Police in Japan have been left red-faced by an apparent murder that turned out to be an unusual case of mistaken identity.

It began in the morning with a frantic call from a couple who had spotted a "corpse" while out walking their dog in a mountain forest in Izu, central Japan, the ZakZak news website reported today.

Fifteen officers were dispatched to the scene, where they discovered a human form wrapped in plastic and tightly bound around the neck, midriff and ankles, with hair protruding from one end.

The body was left untouched and taken away for examination, and the crime scene duly secured by a police cordon.

Back at the local police headquarters, officials notified reporters who had turned up early the same morning to cover an annual earthquake drill. They began preparing to write up the launch of a major murder investigation.

Dozens of extra officers were dispatched to interview potential witnesses, while the evening edition of the local newspaper carried a report of the gruesome find, complete with a photograph of the body's resting place.

By mid-afternoon, the body was in the hands of police pathologists. But when they sliced open the wrapping, they were confronted not by a decomposing corpse, but by a life-sized sex doll.

A police spokesman apologised for the commotion but defended his officers, saying they had simply been following protocol by leaving the concealed "body" untouched until it was in the hands of pathologists.

Though no crime had been committed, the spokesman could not resist admonishing the doll's mystery owner. The doll, he told bemused reporters, showed signs of repeated use.

"Our guess is that the owner didn't want to take a risk by throwing it away with the rest of his rubbish," he said. "It was an incredibly irresponsible thing to do."

Moral of the day: don't throw the blow-up doll with the garbage next time

I find it ironic, since Japan is supposed to be one of the smartest countries in the world.

-Kat

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian museum Thursday defied Pope Benedict and refused to remove a modern art sculpture portraying a crucified green frog holding a beer mug and an egg that the Vatican had condemned as blasphemous.

The board of the Museion museum in the northern city of Bolzano decided by a majority vote that the frog was a work of art and would stay in place for the remainder of an exhibition.

The wooden sculpture by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger depicts a frog about 1 meter 30 cm (4 feet) high nailed to brown cross and holding a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in another.

Called "Zuerst die Fuesse," (Feet First), it wears a green loin cloth and is nailed through the hands and the feet in the manner of Jesus Christ. Its green tongue hangs out of its mouth.

Kippenberger's works have been shown at the Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery in London and at the Venice Biennale, and retrospectives are planned in Los Angeles and New York.

Museum officials in the northern bi-lingual Alto Adige region near the Austrian border said the artist, who died in 1997, considered it a self-portrait illustrating human angst.

Pope Benedict, who is German himself and was recently on holiday not far from Bolzano, obviously did not agree.

The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the pope's name to Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture. Pahl released parts of the letter, which said the work "wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God's love."

Pahl, whose province is heavily Catholic, was so outraged by the sculpture of the pop-eyed amphibian that he went on a hunger strike to demand its removal and had to be taken to hospital during the summer.

"Surely this is not a work of art but a blasphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people," Pahl told Reuters by telephone.

"This decision to keep the statue there is is totally unacceptable. It is a grave offence to our Catholic population," he said.

Art experts defended the work.

"Art must always be free and the artist should not have any restrictions on freedom of expression," Claudio Strinati, a superintendent for Rome's state museums, told an Italian newspaper Thursday.

It appears the number of sane people in the world decreases by the minute, but I gotta say....this kept me laughing for hours!

-Kat

Have you longed to indulge in a Yorkshire Pudding on a hot summer's day?

Then a new range of 20 ice creams created with Britain's best-known delicacies may be the ones for you.

Ranging from Yorkshire pudding flavour to Arbroath smokies, the ice creams are designed to get British taste buds working.

Morelli's ice cream parlour at London store Harrods made the ice creams after Laterooms.com polled 500 people to pick flavours that best represented the UK.

Other Flavours included things like Clotted cream, Sausage and mash, Pork pie, haggis, Cornish pasty, Cheddar cheese flavour and Lancashire hot pot .

Less palate-testing varieties are Eccles cake and Kendal mint cake.

Kathy Gwinnett, of Laterooms.com, said: "It is interesting that the humble Yorkshire pudding tops the list of favourite British delicacies.

"We're lucky to be spoilt for choice and the massive array of regional flavours that make up the taste of Britain shows just how much the UK has to offer."

And just when you thought they couldn't create a more bizarre food mix, people never cease to amaze me.

-Kat