24 December 2007: 2007 was a silly year

And finally, we've tried throughout the year to keep you up-to-date with the stranger side of life, featuring stories like the Australian bank that issued a credit card to a cat, and the inadvertent invasion of Liechtenstein by the Swiss army, who got lost on manoeuvres in the dead of night. But there were a few that for various reasons we couldn't cover, so for the last broadcast of 2007 here are the most intriguing:

In Germany a 100-year-old woman in moved out of her retirement home after six weeks saying she found the other residents boring and too old.

Fishery officials in China restocked a river with 13 truckloads of live carp, then residents from the nearby city swarmed to the banks a short way downstream and caught most of them.

An American man ordered flowers for his mistress, and the florists sent the receipt to his home, thereby informing his wife of his infidelity.

A Belgian prankster put the entire country up for sale on the Internet auction site eBay, and might have sold it had the company not noticed and halted the bidding.

And finally, finally: a town in South Korea spent some 140 million dollars to build itself an airport, and then was then forced to admit that no airlines were prepared to fly there.

The International News will be back on the 2nd of January, and from all the International News team, have a merry and peaceful Christmas and a happy new year.

21 December 2007: The Three Kings Fight Back

In Spain, Santa Claus is under attack by his traditional rivals, the Three Kings

Spanish children traditionally receive Christmas presents on January 6, when parades commemorate the Three Kings said to have brought presents of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Christ.

But in recent years Santa Claus has made inroads, helped by Hollywood films and shops eager to use his image to persuade parents to buy more toys.

So a Spanish advertising agency is fighting back. An advertising campaign portrays Santa's sleigh shot down in an alley, calling him over-commercial and cruel to elves. In one video, three rapping Kings backed by dancing girls taunt Santa as an overweight import and tell him to stay out of Spain.

As yet, Santa has not responded.

20 December 2007: Has anybody seen our tank?

Police in Bulgaria have arrested two Germans and a Bulgarian army officer for stealing a World War II tank and attempting to steal another.

The first tank disappeared between October and December 13 and is still missing, while the second one only had a few of its parts stolen.

Investigators suspect the armoured vehicle or its parts may have been smuggled to Germany, to sell to collectors.

The vehicles had laid unused since World War II near Bulgaria's south-eastern border with Turkey.

Anyone who comes across the missing tank is asked to contact Bulgarian police.

19 December 2007: Illegal Walking

A pedestrian has been charged with damaging property, after walking over a car that was parked on the pavement, but the car driver was not ticketed for illegal parking.

Drivers in Greece's congested capital are notorious for leaving their cars wherever it suits them, including on pavements, wheelchair ramps and even hospital entrances.

"I could not get past the vehicle, a four-wheel drive, which had been parked right on the pavement so I got angry and just walked over it," the man told state television on Tuesday.

The owner of the vehicle saw him and called police. "They did not even bother giving the owner a parking ticket," he said.

18 December 2007: Happy Worms

Colin Bell, an inventor in New Zealand, has come up with an eco-friendly alternative to a septic tank, in which worms do all the necessary work. But local bureaucrats objected to his design on the grounds that it was unfair to the worms, saying they might suffer psychological harm because of their diet.

Auckland Regional Council told him that before his invention could go ahead he would have to find someone with the necessary qualifications to say the worms are happy.

So Mr Bell employed a vermiculture consultant to study the worms. She concluded that, as they were in excellent health and breeding, they were clearly happy and there was nothing to be worried about.

Now his "wormorator" can be installed as planned in a local campsite.