German, British and Portuguese beaches slipped most last year in a list of Europe's cleanest bathing sites, while the Netherlands again came out best, an EU report said yesterday.
Greek and Cypriot beaches gained highest marks after the Netherlands.
Overall, beaches in the EU were not quite as clean last year as in 2006, with around 95 per cent making the grade - a drop of nearly one percentage point.
Topping the beach parade was the Netherlands with bathing water at all 86 tested beaches meeting mandatory hygiene standards for the third year running, followed by Greece with 99.5 per cent and Cyprus with 99 per cent.
This year's biggest fallers in terms of water quality included Britain, down three percentage points at 96.5 per cent, Portugal, also down three percentage points at 94.6 and Germany, down four points at 93.7.
Romania, in its first year of testing, had 20 per cent of its beaches missing the grade.
Jesus statue of cocaine
US customs officials have seized a statue of Jesus Christ made from plaster mixed with cocaine - the latest sophisticated attempt to smuggle drugs from Mexico.
Sniffer dogs at the border crossing in Laredo, Texas, alerted officials to the smell of narcotics in the three-kilo statue, which was in the trunk of a car being driven by a Mexican woman into the US.
"The statue tested positive for cocaine," an official at the US Attorney's Office Southern District of Texas said.
US border police arrested a 61-year-old Mexican man accused of offering the woman $80 to carry the statue to the bus station in downtown Laredo.
The woman escaped back to Mexico.
Mexico shark attacks
Cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures due to the La Nina phenomenon may be partly responsible for a spate of fatal shark attacks off Mexico's Pacific coast, a US shark expert has said.
At least two people - a surfer and a US tourist - have been killed by sharks in the last few weeks around the coastal town of Zihuatanejo in the state of Guerrero.
La Nina, which usually results in cooler than normal water in the Pacific, has moved the boundary between cold and warm water closer to the shore, and along with it, fish and their shark predators, George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research said.
Mr Burgess suspects more than one killer shark was responsible for the attacks and they were probably bull sharks. He estimates that the attacking sharks were large, ranging from 2.5 to three metres.
"Bull sharks are probably the species that we as humans need to fear the most because they live close to shore and inhabit the waters that we as humans most often visit," he said.
Tatum O'Neal arrested on drug charge
Oscar-winner Tatum O'Neal, the former child actress, was arrested on suspicion of buying drugs on the streets of New York City on Sunday, police said yesterday.
Ms O'Neal, 44, was caught buying crack cocaine three blocks from her home in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Ms O'Neal first told police she was "doing research for a part" and changed her story after police searched her and found a bag of crack, a bag of regular cocaine and an unused crack pipe.
"I've been clean for a long time," she told the police. "Today was the first time I was relapsing, but you guys saved me. Can you let me go?"
At 10, Ms O'Neal became the youngest person to win an Academy Award for her supporting role in Paper Moon, in which she starred along with her father, Ryan O'Neal. She married tennis star John McEnroe in 1986 and after their divorce in 1992 won custody of their three children. In her memoir A Paper Life, Ms O'Neal wrote that her addiction to heroin in 1995 led to her losing custody of her children.
Beijing reminds foreigners to behave
The organisers of this summer's Beijing Olympics yesterday reminded foreigners coming to China for the Games to behave, warning them that everything from protesting without permission to sleeping outdoors was banned.
The extensive list, written only in Chinese, also said that entry would be banned to anyone who was intent on "subversion" upon arriving in China, those with mental illnesses and sexually transmitted diseases and people who wished to engage in prostitution.
The handbook warns overseas visitors who are expected to come to Beijing this August that China is still a country with many off-limits areas and beholden to bureaucracy and public security organs.
"Foreigners must carry with them relevant documents. The police, in the course of doing their job, have the right to check foreigners' passports and other documents," the handbook says, adding foreigners must register with the police upon arrival.
And you can forget about sleeping outdoors to save a bit of money. It's banned, in order to "maintain public hygiene and the cultured image of cities".