Comfort food, Chilean style
Many chefs will happily spend hours attempting to convince you of the artistic merits of their creations, but one Chilean has taken the idea of "food as art" to the extreme.

Artist Alejandra Prieto - who was quoted in a local paper as saying: "I like to use food for the diversity of colours and textures, and because it gives off a poetic vibe" - has put on an exhibition of works hewn from foodstuffs at Die Ecke Gallery in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

The exhibition features a range of chairs made of sausages, fish skin and bars of chocolate, and (the pice de rsistance) a sofa made of jam. Very tasty.

Mellow moos for blissed-out bovines
Russian consumers may notice a difference in their morning cereal "hit" after a 40-tonne crop of marijuana was mixed into the natural feed crop of a herd of cows.

Normally, such hauls of the illegal drug are destroyed, but an official ruling has given the cows in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals the go-ahead to satisfy their attacks of the munchies with the adulterated crop.

Without it, reports Russian newspaper Novye Izvestia, the cows would have had nothing to eat this winter after much of their regular fodder of clover and sunflowers was destroyed.

Passion palace for pining pooches
Randy pets looking for a spot of how's-yer-father could do worse than head to Brazil for their holidays this summer. Spotting
a niche in the market, an enterprising entrepreneur in Barra Funda, near São Paulo, has opened a love motel for pets.

The Pet Love motel works much like the celebrated love hotels of Japan, which feature themed rooms crammed with saucy decor and imagery inspired to help the occupants get it on - albeit this time with a pet bent.

The newspaper Las Ultimas Noticias quoted a spokesman for the hotel as saying: "Pets have needs and they also want some excitement."