20 minutes.

The accusations caused uproar in China’s social media, which have increasingly been used to expose abuses of power.

German clinic: Man had pencil in his head for 15 years

BERLIN

German doctors say a man spent 15 years with a pencil in his head after a childhood accident.

Aachen University Hospital says the 24-year-old man from Afghanistan sought help in 2011 after suffering for years from headaches, constant colds and worsening vision in one eye. A scan showed that a 4-inch pencil was lodged from his sinus to his pharynx and had injured his right eye socket.

The unnamed man said he didn’t know how the pencil got there, but recalled that he once fell as a child.

The German doctors removed the pencil and say the man has recovered.

Hospital spokesman Mathias Brand- staedter said Wednesday the case was presented for the first time at a medical conference last week.

Colony of ants jam doorbell, keep German woman awake

BERLIN

Disturbing the peace in a provincial German town: a colony of ants.

A 75-year-old woman in the southwestern town of Offenburg called police at 3 a.m. Wednesday complaining that she couldn’t sleep because her doorbell was always ringing.

Police said officers dispatched to investigate the cause quickly tracked down the culprit: an ant nest next to the doorbell. They say the insects had built such a big home that the nest pressed the switching elements together, keeping the bell ringing.

Officers silenced it by removing the nest with a knife.

Associated Press