German firemen have destroyed a teenage driver's first ever car after they mistook it for scrap and used it for practice. The fire fighters from Hennef, near Bonn, spotted the teenager's pride and joy parked alongside a scrap yard they thought it had been dumped. They set to with hydraulic scissors and axes to cut the roof and doors off to practise for freeing people from crashed cars. But the car had only been parked and not dumped next to the junk yard. 
The 19-year-old driver, who had just bought the car after passing his test, said he had not even driven it yet as he was waiting to renew the MOT.

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A German inventor says he's found a way to make cheap diesel fuel out of dead cats.
Dr Christian Koch, 55, from Kleinhartmannsdorf, said his method uses old tyres, weeds and animal cadavers.
They are heated up to 300 Celsius to filter out hydrocarbon which is then turned into diesel by a catalytic converter.
He said the resulting "high quality bio-diesel" costs just 15 pence per litre.
Koch said the cadaver of a fully grown cat can produce 2.5 litres of fuel - meaning around 20 cats are needed for a full tank.
He said: "I tank my car with my own diesel mixture and have driven it for 105,000 miles without any problems."
Annelise Krauss of the Dresden Animal Protection Association blasted Koch's new diesel though, saying: "This is as bad as experimenting on animals."

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A German motorist has escaped unhurt after losing control of his car in a car wash. The man wrecked both the car wash and his Volkswagen estate in the accident in Braunschweig.
His foot slipped off the clutch, causing his car to shoot forward into the path of one of the rollers. He broke another five rollers before his car emerged on the other side of the 30-metre car wash before colliding with steel-enforced wall.
He caused about £28,000 of damages, police said.

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Police in Germany have arrested a shopper who tried to get a refund on two computers after allegedly replacing the working parts with potatoes.
Staff at the department store in Kaiserslautern called detectives after the man complained that a machine he'd bought only hours before did not work.
When they opened the computer they found it stuffed full of potatoes. The bemused shop assistants gave the man a new machine free of charge. But they became suspicious when the customer returned a short time later with another computer - again filled with potatoes.
A spokesman said: "The second time he said he didn't need a computer any more and asked for his money back in cash."
Computer technician Roman Zukoan said: "It is hard to imagine how the potatoes could get into a computer's casing. When computers leave the factory they are packed in plastic to prevent damage from condensation.
"If they are running for a long time they get hot and in theory it would be possible to cook a potato in a computer, but who would try that?"

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A German professor who went on a dream holiday to Costa Rica woke up in an airport departure lounge to find his leg had been amputated. The professor said he had gone to see a doctor at a hospital in San Jose because his left foot was swollen. He said: "An aspirin usually did the trick. I have had the problem before - it was nothing serious - just something caused by my diabetes.
"When I got to the hospital they put me on a bed and I heard the word amputate. I tried to protest, but before I knew it they had given me drugs to black me out, and when I woke up I was at the departure lounge.
"My suitcases were by my side - and then I realised my leg was missing. I couldn't move, and when I checked my wallet I found that £200 had been taken out and replaced with a receipt for the amputation.
"It was like a bad dream and I could not believe what had happened."
Professor Ronald Jurisch, 50, from Dessau in Sachsen-Anhalt, said the holiday was booked for him by friends for his birthday as the trip of a lifetime. After the operation, Prof Jurisch collapsed and was taken to a private clinic where he was diagnosed with blood poisoning.
He said it was four weeks until a special medically equipped plane took him back to Germany where he underwent 23 more operations to try and repair the damage from the amputation.