Jumping gun flash

Berlin, August 3 (Reuters): German police have arrested a man suspected of holding three teenagers at gun point in the street and demanding money before forcing two of them to strip naked and jump up and down on car bonnets, police said today.

The victims, two young men and a young woman, were confronted by the man as they walked home in a Berlin suburb in the early hours of yesterday morning. He drew a gun and demanded money but they had no cash on them. “The man then told the two men to strip naked and asked the girl to remove her shoes,” the police said. He forced the men to set fire to the clothes and shoes on the pavement then made them climb onto parked cars and jump up and down until they shattered the windscreens, she added.

Caught in computer craze

Helsinki (Reuters): A number of Finnish conscripts have been excused their full term of military service because they are addicted to the Internet, the Finnish defence forces said on Tuesday. Doctors have found the young men miss their computers too much to cope with their compulsory six months in the forces. “For people who play (Internet) games all night and don’t have any friends, don’t have any hobbies, to come into the army is a very big shock,” said Commander-Captain Jyrki Kivela at the military conscription unit. “Some of (the conscripts) go to the doctor and say they can’t stay. Sometimes, the doctors have said they have an Internet addiction,” Kivela said. There are no official figures for the Internet addict dropout rate. “They get sent home for three years and after that they have to come back and we ask if they are OK ... they will have had time to grow up,” Kivela said.