Four guards at a prison in central Denmark enjoyed a cake baked for them by inmates only to end up in hospital with suspected narcotic poisoning. Minutes after eating the cake in the wing of Nyborg prison housing members of the motorcycle gang Black Cobra, a female guard complained of not being able to feel her hands and legs.

Lars Erik Siegumfeldt, a spokesman with the Danish Prison and Probation Service, said the guards would not have been suspicious of the gift. "Normally the guards and the inmates are very close in the Danish system," he said. "Inmates bake cakes every day."

Two female and two male guards were taken to Odense University hospital and are expected to fully recover. The wing was locked down so police could gather evidence.

Dolphin saves two whales

The case of two stranded whales saved by a dolphin off the coast of New Zealand could be the first such case in the world, a conservation worker said yesterday. Moko the dolphin, a regular visitor to the coast of Mahia on the east Coast of New Zealand's North Island, became an instant hero after leading two pygmy whales that had repeatedly stranded into deep water on Monday.

"As far as I know it's the only documented instance of this happening," said local Department of Conservation officer Malcolm Smith. The disoriented mother and calf had resisted attempts to herd them out to sea, and kept restranding on the beach, to the point where Mr Smith said the pair would likely have to be killed. Then Moko appeared, and came right up to the whales before leading them out to sea.

"Quite clearly the attitude of the whales changed when the dolphin arrived on the scene. They responded virtually straight away," Mr Smith said. "The dolphin managed in a couple of minutes what we had failed to do in an hour and a half."

Bear convicted of stealing honey

A Macedonian court convicted a bear of theft and damage for stealing honey from a beekeeper who fought off the attacks with thumping "turbo-folk" music.

"I tried to distract the bear with lights and music because I heard bears are afraid of that," Zoran Kiseloski told top-selling daily Dnevnik after the year-long case of The Bear vs The Beekeeper ended in the beekeeper's favour.

"So I bought a generator, lit up the area and put on songs of (Serbian 'turbo-folk' star) Ceca." The bear stayed away for a few weeks, but came back when the generator ran out of power and the music fell silent, Mr Kiseloski said, adding, "it attacked the beehives again".

A court in the city of Bitola found the bear guilty, and since it had no owner and belonged to a protected species, ordered the state to pay the 140,000 denars (€2,260) damage it caused to the hives.

Threw cat off balcony

A Berlin plumber who threw his ex-girlfriend's cat to its death from a fifth-floor balcony has been sentenced to seven months in jail.

"I just exploded," the 37-year-old plumber told the court. The man, who admitted his guilt, said his girlfriend had recently moved out and left behind Popeye, a two-year-old black and white cat. He had just returned from a nearby bar and got angry at the cat for making a mess, the court heard.

"The crime was especially barbaric," Judge Monika Pelcz told the court after sentencing the man to jail without probation, according to a report in Der Tagesspiegel newspaper yesterday.

Accountant loses grape lawsuit

An accountant who tried to sue British retail chain Marks & Spencer after he slipped on a grape and injured himself lost his case yesterday and was ordered to pay legal costs.

Alexander Martin-Sklan, 55, sued for more than £300,000 (€391,645) over the 2004 incident in which he said a squashed grape from the store got lodged under the sole of his right sandal, causing him to slip and fall. He said he suffered a ruptured quadricep, adverse psychological effects and depression following the incident, which meant that his business suffered and he could no longer ski or play tennis.

But the judge ruled against him, determining that while there may have been a grape or some "crushed fruit or similar" on the sole of Martin-Sklan's sandal, he was not persuaded that it "caused the claimant to slip".

"In my judgment it was one of those accidents that could happen to anyone," the judge said.

Flying trampoline halts train

A German high-speed train was forced to make an emergency stop when a trampoline was blown on to the tracks from a nearby garden, police said.

The Intercity Express (ICE) was travelling from Cologne to Vienna and was forced to stop outside Bonn, Cologne police spokesman Frank Freund said in a statement. "The ICE only came to a halt 300 metres after the blockage," Mr Freund said. The train sustained damage to its front lights but after checks it was allowed to continue.