Beer consumption in Germany, which has been steadily declining over the last decade, was marginally lower again last year, official data showed on Monday.

The federal statistics office Destatis calculated that German breweries sold a total 98.2 million hectoliters of beer in 2011, 0.1 percent less than in 2010.

German police say a thief was in for a surprise after making off with a red plastic box from the back of a station wagon. Inside were seven wooden penises of varying sizes, 100 condoms, and instructional material for sex education classes at a local counseling center.

Police in Goettingen said in a statement that the material worth about €200 ($260), was stolen early Friday morning. They they are appealing to the thief to simply drop the box back somewhere where authorities can find it and return it to the center.

An unemployed Greenlander who suddenly found himself a krone millionaire thanks to a bank error and began giving away the cash was ordered to pay it back by the Danish Supreme Court.

Angut Kleist, nicknamed "Greenland's Robin Hood" by the media, was also sentenced to 100 hours community service after the court ruled Friday that he was not a crook but had succumbed to temptation.

British pensioner Malcolm Brocklehurst loves Blackpool Football Club and his former profession of aircraft engineer, and he has no plans to abandon them in death.

So his final home will be a coffin shaped like a plane, painted bright orange and emblazoned with the Blackpool logo.

A pair of doves seemed to prefer the company of Pope Benedict XVI to the great outdoors on Sunday when he had trouble convincing them to take flight in a traditional peace gesture.

The first dove hesitated on the windowsill of the pope's Vatican apartment for a long spell before flying off, while the second flew back into the room before flying out again.

A Greek Orthodox priest and his assistant have been caught digging for buried treasure, police said Friday.

The pair were caught red-handed late Thursday after neighbors tipped off the police in the town of Fiska, in northern Greece.

A sleepy snake came to a rather untimely end after having its head half chewed off by a fearless toddler in an Arab town in northern Israel, the child's family told Agence France Presse on Friday.

Thirteen-month-old Imad Aleeyan, who has six teeth, was found chewing on the head of the 30-centimetre snake by his mother, who alerted the neighborhood with her screams.

A drone enthusiast testing out his airborne camera discovered a river of blood behind a Texas meatpacking plant, prompting outrage and investigations by local authorities.

"We were very concerned with the fact that this discharge was going into the creek which is going into one of our treasures -- the Trinity River," Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, told Agence France Presse.

A policeman from the former communist East Germany has been doing the rounds in his squad car for 22 years without a valid driving license, a police spokesman told Agence France Presse on Friday.

The oversight was discovered when the officer, who has not been named, found he had to wear glasses and had to change his license which, it emerged, was valid only for tractors and motorbikes, said spokesman Bernard Wessner.

Lebanon's animal rights activists are fighting to bring to national attention what they say are rampant trafficking and abuse, problems that are far from priorities in a country plagued with turbulence.

While there are no official studies, activists estimate thousands -- if not tens of thousands -- of animals are smuggled into Lebanon annually, where they are sold, transferred to other destinations or subject to neglect or abuse.