● <B>Well, if you can?t even trust a hitman... </B>

A Japanese woman called in the police after a hitman she paid to kill her lover?s wife failed to carry out the job. The 32-year-old Tokyo woman was arrested Wednesday for incitement to murder, the Daily Yomiuri newspaper said Friday.The woman contacted a private detective through a Web site last November and paid him one million yen in cash to murder her love rival, the paper said. The 40-year-old detective accepted the money and suggested he could carry out the job by chasing the victim on a motorcycle and spraying her with a biological agent in a tunnel. Police also arrested the private detective and found the alleged target safe and well, the paper said.

● <B>Temple going to the dogs </B>

The newest acolyte at a temple on an outlying South Korea island is a dog who has learned to sit, stay and perform Buddhist prayer rituals alongside the monks. Monks at Buljang Temple on Chindo island off the southwest coast said the stray called ?Hama? now joined them at prayer.Hama ? Korean for hippopotamus ? follows monks into the temple and bows in the same manner for prayer, a temple official said. Some local Buddhists, who believe in reincarnation, are wondering what Hama may have been in a past life.

● <B>Power dressing man leaves trail of destruction</B>

An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building. Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together. When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet. ?It sounded almost like a firecracker,? Clewer told Australian radio Friday. ?Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt.? Employees, unsure of the cause of the mysterious burning smell, telephoned firefighters who evacuated the building.