FROM an ingenious Indian exam scam to the art of easy money… Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

Corrupting India’s sole

All is fair in India’s notoriously competitive state exams, where professionals earn a living taking other people’s tests and crooks can make fortunes selling stolen exam papers.

But even for India, Rajasthan’s flip-flop fraudsters are top of the class. Ten people were arrested after Bluetooth devices were found hidden in the sandals of people taking state exams to become teachers.

Knowing that cribbers often use mobile phones to get answers, police cut the signal for the duration of the exams.

But the cheaters got around this by building Bluetooth capacity into the soles of flip-flops so that candidates could have answers whispered to them via tiny earphones.

“(They) are getting so tech savvy,” police official Priti Chandra told AFP.

But not as savvy as Bikaner police, who sniffed out the felonous footwear.

The 25 would-be teachers who forked out 600,000 rupees ($8,100) each for the smart sandals have been taught a very expensive lesson…

Who is laughing now?

A Danish artist given the equivalent of $84,000 in cash to make artworks out of banknotes pocketed the money and instead sent a gallery two blank canvasses entitled, “Take the Money and Run”.

Lasse Andersson, the director of the Kunsten Museum in Aalborg, told AFP he laughed out loud when he got an email from artist Jens Haaning warning him that there wouldn’t be much to look at when his new show opened.

Haaning was meant to make two works from the cash an average Danish and Austrian worker earns in a year.

While it may seem like the perfect conceptual conceit, especially in the land that invented “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, the museum believes it will have the last laugh.

Director Andersson said, “If the money is not returned on January 16 as agreed, we will take steps to ensure that Jens Haaning complies with his contract.”

Filthy lucre

Congratulations to the Indian police office who caught a smuggler with nearly a kilo of gold up his rectum.

The man was held at an airport near the Bangladesh border through which much of the bullion to feed India’s insatiable demand for gold during the wedding season is trafficked.

Officials didn’t say how they spotted him, but an X-ray revealed the mule had somehow concealed capsules of gold paste weighing over 900 grams (1.98 pounds) in a spot where nothing glitters.

The smuggler was clearly upset, but all things pass…

Gone in a flash

It is probably not much consolation to Rani, the world’s shortest cow, but she has made it into the Guinness Book of Records a month after expiring from a “sudden internal build-up of gas”.

The knee-high heifer — just 50.8 centimetres (20 inches) tall — was a celebrity sensation in Bangladesh until her explosive end.

Herds of people had besieged her farm near Dhaka to catch a glimpse of the miniature milker.

Owner Kazi Mohammad Abu Sufian said the posthumous recognition was some comfort after her shocking demise.

They can’t bear it

An ageing group of Japanese rockers believe they have the solution to bears attacking people — their music.

The howling lyrics of their bear blues warn humans never to turn their back or try to run away.

Bears regularly venture into towns in Japan and have attacked and even killed residents, so the Iwate prefecture government commissioned the rock song to be belted out across the region.

“I think if one heard the song it would run away,” said songwriter Kaoru Toudou.

“That’s the power of rock and roll.” AFP