Colin Dwyer

For a little while Wednesday afternoon, customers at an ATM in Texas got a curious extra with their cash. Along with a receipt detailing their transaction, they got a little slip of scribbled-on white paper.

It was a plea for help from the man trapped inside.

"We have a once-in-a-lifetime situation that you'll probably never see or hear about again," Corpus Christi Police Officer Richard Olden told a local Fox affiliate.

Updated at 2:31 p.m.

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been convicted of corruption and money laundering charges and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison.

Still, Lula — as he's commonly known — has long denied the charges and plans to appeal the conviction. He will remain free as long as that appeals process unfolds.

Federal Judge Sergio Moro found the popular politician guilty of illegally taking more than $1 million in kickbacks from an engineering company, using the money to refurbish a beachfront apartment.

China dispatched troops to set up its first military base overseas on Tuesday. After a ceremony in the southern port city of Zhanjiang, military personnel embarked on a voyage to the East African country of Djibouti to establish an outpost "conducive to China's performance of international obligations," state-run media report.

The base is generally intended to "assist China's contribution to peace and stability both in Africa and worldwide," according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The European Court of Human Rights announced Tuesday that it has upheld a Belgian ban on wearing the full-face veil in public. The law, passed nationwide in June 2011, had come under fire for allegedly violating a series of protections set out by the European Convention on Human Rights.

The unanimous decision held that the ban — which, in the court's words, specifically barred "the wearing in public of clothing that partly or totally covers the face" — aimed to "guarantee the conditions of 'living together' and the 'protection of the rights and freedoms of others.' "