A footbridge under construction near the Commonwealth Games stadium in India collapsed yesterday, injuring at least 23 people.

The bridge was to connect the car park with the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi. The games are scheduled to be held from October 3-14.

Severe delays in the completion of the athletes’ village had already thrown the sporting event into jeopardy.

Anaconda in toilet

A 73-year-old Polish pensioner was shocked to find a two-metre-long anaconda peering up out of her toilet bowl on Monday in her flat in Wroclaw, south-west Poland, local police said.

“After she raised the lid of the toilet seat, the lady saw a huge snake that wanted to slither out of the toilet bowl. She immediately slammed down the toilet lid and called us,” Wroclaw police spokesman Pawel Petrykowski said. “She was certainly very frightened but managed to keep her wits about her,” he said.

After arriving on the scene, police and an employee from the local zoo managed to catch the reptile, native to South America.

“It must have somehow gotten into the toilet bowl via the plumbing pipes,” Mr Petrykowski said. (AFP)

Clegg hits bull’s-eye

Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg scored a bull’s-eye on Monday as he took a moment out from the serious business of his Liberal Democrat party conference to play a computer game.

The Lib Dem leader showed off his hand-eye coordination skills in an archery game on the Wii console at a technology stand at the conference venue in Liverpool, north-west England – and earned himself third place on the scoreboard.

“He was really good,” said Martin Forsythe, who was working on the stand for the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE).

At the bottom of the scoreboard languished Business Secretary Vince Cable, with a lowly three points, compared to Mr Clegg’s 24. (AFP)

Hoax ‘sex offender’

“Malicious” letters which falsely name a man as a sex offender and purport to come from police arrived at several addresses yesterday.

Three letters were received in the morning by organisations and businesses in Leigh-on-Sea and Rayleigh, Essex Police said.

Chief Inspector Glen Westley, the district commander for Rochford, said: “We are aware that a number of malicious letters have been sent out claiming to be from Essex Police. The letters name a man and state that he is a sex offender.” (PA)

World’s oldest man has 114th birthday

An American believed to be the world’s oldest man celebrating his 114th birthday yesterday.

Walter Breuning attended an invitation-only birthday party this afternoon at the Rainbow Retirement Community in Great Falls, Montana, attended by Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and representatives from Guinness World Records.

Mr Breuning was born on September 21, 1896, in Melrose, Minnesota, and moved to Montana in 1918. He worked for the Great Northern Railway for 50 years.

His wife, Agnes, died in 1957. The couple had no children. (AP)

Twitter hack havoc

A new way to cause mischief quickly spread through short-messaging service Twitter yesterday before the site could fix the problem, as mysterious “tweets” of blocked-out text propagated themselves and caused pop-up windows to open.

Shortly before 3 p.m. Twitter said on its “safety” feed on the site that the attack has been “fully patched” and no longer works.

The hack had been extra nefarious because the tweets activated without being clicked on – it was enough for web surfers to move their mouse cursors over them.

But it only affected visitors to Twitter.com. Various third-party programs used to send and read tweets were unaffected. The pop-ups could contain malicious code that could take over poorly protected computers. (AP)

Dope smoke over school

Police in New Zealand burning off seized cannabis were left red-faced when a change in the wind sent smoke billowing over a primary school, it was reported yesterday.

Officers in the South Island town of Picton were destroying cannabis and shredded paper in an incinerator at the local police station when the incident occurred, the Marlborough Express newspaper reported.

It said St Joseph’s School principal Peter Knowles noticed the smoke on Friday morning and complained to police, who immediately extinguished the fire. (AFP)