A three-foot-tall penguin has received a knighthood from the Norwegian King's Guard during a ceremony at Edinburgh, Scotland.

Olav, a king penguin, has been an honorary member and mascot of the Norwegian King's Guard since the 1980s.

A resident of Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, the original Nils Olav was made an honorary member of the King's Guard in 1972 after being picked out as the guard's mascot by Lieutenant Nils Egelien. The guards adopted him because they often toured the zoo during their visits to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

The king penguin was named after Egelien and Norway's then-King Olav V. When the penguin died, he was replaced by a second penguin, which inherited Nils Olav's name and rank.

The current Nils Olav, the third penguin to serve as the guards' mascot, was promoted to honorary colonel-in-chief in 2005 but yesterday he was knighted by British Maj. Gen. Euan Loudon on behalf of Norway's King Harald V.

Stallone turns to vodka

US actor Sylvester Stallone, mighty destroyer of Soviet opponents in the Hollywood Rambo and Rocky movies, now plans to advertise Russian vodka.

Russian vodka producer Synergy said yesterday it had signed a one-year contract with Stallone, who will appear in TV and newspaper advertisements for the vodka brand Russian Ice from September. Sources valued the deal at $1 million.

Mr Stallone - whose film character John Rambo killed Soviet troops by the dozen in Afghanistan and whose Rocky Balboa humiliated Soviet boxer Ivan Drago - will advertise the product under the slogan: "There is a bit of Russian in all of us".

"The advertising campaign concept was based on the fact that the actor has Russian roots," Synergy said in a statement, referring to Mr Stallone's great-grandmother, Rosa Rabinovich, from the Ukrainian town of Odessa.

Fakes galore

The Brooklyn Museum in the US, which recently announced its prized collection of stone sculptures from ancient Egypt was cluttered with fakes, is planning an exhibit with these pieces to raise awareness of forgeries in the world's art collections.

"We really have to face the fact that mistakes are made in museums just as they are made anywhere else," Edna Russmann, curator of the museum's Egyptian, classical, and ancient Middle Eastern art, said this week. "Museums are in the habit of hiding these things away."

The exhibit, Unearthing the Truth: Egypt's Pagan and Coptic Sculpture, is set to open next February.

Ms Russmann says she was long suspicious about some of the museum's fourth to sixth century Coptic, or Christian Egyptian sculptures, acquired before she joined the museum. Some scholars had already raised doubts about their authenticity and several years ago she decided to put the question to rest.

Ms Russmann said it is probably too late to find out who made the fakes, but the show could prompt other museums around the world to take a closer look at their collections.

Roman sarcophagus

Archaeologists in Britain yesterday opened a 1,800-year-old Roman stone sarcophagus in Newcastle.

The coffin was one of two found at the site of a former chapel and thought to have been used to bury members of a powerful family. As the lid was lifted, the coffin was found to be full of water and sludge but teeth, bone fragments and a hairpin were also found, prompting speculation that the remains were those of a woman.

Richard Annis, from the Durham University team, said the bone preservation was very bad.

"... by great good fortune we found this rather fine jet hairpin by the neck. So we can say that it was a wealthy lady who was buried with this and has lain in the dark from perhaps the fourth century," he said.

The sarcophagus had walls around 10cm thick and weighs up to half a tonne. It is carved out of a single piece of sandstone and the lid was fixed in place with iron pegs sealed with molten lead.

Track suit chic

A new exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum explores how high fashion and sport have paired up over the last decade to become a potent clothing and retail force just in time for the Olympic Games in Beijing.

The curator of the V&A's Fashion V Sport exhibition argues that the role of sportswear has increasingly come to be viewed as couture rather than just jogging or gym attire.

The compact display of the interaction between contemporary fashion and global sportswear brands, showcases some 60 outfits, design drawings, photographs and films demonstrating sporty dress sense, design, advertising and collections.

Some fashion brands taking part in this demonstration show how sport crosses the divide from the frumpy to the fashionable.