Robot fish developed by British scientists are to be released into the sea off north Spain to detect pollution.

If next year's trial of the first five robotic fish in the Spanish port of Gijon is successful, the team hopes they will be used in rivers, lakes and seas across the world.

The carp-shaped robots, costing £20,000 apiece, mimic the movement of real fish and are equipped with chemical sensors to sniff out potentially hazardous pollutants, such as leaks from vessels or underwater pipelines. They will transmit the information back to shore using Wi-Fi technology.

Unlike earlier robotic fish, which needed remote controls, they will be able to navigate independently without any human interaction.

The robot fish will be 1.5 metres long - roughly the size of a seal. (Reuters)

Dinner set made of cocaine

Spanish police said yesterday they had detained a man who received a parcel in the mail from Venezuela containing a dinner set that was made with 20 kilos of cocaine.

The 35-year-old was arrested as he received the package containing the 42-piece dinner set made up of cups, plates and bowls at his home in Barcelona.

The package was sent to Barcelona from Maracaibo, in Venezuela, via London in the middle of February.

Police suspect the man had been recruited by a Venezuelan drug trafficking gang to receive the package which he was supposed to hand over to members of the group who would then extract the cocaine from the dinner set.

Barcelona has been the scene in recent days of several creative attempts to smuggle cocaine into Spain, the main entry point for the drug into Europe.

Recently police detained an Ecuadorian woman at Barcelona airport who tried to smuggle liquid cocaine in spray cans of products to starch clothes or clean glass into Spain.

Police also arrested a 66-year-old Chilean man at the airport at the beginning of the month after discovering that his broken leg was supported by a "cast" made out of cocaine. (AFP)

A turtle for the Pope

Pope Benedict flew from Cameroon to Angola yesterday with an unusual travelling companion - a turtle.

Just before he left Cameroon, the Pope met a group of Baka Pygmies, hunter-gatherers from the country's rain forests. They came to the grounds of the Vatican embassy in the capital Yaounde and gave him the turtle, about 30 cm long.

Taken aboard the plane in a wicker cage, it made the flight to Luanda in the first class section of an Alitalia jet along with the Vatican entourage, without apparent discomfort.

The Vatican said it was not yet clear if the turtle - which has not yet been named - would be left in Angola or find a new home in the Vatican gardens. (Reuters)

Russian ads use Obama

Obama ice cream, anyone? Chocolate-vanilla ice cream is one of several Russian products being marketed using America's first black President, even as critics call the ads racist. Other ads featuring US President Barack Obama have promoted tanning salons and tooth-whitening services. But the creator of one Obama-themed ad - for ice cream bars which have a chocolate-flavoured centre embedded in a layer of vanilla - insisted yesterday that it was not racist and should be seen as a joke.

The ad features a smiling, cartoonish black man flashing a V-for-Victory sign in front of the US Capitol, along with the Russian slogan: "Everyone's talking about it: dark inside white!"

Andrei Gubaidullin, who created the ad, said that it was not racist and that Russia simply had a different attitude to race than Western countries.

"For Russia, this is not racist. It is fun and that's it," said Mr Gubaidullin, creative director at Voskhod advertising agency. "We don't consider teasing ethnic groups racist." (AFP)

'Were you expecting Martians?'

Pressed as to why the speakers at an EU summit press conference comprised of six men and no women, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek gave a reply that was out of this world on Thursday.

"Why, were you expecting Martians?" he asked his interlocutor as he shared the table with EU Commission chief José Manuel Barroso and four other male worthies.

Mr Topolanek, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, had no more to say on the subject, as the press conference descended into laughter. (AFP)

Banana split

A stunned supermarket saleswoman stumbled upon 28 kilograms of cocaine worth over a million euros while unpacking boxes of bananas in southern Germany, police said yesterday.

The crates of fruit, flown in from Colombia and imported into Germany, were probably mixed up when they were being loaded onto the delivery trucks.

"Some dealers must have picked up the wrong boxes," a police spokesman said, adding that he would like to see the look on the faces of the drug dealers when they try to get their fix from the nutritious snack. (AFP)