Jockstrip: The world as we know it.

Officer chased himself for 20 minutes

CHICHESTER, England, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Police in Britain revealed an undercover officer seeking a suspicious person reported by a CCTV operator turned out to be chasing himself.

A senior Sussex police official told Police Federation magazine the camera operator mistook the undercover officer, who was staking out a burglary-hit area, for a suspicious character and sent him on a 20-minute chase before discovering he was seeking himself, The Sun reported Wednesday.

A spokesman for Sussex police said officers "had a laugh" at the incident, but he had no further details.

Icelander films alleged legendary creature

EGILSSTAOIR, Iceland, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- An Icelandic man said he has captured video of a creature he believes is the legendary Lagarfljots Worm.

Hjortur Kjerulf said he shot the video last weekend on the river Jokulsa i Fljotsdal, which runs into Lagarfljot lake, and it appears to depict a giant snake-like creature swimming upstream, iceNews reported Wednesday.

However, some critics have said the video could be depicting some old netting that became frozen in the river, making it appear to be a swimming snake.

The legend behind the Lagarfljots Worm, which was first sighted in 1345, claims it began as a regular worm thrown into the lake by a woman who was angry when it failed to make her gold ring grow. The ring, which the legend says the woman also threw into the river, is said to have made the worm grow to a gigantic size.

Police: Fake cop got free hooker sex

NEW YORK, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- New York police said they arrested a man accused of posing as a police officer and threatening to arrest hookers unless they gave him free sex.

Police said William Taylor, 32, posed as an officer in the area near Stanley and Pennsylvania Avenues at least four times since the start of the year and forced prostitutes to perform sex acts for free to avoid arrest, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

Investigators with the Internal Affairs Bureau said they tracked Taylor using the cellphone number he allegedly gave one of the prostitutes in the hopes of becoming her pimp and arrested him Monday.

Taylor was charged with criminal impersonation of a police officer, criminal sex act, patronizing a prostitute, assault, forcible touching, kidnapping and criminal possession of a weapon.

Rats assault Israeli army base

BEERSHEBA, Israel, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- The mostly female garrison at an Israeli army base says it is holding out as best it can against a legion of infiltrating rats.

The women of the military's Home Front command at Beersheba told Ynetnews.com they have been overrun by rampaging rodents for more than five months and are near the breaking point.

"It's terrible," one soldier admitted. "They swarm the offices, the bedrooms, the dinning hall and the sewage system."

Another trooper said extermination efforts haven't worked and everyone at Beersheba is on high alert. "The rats roam freely around us," she said. "We're so scared that we can't sleep at night."

Ynetnews said the military is refusing to surrender in the campaign, but the issue has made it to the floor of the Knesset where Home Front Minister Matan Vilnai reminded lawmakers that rats can be a persistent foe that isn't easily defeated.