■ VILNIUS. Police ask suspect: aren?t you dead? Police in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda were baffled to discover that a woman arrested for shoplifting last weekend had been registered as dead a month earlier. The woman?s parents had mistakenly identified a body found in a forest as that of their 27-year-old daughter, Natalya Pavlova, who disappeared from home in November, police said yesterday. It emerged that Pavlova was alive and well and living with her boyfriend in the same town. ?Her parents identified the corpse as their daughter. What could we do?? Petras Mikalauskis, a deputy police chief for the area, told ?Reuters?. ?It was the first such case in my experience.?

■ MADRID. Divisive national anthem lyrics ditched. Proposed new lyrics for Spain?s national anthem have stirred national divisions rather than pride and have been scrapped, the Spanish Olympic Committee said Wednesday. Spain?s ?Royal March? national anthem has been played without words since 1978, when lyrics approved by right-wing dictator Francisco Franco were ditched. With the Beijing games approaching, Spain?s Olympic committee held a competition to find new words for the anthem rather than see its athletes hum along or chant ?la, la, la,? as has long been the case. Spanish opera star Placido Domingo was to be the first to sing it. But the winning version was leaked and met derision in the Spanish media and among members of parliament responsible for approving the lyrics.

■ WASHINGTON. Scientists find 2,000 pound rodent? luckily it?s a fossil. Scientists in Uruguay have found the fossil remains of a 2,000 pound (1,000 kg) rodent that lived 2 million to 4 million years ago ? the largest rodent ever found. The giant creature probably ate soft food such as fruit or tender plants, Andres Rinderknecht and Ernesto Blanco of the National Museum of Natural History in Montevideo reported on the day before.

■ WASHINGTON. US gives blessing to food from cloned animals. The US government ruled on Tuesday that food from cloned animals and their offspring is as safe as other food, opening the door to bringing meat and milk from clone offspring into the food supply. ?Extensive evaluation of the available data has not identified any subtle hazards that might indicate food consumption risks in healthy clones of cattle, swine or goats,? the Food and Drug Administration said in a final risk assessment that confirmed preliminary findings from 2006.

■ CHICAGO. Swiss study in mice may lead to new pain drugs. Enhancing a natural pain-filtering mechanism in the spine helped relieve chronic pain in mice without the unwanted side effects of current pain relievers, Swiss researchers said on Wednesday. They honed in on a specific molecule that helps prevent chronic pain signals from reaching the brain, without blocking normal pain messages that alert people to danger.