■UNITED STATES
State employees caught
A warning to any slacker state employee who thinks it is wise to deal drugs, sleep and watch TV just a few steps from the State Capitol while you are supposed to be working: You will probably end up in jail. One of Albany’s strangest cases of misconduct by public servants came to a close on Thursday when two state workers who were discovered operating a drug-dealing operation out of a makeshift party lair pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding the government. One of the men, Gary Pivoda, also pleaded guilty to a charge of grand larceny. He will spend one year in the Albany County Jail and pay more than US$2,000 in restitution.
■COLOMBIA
New aphrodisiac touted
A group of young student chefs have unveiled a new dessert made from passion fruit and Viagra, claiming it had aphrodisiac effects on everybody who has tried it. “We got the idea four months ago when we were dealing with a nutrition project for older people,” Juan Sebastian Gomez said at an international gastronomy fair on Thursday. “It occurred to us that we could use passion fruit, with all its connotations … and Viagra, and we came up with this dessert,” said Gomez, who along with his three colleagues is studying the culinary arts at a national college. Gomez said the new dessert was tried on a group of volunteers. “It’s really an aphrodisiac. By trial and error we found out it works. We gave it to a group without telling them it contained Viagra. A second group was in the know and both experienced heightened libido,” he said. “They felt their bodies’ need to quench that desire,” he said.
■CANADA
Thatcher the cat dies
When the transport minister decided to name his cat Thatcher, he likely never thought it would cause quite the stir it did during a gala dinner last week. During a tribute to the military in Toronto, some 1,700 luminaries, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, were in the middle of dinner on Tuesday night when smart phones throughout the room began to buzz with the news: “Lady Thatcher has passed away.” Dinner chatter abruptly veered to expressions of shock and reminiscences of Margaret Thatcher, the 84-year-old former British prime minister, as news of her apparent passing spread like wildfire.
■MEXICO
‘No kissing’ ad causes stir
Pachuca state said it wanted to warn people not to greet each other with kisses — not to avoid kissing the mayor of Madrid. Hidalgo state put up a large billboard with flu prevention measures that featured a man and woman kissing cheeks with a black X-mark across it and the slogan “Don’t greet people with kisses.” The couple was later identified by a Spanish newspaper as Madrid Mayor Albert Ruiz-Gallardon and a political rival. Hidalgo Governor Miguel Angel Osorio said the use of the mayor’s image was unintentional and the company that designed the campaign likely did not check the identities of the people in the photo.
■MEXICO
‘Witch’ killer caught
Prosecutors said a 78-year-old man has been arrested and charged with homicide for allegedly killing a woman he claimed cast a spell on him. The Attorney General’s Office in Michoacan state said Santiago Iniguez was charged with beating to death Modesta Navarro Nieves with a club and severely injuring her husband. The office said on Thursday that the attack occurred in 1998 in a rural mountain hamlet.
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