And Finally...

What would you rather have: $125,000 worth of crypto or crusty French bread? It appears that one ransomware group is a bigger fan of the latter, having demanded that payment for the 40GB of compressed data it stole be paid in baguettes.

Hellcat, a newly formed ransomware group, claims it is behind the cybersecurity incident being investigated by Schneider Electric. The French multinational energy management company has confirmed a developer platform was breached.

...

Hellcat is asking for $125,000 to delete the data. It said that if Schneider publicly admits to the breach, it would cut the ransom demand in half to $62,500.

However, rather than demanding the money in crypto, as is the norm, Hellcat is asking for it to be paid in baguettes.

With the average price of a standard baguette in France at €1.07, or approximately $1.09, Schneider would need to hand over at least 58,715 of these long French loaves.

A tribunal judge remarked that use of the f-word was "particularly common in the North" while explaining why a firm had been unfair to sack a worker for swearing.

Delivery driver Rob Ogden was fired from his job at wholesaler Booker Ltd in Oldham after swearing at a colleague.

But judge Jetinder Shergill said swearing was so widespread that Mr Ogden, who had worked there for seven years, had been made an unfair example of.

He said that while such language should not be used in the workplace it is a "common everyday experience, particularly in the North".

Scotland Yard is hunting a prankster in their ranks who filled an iron with urine in the locker room of one of London’s biggest police stations.

The culprit filled an iron, used for officers’ uniforms while on-duty, with urine at the locker room in Charing Cross police station in central London.

Now the force is probing two offences of criminal damage after the grim discovery last weekend, The Sun reported.

The Met is investigating one count of criminal damage over the iron prank, which would have left officers’ uniforms stained with body waste, and another over damage to an unknown piece of police equipment.

...

The incident at the station, which has Europe’s largest custody centre, has caused a stir among rank-and-file officers.

One retired Met detective chief inspector, Mick Neville, dubbed the mystery culprit the “Slasher of the Yard”.

He told the paper: “This has no doubt caused quite a stink. A joke’s one thing – but this is taking the ‘you-know-what.’

The cause of a "terrible" stench plaguing passengers at Leeds City Bus Station has been revealed.

Speaking on BBC Radio Leeds' Message the Mayor, West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin said the odour had been caused by spilt milk.

Staff previously told the BBC it had been lingering in the bus station's main foyer for more than 10 days, with customers likening it to a cow farm and fish.

A simple explanation but then they go a.bit Alan Partridge:

At the scene - Steve Jones, BBC Yorkshire

I was here on Sunday and the stench was overpowering, with passengers visibly affected.

While it may not be quite as pungent two days on, people are still holding their noses as they hurry to the exit.

One group of girls even ran to the doors to escape for some fresh air.

Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones. More than 260 million vape batteries are estimated to enter the trash stream every year in the UK alone. Vapers and vape makers are simply leaving an e-waste epidemic to the planet's future residents to sort out.

To make a point about how wasteful this practice is—and to also make a pretty rad project and video—Chris Doel took 130 disposable vape batteries (the bigger "3,500 puff" types with model 20400 cells) found littered at a music festival and converted them into a 48-volt, 1,500-watt e-bike battery, one that powered an e-bike with almost no pedaling more than 20 miles. You can see the whole build and watch Doel zoom along trails on his YouTube video.

Not the first Brit to do that this year as a chap in Kent made the news in June.

Meta is one of several tech companies vying for a nuclear boost.

A shoplifter has been banned from wearing wigs after attempting to disguise herself while committing thefts on numerous occasions.

Hannah Roberts of Nettleton Road, Gloucester, was handed a Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO) at Cheltenham Magistrates' Court earlier this month.

Roberts, 33, repeatedly ignored a ban by the City Safe Scheme from entering any member shops in Gloucester, the court heard.

Although she tried to get around the ban by wearing a variety of wigs, her distinctive neck tattoo meant she was recognisable to shop staff in the city.

...

Under the CBO, Roberts has been banned from entering Gloucester city centre and shops participating in the Gloucester City Safe scheme.

She is also prohibited from wearing a wig or hairpiece designed to change her appearance while entering any retail premises.

The man was said to be ‘extremely drunk’ when he returned to his room in Pattaya’s red light district in the early hours of this morning.

Groans and banging was later heard coming from the 51-year-old’s room at The Freelancer Hotel but staff thought nothing of it.

It was only when his legs crashed through the ceiling of an adjacent internet café after he plunged from the balcony that they realised something was amiss.

...

Shocked gamers called police as the naked holidaymaker, believed to be from Blackburn cried for help with his legs dangling from the floorboards.

Subsequent pictures showed him being guided to an ambulance while covered up in a blanket.

...

Officers later checked his room, where they discovered excrement smeared across the floor.

