A mischievous cat thought she could get away with the pawfect crime. But it wasn’t a bank robbery to fund her out-of-control catnip addiction or even being uncovered as a serial killer of mice.

The feline felon named Nub Tang – which means ‘counting money’ – was arrested and charged with assault for attacking officers.

The purrpetrator was brought into a police station by a concerned member of the public, who found her wandering the streets wearing a pink harness.

However, officers got more than they bargained for when taking in the furry fiend.

Far from being a grateful rescue, Nub Tang turned on her would-be saviours, biting and scratching the station’s officers.

One animal-loving policeman, Dar Parinda Pakeesuk, had offered to take her home for the night.

In a now viral Facebook post, he jokingly shared a photograph of Nub Tang mugshot and alerted users to her charge sheet: ‘This cat has been charged with assaulting police officers and is about to be detained.

‘Please share this post so her owner can come and bail her out.’

Later, he shared another picture of the miffed moggy, glaring from the back seat of his car. He added: ‘She is living her best life, while the police are the true victims.’

Pakeesuk has rescued more than 20 stray cats and several dogs over the years, so already had food, litter trays and toys set up at home.

Social media users responded with their own jokes about the confrontational kitty’s situation.

One wrote: ‘That cat looks like she is frowning. She does not seem too grateful for her rescue.’

Another commented: ‘The suspect is so cute’

The next day, Nub Tang’s owner contacted the police and arrived at the station with a new lace collar.

But Nub Tang wasn’t let off that easily. Before being released and reunited with her owner, she posed for an official mugshot and was handed a mock police report, complete with her paw prints.

It read: ‘I was just hungry. I did not mean to bite anyone.’

Pakeesuk gave her a light-hearted warning, adding: ‘This case must be handled properly. We cannot have other cats thinking that biting people is acceptable.’

He said no fines were issued and also encouraged social media users who wanted to adopt Nub Tang to either seek out their local shelter, or adopt some of the cats he had rescued.

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A first responder has described the final moments of John Edward Jones who went on a doomed spelunking trip to Utah’s now infamous Nutty Putty cave and never returned.

Jones, 26, suffered ‘one of the most horrifying deaths imaginable’ when he took a wrong turn and became trapped upside-down in a terrifyingly small crevice, essentially ‘crawling into his own grave’.

Unable to turn or move backwards, the 26-year-old father suffered 27 hours of hell as his family sent desperate messages of support by a two-way radio.

Now, the man tasked with the impossible job of trying to free him has spoken of his ordeal.

John Jones

A devout Christian, medical student and father to a newborn baby, John Edward Jones seemingly had the world at his feet.

Born into a large family, John and his brother Josh had been avid cavers when they were children, and sought to rekindle their love of spelunking with a trip to the Nutty Putty cave.

The brothers arrived at the cave with a party of nine other friends and relatives of varying degrees of experience- a fairly large group by caving standards.

Upon arrival, the group soon split off into two groups, with children and less-experienced adults exploring easier sections of the cave while the seasoned spelunkers went deeper.

It was here that things started to go wrong.

The rescue

John’s brother Josh was the first one to find him. Creeping forwards down the crevice just inches behind his brother, his stomach filled with dread when he saw John’s feet sticking out of the tiny hole which had swallowed him.

‘Seeing his feet and seeing how swallowed he was by the rock, that’s when I knew it was serious.’ Josh told the Salt Lake Tribune. ‘It was really serious.’

Josh tried to pull his brother out of the hole, but only managed to inch him up a little. As soon as he let John go, he slid right back into the crevice.

‘There was this, ‘I’m not getting him out,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how anyone is getting him out.’

As they waited for rescuers to arrive, they prayed together. At the end of the prayers, though, Josh could hear his own voice waiver and crack.

John began to comfort him, telling Josh it would be OK and to be good to his girlfriend.

‘The way we spoke’, Josh said, ‘it felt like John knew what the score was.’

What transpired over the next few hours was an intense brainstorming session from a rescue party, who tried every method they could to free John from his subterranean prison. In addition to pulling him, they also tried lubing the walls and drilling away chunks of rock near John, but the hard material and the awkward position made the drilling slow and painful work.

After drilling over for an hour, they abandoned this approach after only managing to drill through a couple of inches of rock.

