News of the weird

Easy catch: A useful by-product of Columbia's congressional elections last weekend has been the arrest of some 3,000 wanted criminals. Police chief General Rosso Jose Serrano said they were easy to catch because they had to hand over their identity cards to polling officials. Most were wanted for murder, armed robbery, fraud and sex crimes. "We did an important job for democracy," Serrano said.

Lucky Lizard: Charles Wood, the unofficial mayor of Lizard Lick, a town of 1,300 people in North Carolina, has expressed great joy at the choice of the town by Nintendo to launch a new video game that involves cartoon dinosaurs that pick off enemies with their long tongues. Mr Wood said the event was the most exciting news to hit the community since the state replaced the town's only traffic light last year.

News scents: The lastest issue of the Tianjin Youth News has been printed on scented paper to mark its 15th anniversary. This is the first perfumed newspaper to appear in China.