Diplomatic tensions between Colombia and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez have generated fierce rhetoric, political protests and even troop movements along the frontier between the Andean neighbours.
Now a Colombian designer has come up with an idea he hopes will create a humorous way to deal with local anger over the man many in his country consider a threat to national security: a fake Chavez voodoo doll complete with a set of needles.
An idea sure to enrage many Venezuelans who see Chavez as a saviour who has empowered his country's poor, the Chavez Personal Voodoo Doll is a cushion with a printed likeness of the anti-US leader and is sold in two Bogota boutiques for $6.
"People ask if this is not an aggressive thing, but I think it is really the opposite," said the doll's creator, Nicolas Mendoza. "It's better for people to stab a pin into a cloth doll than do some real violence."
EU states oppose plan to end 'bent cucumber' rule
Bent courgettes and cucumbers, misshapen garlic, warped leeks and onions? Who sets the rules? One of the most popular jibes about EU over-regulation, where zealous Brussels bureaucrats are portrayed as wanting to set permitted sizes, lengths - and "bendiness" - for household fruit and vegetables, has come back to haunt the EU.
But this time, Brussels wants to cut the red tape and get rid of what it calls "unnecessary marketing standards". The trouble is, several EU governments don't like the idea. As part of last year's reform of fruit and vegetable rules, EU farm ministers signed up to a deal to simplify much of tortuous policy and subsidy regulations.
But Europe's farm chief got a shock when she tried to put some of that into practice. Her idea was to scrap 26 out of 36 marketing standards that apply to a wide range of products such as beans, cauliflower, melons, spinach and watermelon.
Spain kitchen spat boils over
Top international chef Ferran Adria from Spain yesterday hit back at a fellow three-star Michelin cook who labelled his type of "molecular gastronomy" pretentious. Last month Santi Santamaria, a traditionalist, took aim at restaurants like Adria's El Bulli which is ranked as the world's best by Britain's Restaurant magazine. antamaria said Adria's dishes were designed to impress rather than satisfy and used chemicals that actually put diners' health at risk.
Adria's avant-garde creations are often the result of a high-tech distillation of flavours into foams and gels.
Russia charges three men in Politkovskaya murder
Russian prosecutors yesterday charged three men with a role in the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was critical of the Kremlin's rights record in Chechnya, but her newspaper's editor said he did not believe the crime was solved.
A gunman shot Ms Politkovs-kaya in her central Moscow apartment block in October 2006, a murder which shocked the West but barely resonated in Russia outside a small band of intelligentsia who read her reports in the newspaper.
"Three figures are accused in the murder of the journalist," the Russian Prosecutor-General's office said in a statement. Prosecutors named the men as: Sergei Khad-zhikurbanov, Dzhabrail Makh-mudov and Ibragim Makhmudov.
Last month Russian prosecutors named a different man, who they say shot Ms Politkovskaya, as Rustam Makhmudov.
Fidel Castro video puts latest rumours to rest
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro's appearance in a televised video on Tuesday night put to rest the latest rumours of his imminent demise and suggested he still plays a significant role in Cuba's government.
Gen. Castro, 81, looked vigorous as he chatted with his close ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and his brother, Cuban President Raul Castro, in a sun-dappled garden in the first public images of the ailing former leader since mid-January.
The man who took power in a 1959 revolution and led Cuba for 49 years has not been seen in public since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006, but has surfaced sporadically in videos and photographs shown in the island's state-run media.