Two men in Melbourne, Australia, armed with a knife and a club lock robbed a pizza parlor in the northern part of this city the night of August 29, but bungled their getaway when there car stalled.

Police there said that witnesses had time to get the car’s license plate number after the hold-up of the Kebab Pizza Corner in Hadfield, Australia, at 8:50 PM Australian Eastern Standard Time and the robbers were soon busted by police in a nearby street.

The driver was arrested but the passenger fled on foot only to be caught by members of the police dog squad a few minutes later.

A 40-year-old St Kilda man and a 28-year-old Hadfield man, neither of whom were identified, are expected to be charged with armed robbery.

An armed robber in Cork, Ireland, thought that he had hit the jackpot when he held up a gaming arcade there.

But he was in for an unpleasant surprise.

He seemed cool, calm, and appeared to have planned the heist quite well. But it is said that sometimes your accent can give you away and that was definitely the case for this guy.

Just before 3:30 PM, he walked into a gaming arcade in downtown Cork. For several minutes he played the machines and seemed like a normal patron.

But it wasn’t long before he put on a ski mask and pulled out a handgun, threatening two female staff at the Leeside Leisure Centre on Winthrop Street.

He demanded the takings and then fled with what Garda (the Irish police force) sources described as a “handy amount of money”.

The two female staff members were unhurt but were said to be extremely shocked by it all.

Detectives were quickly on the scene and did what the suspect apparently did not do — they used their brains.

The man did not appear to be known to anyone locally, so they decided that since he had a Dublin accent he was possibly just visiting Cork for the day.

He certainly had enough money to get a first-class flight back to the capital but gardaí (pronounced GAR-dee) (Irish police officers) thought that he might just catch the train.

They decided to stake out Kent Station, and wouldn’t you know it, he walked right into their clutches later in the evening.

Gardaí believe they have recovered most, if not all, of the cash. But, there was no sign of the gun and detectives were still searching for it the night of August 30.

The unidentified man, believed to be in his 20s, was arrested and taken to the Bridewell Garda Station where he was being detained under section 20 of the Offences Against the State Act.

It hasn’t been a good week in the world of bungling robbers. Last week, a man whose weapon of choice was an ice pick demanded cash during a botched robbery of a sex shop in Cork.

Unbeknownst to him, the assistant refused to hand over any money and instead put up a fight. He also forgot that a Tour of Ireland cycle race was taking place and that Cork was awash with gardaí. He fell out the door of the sex shop and into their arms.

When emergency workers in Symmes Township, Ohio, received and answered a 911 call the night of August 29, they expected to find someone who needed help.

They did — but the caller, identified as 39-year-old Richard Harris, didn’t need medical help. He needed a ride to his home in North Avondale, Ohio.

Harris was arrested and charged with making false alarms, a charge carrying a maximum sentence of 180 days in the county jail.

Instead of being given a ride home, Harris was given a ride to jail.

In court on August 30, his bail was set at $1,000.

Police in Frankfurt, Germany, say that three forgetful drug dealers left a kilo of heroin worth over $60,000 in a rental car that they returned.

The drug was found stashed in a first-aid kit by cleaners getting the car ready for a new owner after the rental company decided to sell it.

Using the firm’s computer records, police tracked down two people from Poland and one person from Germany as the men who left the drugs in the car, which they rented earlier in the year.

The three have been detained since April when they were caught attempting to smuggle 135 grams of heroin into Germany from the Netherlands.

The story that you are about to read kind of echoes the story of a guy in Los Angeles, California, who used the same excuse for stealing a steamroller and leading police on a five-mile-per-hour chase back in 1999.

A man from Ashdown, Arkansas, had wrecked his vehicle in Oklahoma. He was in a big and sort-of new pickup truck when cops caught up with him in De Queen, Arkansas. But police were not looking for the man, identified as 29-year-old Charles Hope, because of the crash but because the pickup truck was stolen.

Officials say that Hope led officers on a swerving chase at speeds up to 80 miles per hour on U.S. Highway 41 Sevier County in southwest Arkansas. The incident, which occurred on the evening of August 28, ended peacefully when a cop set out spike strips to flatten the purloined pickup’s tires. When hope saw the strips, he pulled over and stopped.

Police say that Hope told them that he had wrecked his own vehicle in Tom, Oklahoma, and that he stole the 2006 Dodge Ram 3500 because he was tired of walking.

Hope was taken into custody pending formal charges.

Graeme Glass, a resident of Queenstown, New Zealand, was shocked to find that his home had been broken into twice in one day — once for his stuff to be taken and once to get it back, along with a heartfelt apology.

The thief struck first while Glass was at work on August 28, smashing a window at his Arthurs Point home to gain entry and stealing an expensive laptop, camera, and wallet that had his American Express credit card in it, according to Otago Daily Times, a newspaper there.

The second break-in occurred later that same day, when the remorseful decided to return the goods, along with a basketball and two pairs of gloves bought using the hot credit card.

Glass and his wife Shirley only found out that their home had been burglarized when they returned home from work that night to find the loot piled up on their kitchen table.

To top it all off, there was a full-page apology letter from the burglar.

The apology, neatly written on a page of Mr. Glass’ diary, expressed sorrow for “violating the safety and security of your home”.

The burglar said that he did not want to go to jail but understood if Mr. Glass wanted to seek “proper justice”, in which case he should “ask around your neighbourhood”.

“Someone will have seen me, and from there I’m certain you will find me.”

In the interim, the burglar promised to leave cash in couple’s mailbox to pay for the smashed window when he had enough money.

“I have never written truer words when I say that I wish that I had never done this to you and your family,” the note read.

“From the bottom of my heart I am sorry.”

On August 29, Mr. Glass,  A J Hackett’s Kawarau bridge bungy and is president of the New Zealand Ice Hockey Federation, said he was more bewildered than angry.

“It was all pretty bizarre really.”

His credit card had been used at three different stores that day, with his signature forged each time.

Police have a description of the thief from store staff and are searching for a man in his late teens or early twenties with shoulder length blond hair.

Police in Plainfield, New Jersey, arrested a suspect on August 28 who they said robbed local gas stations of nearly $20,000.

The suspect, identified as 39-year-old Albert W. Smith, who lived in Edison and Plainfield, was busted inside the Plainfield Police Headquarters at 2:00 PM after he stopped by the station to ask about traffic summonses that he received.

Police said that they recognized Smith as the prime suspect in gas station robberies in several New Jersey townships.

On August 16, Smith was caught on tape entering the office of the Riggins Gas Station at the intersection of Route 130 and Riverton Road at 8:00 PM and kicking in the door and stealing more than $18,000 in cash, according to police.

Police said that Smith also committed a similar theft and stole about $1,000 at the LukOil gas station at the same intersection on July 8.

Smith was also wanted in connection with attempted theft at an Exxon station at the intersection of Route 130 and Highland Avenue on August 23, according to investigators.

An attendant spotted the suspect inside the booth, but chased him away before he could steal any money. Smith was identified as a suspect in in the thefts after Cinnaminson’s Criminal Investigation Bureau circulated photos taken from the surveillance video at Riggins.

Detectives in East Windsor, Mercer County, Connecticut, contacted Cinnaminson after they received a fingerprint match on Smith from an August 2 robbery at a Sunoco gas station there.

Smith was charged with burglary, conspiracy, theft, and attempted burglary, among other charges.

As of this writing, he is being held in the Burlington County Jail in lieu of $85,000 bail on some of the charges.