Our weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world:

Two Australian friends out fishing on their boat came across a naked man in "a nest up a tree" in a crocodile-infested mangrove swamp near Darwin.

Kev Joiner and Cam Faust offered the man -- who had been living on snails -- a beer and brought him back to civilisation.

"We didn't understand how he got there" and how he survived the crocs, said Joiner, given that his improvised "nest" was within easy snapping distance of the water.

"We thought he must have had a big night after New Year's... and done himself a mischief in the bush," he added.

But it turned out the man -- who was covered in insect bites -- was a fugitive wanted for armed robbery. He is now in hospital under armed guard.

"We were going to visit him... then we thought, 'We might give that one a miss,'" Faust said.

A young American woman has been left devastated after her boyfriend left her and then stole her car.

"She had her heart and her car stolen," her dad wrote on Facebook as he appealed to neighbours in Connecticut to help track the cad down.

Never mind crime or Covid-19, the mean streets of New York's Queens district have just got meaner due to gangs of marauding squirrels.

The nutty rodents have been attacking residents of the Rego Park neighbourhood, who are now carrying pepper spray to fend them off.

Micheline Frederick had to have a rabies shot after a squirrel scratched her hand and then went for her neck.

"Next thing I know, it's a cage (fight) match and I'm losing," she said.

A Danish children's television show about the misadventures of a man with "the world's longest willy" has gone viral.

John Dillermand (John Penisman in English) uses his extraordinarily long member to get himself out of all sorts of tricky situations.

While he can use it as an extra hand or to light his barbecue from a distance, it also lands him in trouble, like many a male before him.

Public broadcaster DR insists the series tackles children's complexes about their bodies. "We recognise (their) growing curiosity about their bodies and genitals."

But academics are not so sure.

Gender studies professor Christian Groes said by celebrating an all-powerful phallus it was "perpetuating patriarchal" values.

But psychologist Erla Heinesen Hojsted took a more relaxed view, saying Dillermand was a New Man.

"When a woman tells him he should keep his penis in his pants, he listens. Which is nice," she added.

After its cow dung smartphone chip which claims to protect users from radioactive waves, and manure cures for Covid, the Indian government cow protection agency's latest wheeze is an online exam on "cow science".

The controversial body created by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party -- which reveres cattle as sacred -- is helping pour millions of dollars into research into the miraculous properties of bovine dung and urine.

Study material for the test includes the theory that slaughtering animals causes earthquakes.

Staying in India, villagers in Bihar state took the corpse of a farm worker to a bank so they could get money from his account to cremate him.

Canara Bank branch manager Sanjeev Kumar told AFP of the extraordinary posthumous withdrawal.

"After over an hour (when his account book was produced), I gave them money and they finally left with his body for the cremation ground."

Never mind Prime Minister Boris Johnson's father and sister applying for French nationality after Brexit, UK Independence Party backer Arron Banks' Leave.EU group which helped lead the campaign for Britain to quit Europe is now also jumping ship.

It has moved its registered office to Ireland so it can keep its ".eu" internet address.

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