Disaster strikes

Eventually, the team came up with a plan to pull John to safety using a complex system of ropes and pulleys, which they would attach around his feet.

‘How are you?’ one rescuer asked.

‘It sucks. I’m upside down. I can’t believe I’m upside down,’ John responded. His eyes were red and looked tired but otherwise, had a smile on his face. ‘My legs are killing me,’ he added.

The team decided to take a quick break to regain their strength before making the final push. John was nearly out. But as they grabbed hold of the rope for the fourth and final time, something disastrous happened.

All of a sudden, the entire team fell backwards, and the rope became loose in their hands. The closest rescuer felt something hard hit him in the face, and momentarily blacked out from the impact. At the very last moment, one of the pulleys had collapsed under the strain and flown off the wall, sending John plunging right back into the crevice – even deeper than before.

John himself had become unresponsive. At this point he had been trapped for over 25 hours and his body had begun to break down from the stress and strain.

In a blog post, explorer and YouTuber Brandon Kowallis spoke of first arriving when Jones ‘was in and out of consciousness’ and talking about seeing ‘angels and demons around him’.

‘I went in first’, he wrote. ‘As I wormed my way in I felt my feet touch something soft which ended up being John’s feet. I felt them move and immediately lifted my feet and worked my way horizontally into the crack.

‘After stabilising myself by jamming my body into a narrower section of the crack I began speaking to John asking him how he was and introducing myself. There was no response.

‘I shifted my position a little and tapped him on the leg. I could hear him breathing a deep, gurgling breath, as though his lungs were filling with fluid.

‘Then his feet shifted as though he were trying to manoeuvre his legs out of the crack he was jammed in.

‘The kicking looked fairly frantic and after a second he stopped and it looked as though he had drifted into unconsciousness.’

He added:  ‘I continued tapping him on the legs and hip to see if I could get a response, but there was no response.

‘From there I spent a few minutes studying the passage, the positioning of John, and the rig that was set up, to see how we could get him out from here. It looked very bleak. I wondered if it was even possible to get him beyond this point.

‘There was a request to take the radio down to John so that his family could say some words to him. I think it was his father, mother, and wife who spoke to him, telling him that they loved him and were praying for him and that his father had given him a blessing. His wife mentioned a feeling of peace, that everything would be OK. She talked to him about 5 to 10 minutes before I told her that we needed to get back to working at getting him out.’

‘At that point I decided to try using the jack hammer. So we waited for it to arrive and then I carried it down to where John was located. The tool was much heavier than I anticipated and to hold it up while wedging my body in the crack took everything I had. Even then, I couldn’t get a good angle on the rock because of the confined space and limitations in my own mobility and positioning.’

He added: ‘And even if we could get him into a horizontal position, he would then have to maneuver the most difficult sections of the passage he was trapped in. 

‘If he were conscious and had his full strength there was a minute chance he could possibly do it. But even if that was the case it looked grim’.

He estimated it could take a week to free him using this method but now it was close to midnight and he was asked to check vitals on John.

‘I didn’t hear a distinct heartbeat, only some ruffling, fluttering sounds that were probably a result of me shaking as I tried to steady myself in an awkward location. I then jammed my hand between the rock and pressed as far up his torso I could go to feel for breathing. I didn’t think I felt anything.

‘I reported my findings to the paramedic above and then crawled out so that he could see if he could squeeze in.

‘He was able to get down to the point where he could feel his feet and confirm he had passed away. John Edward Jones was pronounced dead at 11.52.’

His wife Emily, still outside, refused to leave her husband’s body trapped inside the cave, and the local Sheriff assured her they would recover it.

But even following his death it was deemed too dangerous to attempt to recover his body, and the entrance to the passage he was trapped in was collapsed with controlled explosives.

Once it became clear that John’s remains couldn’t be safely removed from the cave, Nutty Putty was permanently sealed off and John’s family had a plaque put on the entrance of the cave in his memory.

Jones’s body remains entombed inside the dark cave to this day – his death becoming a cautionary tale about the dangers of spelunking.

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The body of a man missing for nearly 30 years has been found in a melting glacier in remote Pakistan.

Father-of-two Naseeruddin, 33, was travelling on horseback with his brother through Kohistan in June 1997.

