An entire continent (a small one, admittedly) was transfixed yesterday by the strange saga of Madeleine Pulver, an 18-year-old girl from a well-to-do Sydney family who found herself in the middle of a bizarre extortion attempt after a home-intruder wearing a ski mask chained a bomb and a ransom note around her neck. Pulver was freed after ten hours, but police now say that the bomb contained no explosives and wasn’t real. Somehow, that’s even more messed up. [AP]
