A heating company in Ukraine has collected on thousands of unpaid bills by using the image of Stalin to threaten deadbeats.

Posters of the feared Soviet dictator were plastered around the city of Donetsk warning, “Comrades! This is not the cinema, this is real life. Anyone who does not pay their heating bill will be punished.”

An official from the state-run Donetsk Heating Co. said, “It was the nearest we could get to intimidating people without sending around the heavy mob, and it has worked.”

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Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union . . .

A mouse munched its way through thousands of dollars worth of bank notes and made a bed for itself inside a cash machine in Estonia.

The critter was found in the ATM by a customer who received partly-eaten bills outside the Hansapank Bank in the capital of Tallinn.

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Love is in the air for one lucky British couple.

A radio station in the tiny coastal town of Frinton is holding a contest to place a couple on a private plane equipped with a double bed and champagne for a flight of lovemaking.

The winning pair will be chosen from among those who best describe over the air how they’re growing old disgracefully.

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A middle school in China has expelled seven boys for refusing to submit to an examination of their foreskin.

Claiming they were too shy to undergo the bizarre annual health check, the boys forged a doctor’s note saying they had already been inspected.

The female administrative director of the Guangzhou City school said the boys’ actions “stained the reputation of the school.”

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It could be said Ferdinando Borelli was in heaven traveling by train after a holiday in northern Italy – because he was dead.

The 85-year-old Italian man made the two-hour trip from Savona to Turin three times before crewmembers realized he had passed on.

He apparently suffered a heart attack shortly after boarding the train.