Hearing gunfire, the two men fled, with Naseeruddin sprinting into a nearby cave in the snow-capped mountains of Lady Valley – he never came out.

Despite an extensive search organised by his brother, Kathiruddin, no trace of Naseeruddin was ever found, his family told The Express Tribune.

Local shepherd Umar Khan discovered the hiker’s body 28 years later, on August 1, inside a glacier, which has been melting for years.

Khan told BBC Urdu that the body was ‘completely intact’, his clothing wasn’t torn and he was still carrying his ID card.

‘What I saw was unbelievable,’ he added.

Naseeruddin fled from the area as his family were squabbling with an ‘enemy family’, his brother, Kathiruddin, said.

Naseeruddin was finally buried on Tuesday, leaving behind a son and daughter in their 20s.

Son Naeem said he hasn’t stepped into his hometown for years in the daylight because of the family feud.

‘Now I have come with my father’s body,’ he said.

‘The pain of travelling to his native area with my father after so many years cannot be described in words.’

Police confirmed the identity of the remains as that of Naseeruddin, from Saleh Khel, a village by the Cherat mountains, home to various tribes.

On the day he disappeared, the two men were travelling back from Alai, a nearby village they often visited to buy livestock and horses to sell for money.

The brothers took a more remote route due to the ongoing family feud when they were separated.

‘I turned back and reached the place where I saw that my brother had gone inside the cave, but there was nothing there,’ said Kathiruddin.

After Naseeruddin’s body was found, the bad blood between the families made burying him in his hometown almost impossible.

But the locals held a jirga, when tribal representatives hold a meeting, to put in place a nine-day ‘ceasefire’ between the families.

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A horrified mum discovered a hissing 7ft snake slithering through her child’s bedroom.

Natasha Robinson thought her fiancé Gary Minshull was playing a prank when she discovered the Taiwanese Beauty Rat Snake in their children’s bedroom.

But the 34-year-old’s jaw dropped when she spotted the serpent’s tongue suddenly flick in and out of its mouth.

Natasha, from Chester, Cheshire, said: ‘To begin with, I thought “it’s got to just be a grass snake” or something else not so dangerous but it didn’t look anything like the pictures – and it was so big.

‘We realised with the size and the look of it that it definitely wasn’t native.

‘My partner and I were just in disbelief really – especially knowing it had been in there with our daughter.

‘I’m just so grateful it was spotted and that she didn’t accidentally tread on it.’

The wedding accessories business owner quickly ushered three-year-old Primrose along with her sons Jacob, seven, and six-year-old Theo into the garden and checked on her pet cats who she feared might have been eaten.

Natasha and her 40-year-old health, safety and quality manager partner contained the snake for two hours before a couple living locally, who own exotic pets, took it away.

Taiwanese Beauty Rat Snakes are a non-venomous constrictor snake butthey can grow up to 10ft long.

It’s legal to keep without a licence in Britain and they are usually docile but can strike if they perceive a threat.

‘One of my sons is autistic, he would’ve grabbed it. I dread to think what could’ve happened then,’ Natasha said.

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Natasha believes the snake may have got into their house before last month’s incident through an open window.

Although now safely fostered, she spent the days after the incident frantically checking the bed in case another one got in.

Natasha said: ‘The children weren’t frightened of it, they thought it was really cool having a snake in their bedroom.

‘It was totally bizarre. You’d think if it was a loved pet it would’ve been claimed.

‘We have been like celebrities around here ever since, I’m asked about it constantly.’

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It’s been 56 years since Neil Armstrong plonked a boot on the Moon and made history.

Yet, much to the rest of humanity’s annoyance, they haven’t followed in his footsteps – literally.

The grey, pockmarked orb doesn’t exactly scream real estate, but Nasa hopes to build homes for astronauts and civilians on the Moon by 2040.

Chinese scientists have suggested that this might not be as far-fetched as it might seem – the soil on the Moon could potentially support life.

According to a study, the Chinese University of Hong Kong have invented a way to extract water from the chalky lunar soil.

This celestial water is then used to convert carbon dioxide – such as that exhaled by astronauts – into carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, which can be used to make fuel and oxygen for the astronauts to breathe.

Just like on Earth, fuel and food would be costly on the Moon, given how expensive it would be flying up essentials into space.

