Last week was a ...

Good Week for clean streets, as an undercover team of plain-clothes agents went into action in Tel Aviv to photograph dog owners who let their pets foul the footpath without cleaning up after them. The new regime began after the failure of a campaign to urge dog owners to behave responsibly. "It is a problem and we have to deal with it," said a city spokesman. Those caught by the pooper-snoopers will be liable to fines of $100. There are 12,000 dogs in Tel Aviv.

Bad Week for clean air, as Richard Thomas, a retired US army colonel, filed a lawsuit against his wife, alleging that the smoke from her cigarettes is a carcinogenic pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act. He says he filed the suit because he loves his wife. He will drop the action if she gives up smoking. They have been married for 43 years.

Disappointing Week for Chan Wing-hong, a 38-year-old, 1.37-metre-tall Hong Kong man who went on trial for murdering and dismembering his lover because she called him a dwarf. He said that the five weeks he dated prostitute Chow Mei-hing were the happiest of his life but he stabbed her when she said: "You bloody dwarf. I see no reason that I like you." Her comment had left him "very disappointed", he said.

Surprising Week for Olga Lauppe, who gave birth to a baby boy without realising that she was pregnant until about five minutes before he appeared. "I had gained some weight recently," she said, "but I am rather hefty." "We really don't have an explanation for this odd phenomenon," said Dr OP Bleker, head of the gynaecology department at Amsterdam's Academic Medical Centre.