It wasn’t all bad

A team of Russian tusk-hunters searching for Stone Age mammoth ivory may have stumbled upon the world’s oldest dog instead, preserved in the Siberian permafrost. The 18,000-year-old puppy, which was about two months old when it died, still has whiskers, eyelashes and a velvety nose. Scientists from the Swedish Museum of Natural History have been mapping its DNA, but so far cannot say whether it is the oldest dog ever found, a wolf, or something in between.

A young man who broke into a house in upstate New York was beaten up by its octogenarian resident – who turned out to be an award-winning weightlifter. The man broke down 82-yearold Willie Murphy’s door at 11pm last week, at which point she tackled him using a metal-legged table, poured shampoo on his face and hit him with a broom. “I think he was happy when he went in the ambulance,” said Murphy, who still deadlifts 225 pounds. “He picked the wrong house to break into... I’m alone and I’m old. But guess what – I’m tough.”

A £30,000 model railway display destroyed by teenage vandals in May has been restored to its former glory. After the exhibition in a school hall was trashed, the Market Deeping Model Railway Club launched a fundraiser, hoping for £500 to help fix it. Instead, they received a total of £107,000, including £10,000 from fellow enthusiast Rod Stewart. Since then, 25 club members have spent around a thousand hours restoring the display by hand. Last weekend, it went back on display at the Warley National Model Railway Show in Birmingham.

COVER CARTOON: NEIL DAVIES