The Southeast Foundation for Biomedical Research has established a $1.7 million pension fund to build apartments containing exercise machines and colour televisions for chimpanzees who have retired from AIDS research.

A government agency in Bulgaria offered a 10 day holiday to people who volunteered for a brigade that barehandedly fought off swarms of marauding field mice that were endangering crops.

Police in St Cloud, Minnesota, searched in vain for a young man who went into Kinko's Copy Centre, pulled down his trousers and leaped onto a photocopier in an apparent attempt to photocopy his genitals. When the glass broke, he fled, having caused $4300 worth of damage.

Daniellen Dickleman, 27, asked North Dakota judge Cynthia Rothe for lenience on her husband after he attempted to kill the family dog, she had intervened, so he shot her instead. However, she claimed the incident had strengthened their marrage.