Police lieutenant Thanawee Yarangsee said: ‘We have some ideas about what he was doing in the room to make it so dirty but there was nothing illegal.

‘It is his private life, so he will have to speak with the hotel to negotiate the bill.’

Two Scots who are believed to own the biggest brick collection in the UK are looking for a museum to house all 6,000 of them.

Mark Cranston and Ian Suddaby have spent the last 15 years collecting thousands of Scottish-made bricks from all over the world.

Part of the collection is stored in two large stables in Mr Cranston's garden in the Scottish Borders; the rest is stacked outside Mr Suddaby's house in East Lothian.

The pair have an agreement that if something happens to one of them the other will make sure their priceless collection is safe. However, they have now decided they need to find a more secure and permanent home for them.

Mr Suddaby, an archaeologist who lives in New Winton, told BBC Scotland News the bricks were an important record of Scotland's industrial past.

"Brick-making is a very important part of Scotland's history because we do have some of the best quality fireclay in the world for making industrial bricks.

"And this ties in with the industrial revolution and I think it should be promoted to a wider audience and that should be in some sort of a museum.

...

Among their collection is a special fire brick that was salvaged from the SS Politician, after it ran aground in the Outer Hebrides in 1941 carrying 264,000 bottles of malt whisky - inspiring the novel and film Whisky Galore!

There is also a brick that was retrieved from the execution block at Barlinnie prison in Glasgow, before it was demolished in the late 1990s.

The men own a Scottish-made brick recovered from an old gold mine in Washington state, USA. Their oldest brick is a drainage tile from 1833.

Their collection even out-numbers that of The Brickworks Museum - the UK's only brick museum - in Swanwick, Hampshire, which has about 3,500 bricks.

A woman who pleaded guilty to dressing as a clown and in 1990 murdering the wife of a man she later married was released from prison on Saturday, ending a case that has been strange even by Florida standards.

Sheila Keen-Warren, 61, was released 18 months after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the shooting of Marlene Warren, Florida department of corrections records show. The plea deal came shortly before her trial would have started.

Keen-Warren, who has maintained her innocence even after her plea, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But she had been in custody for seven years since her arrest in 2017, and Florida’s law in 1990 allowed significant credit for good behavior. It had been expected she would be released in about two years.

...

Marlene Warren’s son, Joseph Ahrens, and his friends were at home when they said a person dressed as a clown rang the door bell. He said that when his mom answered, the clown handed her some balloons. After she responded, “How nice,” the clown pulled a gun and shot her in the face before fleeing.

...

Palm Beach county sheriff’s investigators had long suspected Keen-Warren in the slaying, but she wasn’t arrested until 27 years later when they said improved DNA testing tied her to evidence found in the getaway car. Rosenfeld has called that evidence weak.

At the time of the shooting, Keen-Warren was an employee of Marlene Warren’s husband, Michael, at his used car lot. Since 2002, she has been his wife – they eventually moved to Abingdon, Virginia, where they ran a restaurant just across the Tennessee border.

...

Aronberg last year conceded that there were holes in the case, saying they were caused by the three decades it took to get it to trial, including the death of key witnesses.

A record-breaking 75-mile GPS image of a penis has been scrawled across south Wales on the exercise app Strava to raise money for charity.

The outline of the male genitalia – drawn by the on-foot journey of Terry Rosoman – stretches from Hay-on-Wye to Abergavenny via a double circuitous route taking in Crickhowell and Llangenny.

It was completed in less than 24 hours by Rosoman, 38, a marketing director from south Wales, to raise money and awareness about men’s mental health issues for Movember.

He said he chose to run the giant phallus to help gain the attention of his “target demographic”. He claimed most men find the shape “hilarious”.

Donation page

The UK's largest mobile, inflatable planetarium has been stolen from the University of Hertfordshire.

The so-called Cosmodrome was being kept in a trailer by the observatory in Bayfordbury near Hertford.

It is used to teach schoolchildren about space and also appears at music festivals.

The university said it was "utterly heartbroken" and wanted the public to keep their eyes peeled for the inflatable.

The portable planetarium is roughly the size of a house and can fit 100 people inside.

It uses light, sound and tactile experiences to host shows, lectures, and audio-visual art.

With Halloween in the rearview mirror, Aldi is looking ahead to the next holiday season.

Aldi will unveil more than 20 Advent calendars on Wednesday, Nov. 6. Calendars will be available for purchase in person, through pickup and via DoorDash delivery, while supplies last.

Three luxury calendars featuring cheese, wine and chocolate pairings will headline Aldi's Advent selection this year.

The Emporium Selection Cheese Advent Calendar features Red Leicester, Bruschetta, pesto cheese, Mimolette, aged gouda, extra mature cheddar, mustard gouda, hard goat cheese, cheddar with whiskey, black truffle cheddar and black pepper gouda. The Advent calendar is $16.99.

Police officers have seized an electric scooter with an exercise bike welded to it after it was spotted being ridden around Inverness.

In a social media post featuring an accompanying photograph, Police Scotland confirmed road policing officers spotted the adapted machine being ridden without relevant documents.

The post also stated: "Yes, that is an exercise bike welded to it. Rider reported, vehicle seized."

it is currently illegal to ride an e-scooter in a public place in Scotland.

A pub landlord wants to hunt for the remains of a motorbike-riding lioness that was buried at the venue in the 20th Century.

Howard Watts recently bought the White Hart in the village of Boxford in Suffolk.

The pub is famous for being the home of George "Tornado" Smith who popularised the motorcycle Wall of Death attraction from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Tornado Smith bought a lion cub and trained her to sit on the handlebars of his bike to perform in the stunt. She later died in an incident in her cage and was buried on pub grounds.

Mr Watts explained he fell in love with the White Hart and the story of Tornado Smith after he came to buy his father's old garage nearby in 2001.

He became adamant he wanted to buy the pub eventually and recently, when it came up for sale, he jumped on the opportunity.

"He's a local hero really," Mr Watts said. "He brought over the Wall of Death from America and it was the first time it was seen here.

...

Tornado Smith took his Wall of Death to the Kursaal in Southend-on-Sea in Essex each summer while keeping the show at the pub in the winter.

At some point, he bought the lioness cub which he named Briton.

He trained her to sit on the handlebars of a motorcycle while it rode around the Wall of Death.

"It was very well trained, I don't know quite how he made it so placid," Mr Watts added. "It must have been amazing."

As Briton grew larger, she was trained to sit in the motorbike's sidecar.

...

However as World War Two neared, at the end of the 1930s, it became increasingly hard for Tornado Smith to find enough food for Briton.

She later died following an incident in one of the stables she was kept in.

"It was in a cage and it got its paw trapped and it went crazy," Mr Watts explained.

"There was so much noise and confusion, it had to be put to sleep.

"It was very unfortunate but the lion was buried at the front of the pub and is still there."

...

Claw marks could be seen in the stable and Mr Watts said he believed Briton's remains were buried in one of two locations in the pub's grounds.

"Originally there was a gravestone for the lion with some very nice wording which I have got and I want to find the bones of the lion and put the grave back because it's part of the history of this amazing building," he said.

Social media users were shocked over an “alien” creature that washed ashore in Australia with some labeling it the “freakiest thing” they’d ever seen.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before!” wrote the sea denizen’s discoverer Vicki Evans in a post with a photo on a community Facebook page. “Nature never ceases to amaze!”

The beachcomber happened across the freaky flotsam while walking along Horseshoe Bay in Port Elliott, South Australia, The Advertiser reported.

Evans included photos of the oceanic oddity, which is long and riddled with gelatinous tendrils that are tipped with shells, like maritime hair-braid beads.

Many Facebook users were equally baffled by the vermicelli-esque tentacles, with one writing, “That might just be the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen!!”

“Wow, it looks long judging by scale of dog,” one said, referring to a curious pooch seen inspecting the creature in the photo...

Safety chiefs have sounded the alarm over a set of Christmas baubles sold by John Lewis that looks just like Quality Street chocolates. Concerns have been raised that the tasty-looking festive decorations could lead to injuries if people confuse them for the edible treats.

But a nasty surprise awaits anyone who attempts to chomp down on these glass baubles, as they risk getting cuts in their mouths or on their hands. The Office for Product Safety and Standards has issued a recall notice, warning: "The products present a risk of cuts or injuries as they may be mistaken with real chocolates.

"If the glass baubles are bitten or swallowed the user could receive lacerations to the mouth or hands. The products do not meet the requirements of the Food Imitations (Safety) Regulations 1989 or the General Product Safety Regulations 2005."

Edit: changed title to reflect the updated title in the article

Members of an "anti-establishment cult" have been jailed for up to seven years for storming a court with handcuffs and trying to kidnap a coroner.

Mark Christopher, 59, led the group that tried to shut down Essex Coroner's Court in Chelmsford having accused senior coroner Lincoln Brookes of "interfering with the dead" in April 2023.

Matthew Martin, 47, Sean Harper, 38, and his wife Shiza, 45, were part of the group and believed they could overrule the UK judicial system.

All four were sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court having been convicted of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to commit false imprisonment.

Christopher, of Claremont Road, Forest Gate, east London was also found guilty of sending a letter or email with intent to cause distress or anxiety.

He was jailed for seven years, while Sean and Shiza Harper, of Benfleet Park Road, South Benfleet in Essex, and Martin, of Evelyn Denington Road, Plaistow in east London, were given 30-month sentences.

