28 September 2007: Records are good for you

This year's Guinness World Records book is published today, so we'll follow tradition and report a few of the more interesting achievements that it documents.

• The record for smashing watermelons over your head is held by Australian John Allwood, who broke 40 in just one minute;
• The most books typed backwards is 57, by Italian Michele Santana;
• American Jackie Bibby shared his bath with a record number of live western diamondback rattlesnakes - 75 of them, to be precise;
• And Frenchman Michel Lotito has the weirdest diet, having consumed a total of 128 bicycles, 15 supermarket trolleys, six chandeliers, two beds and a pair of skis.

Other records include throwing a washing machine for the longest distance; keeping the most yo-yos going simultaneously; and holding your breath, which you would have to do for more than 14 minutes to have a hope of winning for next year's book.

SaintFM feels that few of the achievements have any practical application, though maybe German Thomas Vogel is an exception: in one minute he managed, with one hand, to unfasten 56 bras.

27 September 2007: Gone home in 60 seconds

Californian police thought they'd scored a victory in their narcotics war when they stopped three Mexican youths just inside American territory who they believed were smuggling drugs.

The arresting officer handcuffed them and put them in his patrol car while he searched their truck. Unfortunately for him he left his engine running with his keys in the ignition, so one of the lads, still wearing handcuffs, grabbed the steering wheel and headed back into Mexico.

Mexican police used a helicopter to locate the American patrol vehicle, which they found in a remote area near the border.

The youths escaped.

26 September 2007: Spellbound

An astrologer in northern Greece has been charged with fraud for casting fake spells.

The astrologer took payments from a woman over a nine-month period, supposedly for spells to induce her lover to return. In total the payments came to about 100,000 pounds.

Eventually the woman despaired and spoke to the police.

Astrologers and diviners make a brisk business in Greece, where belief in the 'evil eye' still runs strong, and where the reading of palms and coffee-cups is commonly used to plan relationships and even business deals.

25 September 2007: Unidentified flying objects

There is usually little to amuse on the tense Israeli-Syrian border, but a recent escapade makes an exception.

Israeli radar systems picked up a potential incursion from Syria by unidentified aircraft, and sounded the alert. Fighter planes were scrambled to intercept the enemy, and raced to their target, only to discover that the invaders were: a flock of birds.

Israeli radar admitted the mistake, saying that officers had been unable to rule them out as enemy aircraft from the screen and were preferring not to take any risk.

24 September 2007: Politics with no cover-up

The new women's political party in Poland says it has nothing to hide, and is proving it with its new campaign posters.

The posters, for the parliamentary elections on October 21st, show various of the candidates posing nude.

Seven women, including the party's founder and president, appear on the posters, with the slogan "Everything for the future... and nothing to hide."

Polls taken before the posters' launch gave the party only 3 percent of the vote. If the posters improve that, politicians around the world will doubtless start thinking very carefully.