Beer on tap

Oslo, March 13 (Reuters): A woman thought she was in heaven when beer instead of water flowed from the taps in her apartment in west Norway.

“I turned on the tap to clean some knives and forks and beer came out,” Haldis Gundersen said from her home in Kristiansund, west Norway. “We thought we were in heaven.”

Beer in Norway is among the most expensive in the world with a 0.4 litre (0.7 pint) costing about 50 crowns ($7.48) in a bar.

Gundersen said she tried the beer but that it tasted a bit odd. It turned out that a worker in a bar two floors below had mixed up the pipes on Saturday evening, wrongly connecting a new barrel to a water pipe leading to Gundersen’s flat. The bar got water in its beer taps.

Gear grind

Sydney (Reuters): Police charged an Australian driver with “reversing further than necessary” after he travelled backwards for more than 40 km along one of the country’s busiest highways. Police said the man was stopped on the Hume Highway ? which runs between Sydney and Melbourne ? at Benalla, about 200 km northeast of Melbourne. Police said the man told them reverse was the only gear in the car that worked and that he was travelling home to the small regional town of Numurkah, a further 90 km.

Letter luck

Tokyo (Reuters): A letter of apology sent to a robbery victim spelled arrest for a Japanese man after police investigating the case identified him from the handwriting. NHK television said the man had pushed his way into the house of a 78-year-old woman in the town of Misato, western Japan, and stole 15,000 yen ($125) after threatening her with a knife. He later wrote the victim a letter saying he was sorry and returning the cash. The handwriting “and other things” led police to the man, a 51-year-old construction worker who lives near the victim.