Wanted: Cheerful, chubby men, preferably with fluffy white beards and no criminal record, ready to work hard for one month. Germany is running out of qualified Santa Clauses and needs to recruit and train them fast, a leading job agency says.

Germans are trying to shut out the financial crisis by taking comfort in traditional festivities, and there is an acute shortage of Santas to entertain children at shopping centres, Christmas markets and private parties.

"Being Santa is not an easy job," Jens Wittenberger, in charge of Santa Claus recruitment at the Jobcafe Munich, said yesterday. "To be honest, not many people have what it takes to be a good Father Christmas". The job centre wants its Santas to be child-friendly, good organisers, reliable and have acting skills. They also need a clean police record.

"Santas can make up to €60 an hour," Mr Wittenberger said. "That's not bad, is it?"

Salary cuts for politicians

Salaries for Singapore politicians, who are among the highest paid in the world, will be cut by up to 19 per cent next year due to a weakening economy, said state broadcaster Channel NewsAsia yesterday.

Singapore ministers, who are paid millions each year, have a component in their salary that is pegged to economic growth and with Singapore in a recession and the outlook gloomy for next year, this variable will fall, Channel NewsAsia said on its website, quoting the government's Public Services Division.

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, whose pay was increased to S$3.76 million (€1.91 million) this year - or five times that of US President George W. Bush - will see his salary fall to S$3.04 million (€1.55 million).

The Southeast Asian country has said it needed to pay top dollar to compete with top private sector salaries and to retain talent in the public sector, as the city-state becomes a growing centre for financial services. The downturn has also hit the private sector, with the country's biggest bank DBS Group and shipping firm NOL laying off staff.

Man will not leave Mexico airport

A Japanese man has been sleeping rough at Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico for three months.

Hiroshi Nohara flew in from Tokyo in September with a tourist visa and a return ticket, but has never left Terminal 1.

Mr Nohara said: "There is no specific reason (why he chose Mexico). But if I had to come up with an answer then I would say I wanted to breathe the air of Mexico at the airport."

Worm removed from woman's brain

A woman from the US has had a live worm removed from her brain.

Surgeons thought Rosemary Alvarez had a brain tumour, but on operating they discovered the worm.

Peter Nakaji, her doctor, said Mrs Alvarez probably picked up the worm after eating undercooked meat.

Trees for kids beat global warming

An Indonesian city battling the effects of deforestation has come up with a novel way of tackling the problem. Would-be families must plant a tree.

"Everyone who wants to get married or apply for a birth certificate must plant a tree," Syahrum Syah Setia, the head of Balikpapan city's Environmental Impact Management Agency, said. "The city's condition is already worrying, and we must act to tackle global warming."

The areas around Balikpapan city in East Kalimantan province have lost some of their forest cover to deforestation from the mining and timber sectors.

East Kalimantan loses 350,000-500,000 hectares of forest land a year and the government can only replant 30,000 hectares of that, local environmental group Walhi said.

Indonesia has lost an estimated 70 per cent of its original forest land, although it still has a total forest area of more than 91 million hectares

Mystery piano perplexes police

Authorities in Harwich, Massachusetts, are probing the mysterious appearance of a piano, in good working condition, in the middle of the woods. They don't know whether it was a theft, a prank, or a roundabout effort to bring some holiday cheer to the police?

Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact - and, apparently, in tune.

Sergent Adam Hutton of the Harwich Police Department said information has been broadcast to all the other police departments in the Cape Cod area in hopes of drumming up a clue, however minor it may be. But so far, the investigation is flat.

Also of note: Near the mystery piano - serial number 733746 - was a bench, positioned as though someone was about to play.

It took a handful of police to move the piano into a vehicle to transport it to storage, so it would appear that putting it into the woods took more than one person.

Pub calls time on horse regular

A Tyneside pub has called time on one of its regular visitors, Peggy the horse, after the premises were refurbished.

Peggy, a 13-year-old mare, used to enjoy a pint of beer and a packet of crisps alongside her owner at the Alexandra Hotel in Jarrow.

However, she is no longer allowed to prop up the bar following a refit which included new carpets.