Mr Justice Goss said the defendants were part of an "anti-establishment cult" who relied on "non-existent powers" to further their aims.

...

The defendants were part of what law agencies called an "organised pseudolegal commercial arguments" (OPCA) group, usually defined as one that believes its interpretation of law supersedes a state's legal system.

Members had self-conferred legal powers derived from what they believed to be the "true meanings" of words, the court heard.

The group called itself the Federal Postal Court, also known as the Court of the People.

Christopher was the group's "chief judge", with Martin and Sean Harper as his "sheriffs".

Shiza Harper, a former special constable with the Metropolitan Police, held a "postal inspector" role.

The group had "many followers across the country and the world" who held "delusional beliefs", the court was told.

They were sold online courses for thousands of pounds by Christopher, who acted as the group’s "teacher".

Addressing Christopher, Mr Justice Goss said: "I am satisfied that you are intelligent, persuasive, manipulative and dishonest.

"Your group, of which you are the self-appointed leader, preys on the vulnerabilities of others, particularly those in financial difficulties, who you are able to persuade to pay you significant sums of money and to do your bidding.

"You clearly recruited your co-defendants to your ideology [and] took a considerable amount of money from Sean and Shiza Harper."

The court heard Christopher sent Mr Brookes a series of letters between March 2022 and April 2023, accusing him of being a "detrimental necromancer" who must face corporal punishment, including beating with cattle prods.

Another letter said: "Mark Christopher will seek the death sentence for damage and for insidious conduct delivered at the court by the coroner".

...

Narita Bahra KC, representing the Harpers, said they were in Christopher’s "thrall" due to "the level of control and dominance he had".

She claimed they had been "on a trajectory of awakening" since the trial.

They were "pressured" to pay more than £30,000 to take part in online courses ran by Christopher, including a “mortgage elimination” scheme, Ms Bahra said.

“The pernicious veil of the first defendant has impacted every aspect of Mr and Mrs Harper’s life,” she said.

In his mitigation, Martin claimed to have been acting with King Charles III’s approval to tackle "state child trafficking" on Christopher’s behalf.

And previously...

• 'Cult' members found guilty of trying to kidnap Essex coroner

A store in Boardman, Ohio is out $400 worth of potting mix after a former employee urinated on the products, according to police reports.

Boardman police were called to the Walmart at 1300 Doral Drive around 3:50 p.m. Tuesday for reports that a former employee was urinating on products for sale outside the business.

Reports state the suspect was still in the area when police arrived and admitted to officers that he had been drinking earlier in the day and had urinated behind a pallet of potting mix.

Security footage provided by the store shows the suspect consuming alcohol while outside the store, also capturing his ruination of the potting mix.

Conservative MP Neil O'Brien has set out a list of policies to make Britain "vaguely civilised again" including "large and instant fines" for passengers playing music on public transport and a "crackdown on spitting".

The Leicestershire MP also called for action to stop e-scooters being " dumped across pavements" and a push to plant trees on every residential street "where this is remotely possible".

O'Brien was a minister in the previous Conservative government and is an influential thinker in the party, as the former head of the Policy Exchange think tank.

In a Substack article,, external O'Brien argued the desire to live in a "civilised, orderly society" was "one of the most under-discussed and under-appreciated things in politics".

"It is something often promised by politicians - but in my lifetime it has not been delivered."

...

Speaking to the BBC, O'Brien singled out street artist Banksy for criticism. He said his work was "valorising" graffiti.

"Graffiti is not art, it's a massive nuisance, it creates a really disorderly atmosphere.

"People have done everything they can to make their place, perhaps a business or shop, nice then some moron sprays paint all over it."

...

Matt Ashby, a crime science lecturer at University College London, says many of the actions O'Brien proposes would require "substantial investment in public services".

...

O'Brien acknowledged in his piece that the Conservative-led government cut the number of police and although the overall levels were later restored, Ashby says cuts to Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) were not.

"Compared to 2010, right now we only have 44% of the PCSOs."

Ms Harrison spotted the reddish hue while driving to work through the village of Bramford, Suffolk, at around 5.15am on Wednesday.

The cleaner posted three photos of her discovery to social media with the caption “guess it is the aurora, not seen one before”.

After attracting hundreds of comments, Ms Harrison was told the “beautiful” glare actually came from Suffolk Sweet Tomatoes’ LED light units, which are used to encourage the growth of its stock.

...

Ms Harrison is not the first to make an aurora faux pas. In May, two university students said they were “catfished” into mistaking the purple glow of a Premier Inn hotel for the aurora borealis.

And previously...

• Pals ecstatic after spotting ‘Northern Lights’ - but it was a Premier Inn sign