London: A British man accused by police of driving at 115 m.p.h. in a Fiat Punto thought the accusation so ridiculous he enlisted an expert driver to help prove his new car was incapable of going that fast.
"I was happy to put my hands up and admit that I was driving at 85 m.p.h. but the idea that my little Fiat Punto 1.2 litre could manage 115 m.p.h. was laughable," Steve Lucas said.
The law student spent 18 months fighting the charges, hiring a traffic consultant to test- drive his Punto on a private racecourse. He found the best the car could manage, going downhill with a following wind, was 104 m.p.h. Police were finally forced to drop the speeding charges, although Mr Lucas was fined £40 for driving without due care and attention.
London: A cleaner at London's Tate Modern art gallery threw out a bag of garbage which formed part of an artwork because it was thought to be rubbish.
The transparent bag of garbage -- full of newspaper, cardboard and other bits of paper -- formed part of a work by German-born artist Gustav Metzger called "Recreation Of First Public Demonstration Of Auto-Destructive Art". It was on display next to a sheet of nylon that had been spattered with acid, and a metal sculpture on a table, when a cleaner tossed it out with the other rubbish.
A Tate spokesman said the mistake was made the day before the exhibition opened at the end of June, and although the bag was later rescued, it had been damaged and Metzger had to replace it with another one.
Beijing: Sexual frustration has turned a Chinese chimpanzee from a mild-mannered simian into a problem primate who smokes cigarettes and spits at visitors, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday.
Feili, a female chimp in the city of Zhengzhou in the central province of Henan, picked up her nasty habits by imitating visitors who behaved "improperly" around her, zoo director Liu Bing said.
But, Mr Liu said, the root cause of Feili's transformation from a "gentle girl" into a "shrew" lay with the inability to find her a satisfactory mate.
A male chimpanzee at the zoo has failed to live up to Feili's sexual demands, and she has snubbed other potential suitors.