Officers in Brazil raided the home of a drug dealer's mother-in-law and found two alligators, one of them about 6ft long, police said. Police speculated that traffickers used the jacarei alligators to help them dispose of bodies and to torture captured members of rival gangs, though they gave no evidence of anyone being eaten or tortured.

After being shot five times, a US man had to go to court to get his prosthetic leg back from prosecutors. The Box Butte county attorney's office gave Val McCabe's leg back after a judge ordered it to be returned.

A man was reunited with the father he thought he had cremated after he saw him on television. John Renehan was amazed to see him on a missing persons appeal programme five years after a coroner formally identified his body at an inquest.

A teenager's head swelled up like a football after she drank an exotic holiday cocktail. Corinne Coyle was taken to hospital after she reacted to a "secret ingredient" in the 10 euros mixture of Baileys, chilli powder, tequila, absinthe, ouzo, vodka, cider and gin.

A 45-year-old woman was fined after she admitted stealing a fire engine while its crew dealt with a flood near her home. Catherine Durant was "irate" when she entered the cab of the fire engine before reversing it, crashing it into a brick wall and a car, South Wales Fire and Rescue Service said.