World Briefs

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died, aged 102. He died from a heart attack at his home in Basel, Switzerland on Tuesday.

Mr Hofmann discovered LSD -the favoured drug of the 1960s counter-culture - when a tiny quantity leaked onto his hand during a laboratory experiment in 1943.

He noted a "remarkable restlessness, combined with slight dizziness" that made him stop his work. "At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxication-like condition, characterised by an extremely stimulated imagination...

"In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight too unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours," he wrote in his book "LSD - My Problem Child."

Mr Hofmann defended his "wonder drug" for decades after it was banned in the 1960s.

Le Pen sells bullet-proof car

French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen is looking to make a bit of extra cash by putting his old bullet-proof car up for sale on eBay.

Mr Le Pen, who stunned France in the 2002 presidential election when he finished second, put his party headquarters up for sale earlier this year after humiliating defeats in presidential and legislative elections last year left his group deep in the red.

Another drain on Mr Le Pen's finances was the €10,000 fine he incurred in February when he was found guilty of "contesting crimes against humanity" for saying the Nazi occupation of France was "not particularly inhumane".

Asked why the car was up for sale, a National Front spokesman said: "Money, money, glorious money."

Secondhand body parts

Families in Philadelphia who claim the corpses of more than 1,000 relatives were dismembered and sold in an illegal body-parts scandal have sued funeral directors and others.

The class action suit represents hundreds of people who claim their relatives' body parts were harvested for medical use without their consent. It charges seven individuals, and the funeral homes and human tissue services with which they worked, with conspiracy, negligence and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The suit alleges that after removing parts from the corpses, the accused replaced harvested bone and tissue with foreign objects such as PVC piping "so that bodies would still appear normal for their pending visitations, funerals, or post-mortem proceedings."

Colossal squid examined

A colossal squid caught from deep Antarctic waters was defrosted yesterday by New Zealand scientists keen to discover more about the little-known giant predator.

The eight-metre-long colossal squid which weighs about 495 kilos is the largest and best preserved adult colossal squid to be caught. It has been on ice for over a year after being caught by a deep-sea fishing boat.

The squid has hundreds of sharp hooks on its arms as well as a large and powerful beak which could easily snap the backbone of a fish up to two metres long. The specimen has eyes that are 27 centimetres in diameter.

The scientists will have about 6-8 hours to examine the squid before it begins to decay.

It will be preserved in formalin, and stored for display at New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa, later this year.

Italians' income on internet

Italians were surprised and outraged yesterday to discover that their income levels were available for public viewing on an internet site.

As part of a crack-down on tax evasion, the outgoing centre-left government made public every citizen's declared taxable income on the state's tax website.

The website, www.agenziaentrate.gov.it, was difficult to access yesterday, due to massive traffic as curious Italians tried to see what their neighbours and celebrities were earning.

"It's a clear violation of privacy law," said consumer group Adoc, "A danger for an increase in crime and violence as the data are an irresistible source for criminals."