Magic spys

The CIA hired America's most famous magician to write a manual on the arts of trickery, concealment and secret communication during the Cold War.
John Mulholland was paid $3,000 for tips on slipping a pill into the drink of the unsuspecting, tying shoelaces to give uncover signals and on the "surreptitious removal of objects." His guidance was part of a CIA effort, called MK-ULTRA, developed to counter Soviet mind-control and interrogation techniques. It involved dosing suspects with LSD, dropping depilatory powder into Fidel Castro's boots, or planting an explosive in his cigar.

Mouth of discovery

A new species of chameleon was discovered in an African forest living in the mouth of a snake. The tiny lizard came out of the mouth of a twig snake disturbed by Dr Andrew Marshall in Tanzania's Magombera forest.
He said, "I was doing conservation research when I came across this snake.
It saw me and fled, and as it did so spat out a chameleon. I took photos and showed them to a local herpetologist, who instantly recognised that it was a new species.''
The creature, small enough to sit in the palm of a hand, was named as Kinyongia magomberae by scientists.

Italy for sale

Benito Mussolini's granddaughter demanded a police investigation on Friday after the late Italian dictator's blood and brain were reportedly offered for sale on eBay, the online auction website. The initial asking price was 15,000 euros, or £13,000, but nobody had had a chance to bid, eBay said. The online auctioneer does not permit the sale of body parts on its website and removed the listing hours after it was posted. Miss Mussolini said the remains could have been stolen from a hospital in Milan where an autopsy was carried out on the dictator's body after he was killed and strung up by partisans at the end of the Second World War.

Tip thief

A couple who refused to leave a tip after receiving bad service in a Pennsylvania restaurant were arrested by police after being accused of theft. Leslie Pope and John Wagner were handcuffed and hauled away after they failed to leave the restaurant's mandatory 18 per cent gratuity -- totalling $16. The couple had joined six friends at Lehigh Pub for dinner. They said they had to wait almost an hour for their meal to arrive and that the service was so shoddy they had to get their own cutlery and napkins. They had to repeatedly ask for drink refills while their waitress smoked outside the pub.

Forest fugitive

France's most wanted fugitive ­ who escaped from prison in a cardboard box and lived in the woods for ten weeks ­ has been caught, the interior minister announced on Friday night.
Jean-Pierre Treiber, 47, a former forest worker and game-keeper, is accused of the kidnapping and double murder of a young couple in 2004. He had been on the run since September 8, when he shut himself into a cardboard box he had made and jumped from a lorry after it drove out of prison in Auxerre, Burgundy. His ability to survive in the forest had captured the French imagination ­ turning him into an anti-hero for some ­ but had become a source of great embarrassment to the police.

Chicken smuggler

An employee at a Johannesburg jewelers has been arrested after trying to smuggle gold out of the store in a cooked chicken. The unnamed worker was nabbed at a security checkpoint set up by Browns jewellers at its head office in northern Johannesburg. Police said the man had stuffed the unspecified amount of gold into the cooked bird and was attempting to leave the premises when he was caught. Following the alleged theft, Browns issued a company edict telling female workers to wear bras without underwire at its Dunkeld workshop. Belinda Phillips, the general manager, declined to say whether the new policy was a bid to avoid interference with metal detectors.