Afghan nationals who work at NATO's Kandahar Airfield must use their own 'separate but equal' toilet facilities, according to a March dispatch in Toronto's Globe & Mail newspaper.

The American officer in charge of administrative contracts said the policy was based on hygiene, in that some locals customarily stand on toilet seats and then squat down, which he said creates unusual messes, but also on some Muslims' carelessness in cleaning themselves in preparation for prayer, when their water bottles sometimes fall in and have to be fished out.

Least competent restaurant management

Finally, after four weeks of one customer's walking out on a dinner check, the staff of an O'Charley's restaurant in Bloomington, Ind., caught him.

The diner had appearedon four consecutive Wednesdays nights, and on all four occasions he ordered two gin and tonics, ate a rib-eye steak, asked to use the rest room, and then walked out on the same $25.96 tab.

On March 28, the staff finally wised up and waited for him outside as he again tried to sneak out. He was arrested.

Science on the cutting edge

American researchers in West Africa believe they've found the first instance of an animal (other than humans) building a multi-step weapon, after observing wild chimpanzees grab sticks from one to four feet long, sharpen the ends with their teeth, and murderously jab them into deep tree hollows where delicious bush babies may be nesting. Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team even reported observing the chimps tasting the tips after the stabs, to ascertain whether they had actually located a prey. (One of the researchers said the ferocity of the jabbing reminded her of the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.)

Researchers at the Second University of Naples (Caserta, Italy) recently reported the case of a 65-year-old man who, because of damage to the fronto-temporal region of his brain, habitually assumes an identity appropriate to whatever setting he finds himself in (e.g. a doctor when he's around doctors, a bartender when in a bar), a behaviour reminiscent of the Woody Allen character Zelig. The researchers said the man lacks awareness about his tendency to switch roles and in fact suffers from amnesia about his life since the brain damage, according to a March report by the British Psychological Society.

Animal awesomeness

In April, two Labrador retrievers (Lucky and Flo) sniffed out another shipment of pirated DVDs (worth about US$435,000) in a building in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. It was at least the second such bust since mid-March, when the U.S. Motion Picture Association of America loaned the dogs to Malaysian authorities because they can detect the polycarbonate and unique chemicals in the discs. Sosuccessful are Lucky and Flo that an unspecified crime gang has reportedly put out a contract on them.

Ada Barak's spa in the northern Israeli town of Talmey El'Azar features a 'snake massage' for the equivalent of US$70, for which six king or milk snakes slither over the client's body (a therapy said not to be stress-increasing, but stress-reducing, according to a January Reuters dispatch).

New product launches

A US$60,000 mattress from the Swedish manufacturer Hastens, introduced to the United States recently for people who (according to the advertising) might believe that they're so special that they're entitled to a luxuriously rejuvenating night's sleep.

Holy drinking Water in half-litre bottles, from Wayne Enterprises of Linden, Calif., which supposedly obtained blessings from Catholic and Anglican priests for the ordinary purified water.

Can't stop the greed

The three Kentucky lawyers who won US$200 million for their clients in a 2001 settlement with the manufacturer of the diet drug Phen-Fen, and whose contract called for a maximum of one-third commission (about US$67 million) actually took US$59 million more than that, according to clients who testified before a federal grand jury in March, which is expected to indict the lawyers soon for fraud, according to a New York Times dispatch. The lawyers had explained that they were taking an extra US$20 million because they had decided to create a 'charity' and were simply entitled to the other US$39 million because they had to work extra hard. The Kentucky Bar Association has suspended the lawyers.

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate