A novel idea by a hard-up east German village to sell its potholes to finance their repair looked Friday to have got off to a good start, with 111 already snapped up, the official website showed. Since last week people have been able to buy a hole in Niederzimmern near Leipzig for 50 euros (68 dollars).

Instead of resting in peace, the body of a recently deceased man ended up in New York's equivalent of Purgatory: the city tow pound for illegally parked cars. Funeral director Paul DeNigris had illegally parked his silver Dodge while preparing to drive the corpse to the airport so it could be flown to Miami for cremation, the Daily News reported Friday.

The Portuguese pilots' union on Thursday announced a six-day strike of its members at the TAP Portugal airline over a pay dispute. "The offers made by the management do not match the aims, the compromises and the legitimate expectations of the pilots," the SPAC union said in a statement. Formal notice of the strike, to be held from March 26 to 31, will be given within three days, the union said.

US driving deaths dropped to their lowest level ever recorded last year, which officials attribute to public service campaigns, less driving and safer roads and vehicles, government data showed Thursday. Despite the decrease, roads remain deadly, killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. Projected traffic fatalities for 2009, places the highway death count at 33,963, an 8.

Bulgarian media launched a humourous campaign against the country's potholed streets Thursday, urging a disgruntled public to photograph and name the worst craters they could find. The station PRO. BG said viewers could upload pictures and assign names to their "favourite" potholes. The best of the worst from each day would be shown on the evening news broadcast.

Finnish forestry group UPM-Kymmene on Thursday stopped paying wages to workers at a paper mill closed since last week because of a port strike that has crippled Finland's foreign trade. "The payment of salaries is interrupted today, Thursday . . . this is the first day of no wages," UPM spokeswoman Kaisu Lehtomaa told AFP, adding that about 450 workers at a factory in Rauma were affected so far.

Airline industry group IATA on Thursday halved its 2010 loss forecast for airlines to 2.8 billion dollars, as a recovery led by Asia and Latin America proves stronger than expected.

African trucking routes, long known as pathways for spreading HIV across borders, have been drawn in new maps that also direct drivers to clinics that treat AIDS, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. About 20,000 maps have been printed and distribution began last week, Catherine Larkin, a spokeswoman for the project, told AFP.

Some 100,000 people were without power in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region Wednesday, two days after the area was hit by its worst snowstorm in decades, officials said. The area worst affected by the power cuts was the province of Girona on the border with France. Catalonia's interior minister, Joan Boada, said he expected power to be restored to around 50,000 people during the day.

Finland's ports remained shut for the seventh consecutive day Wednesday as talks aimed at ending a stevedores' strike that has crippled the country's foreign trade continued, officials said. All of Finland's commercial ports ground to a halt last Thursday when some 3,000 dockers walked out following the collapse of negotiations for a collective labour deal by a March 4 deadline.