Travelling light is critical to spaceflight, where just one kilogram of supplies can cost well over £74,000 to ship up by rocket.

And this includes water, too. The academics estimated that getting a single gallon of water to the Moon would cost £61,000, barely enough to quench the four gallons an astronaut would drink a day.

But the researchers say this technology could ‘potentially open new doors for future deep space exploration’ by eliminating these eye-watering costs.

Lead researcher Lu Wang said: ‘We never fully imagined the “magic” that the lunar soil possessed.’

Appearances are deceiving when it comes to water on the Moon, where years of being pelted with asteroids and comets have left water on it.

Shadowy craters on the lunar poles, known as permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), never see sunshine, meaning there’s water ice tucked inside minerals such as ilmenite.

The tool developed by the Chinese researchers would involve taking the reoglith – a layer of loose material that blankets solid rock – of ilmenite and heating it using sunlight to release the water.

Carbon dioxide is then chucked in, causing the ilmenite to undergo photothermal catalysis – a novel method that uses sunlight to speed up chemical reactions.

Wang added in a statement that ‘one-step integration of lunar water extraction and photothermal carbon dioxide catalysis’ could make efforts to build lunar outposts or Tescos (we assume) more energy efficient.

Easier said than done, however, the researchers said, given that ‘drastic temperature fluctuations’, radiation and low gravity can make harvesting oxygen and water from the land tricky.

Nasa’s plan to build a colony on the Moon similarly involves making the most of the materials already there.

The plan, first reported on in 2023, will involve blasting a 3-D printer into the heavens that will build structures out of lunar concrete created from the rock chips, mineral fragments and dust that cover the Moon.

This debris is harmful to humans and is easily kicked up into the air – or rather, the lack of it – as astronauts lumber around in their heavy boots.

The first lunar Americans could get some neighbours pretty soon, with South Korea to develop lunar landers by 2040 before building a ‘lunar economic base by 2045’, according to The Korea Times.

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A couple have been left astounded after a thunderstorm produced a glowing orb of light thought to be mysterious ‘ball lightning’.

Ed and Melinda Pardy were watching a storm from their porch in Alberta, Canada, on June 2 when lightning struck.

After a tornado warning had been issued Ed, a weather enthusiast, saw a ball of light moving across the horizon in the lightning bolt’s wake.

He said it was floating about seven metres above the ground, a little under a kilometre from their home outside Edmonton.

‘Once the lightning bolt kind of disappeared, the ball of light kind of got bigger, intensified, like, really bright,’ he said, according to broadcaster CTV News.

‘Then I was like, “Oh, that’ll go away really soon,” and it didn’t.’

He started recording the phenomenon on Melinda’s phone, capturing about 23 seconds of video before the ball of light disappeared.

‘There was a little bit of pop and then it just kind of disintegrated,’ Ed said.

‘I was like, “what is this? I’ve never seen this before.” It was pretty neat,’ added Melinda.

Ball lightning is a disputed weather phenomenon that has been described by eye-witnesses for centuries but still has no widely accepted explanation among scientists.

They have usually been associated with thunderstorms and conventional lightning strikes.

Ball lightning, a mysterious and rare atmospheric electrical phenomenon, has inspired numerous legends, myths, and folklore over the centuries due to its strange appearance.

In medieval Europe, strange glowing orbs seen hovering near swamps or in the air were often explained as “will-o’-the-wisps”—ghostly lights said to trick travellers.

During a church service in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, a ball of fire reportedly entered the church, killing four people and injuring other worshippers. This was at the time explained as a manifestation of the devil himself but could have easily been ball lightning.

During the Siege of Leningrad in the Second World War, soldiers reported seeing strange glowing orbs that moved erratically, sometimes entering bunkers or tanks.

These were interpreted as experimental weapons, divine intervention, or even UFOs.

Storm chasers, people who pursue and study thunderstorms, have speculated that ball lightning could travel along power lines, but the Pardys said it was not in this case.

‘Definitely not,’ said Ed.

Melinda added that it was ‘a long way’ from any power lines.

The couple said they have since been contacted by scientists from the University of Calgary.

‘If I saw one of those fairly close to me, I don’t think I would want to get near it, because that’s a lot of energy. It’s a lot of power,’ said Ed.

‘I never thought I’d see anything like that in my lifetime.’

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