Paper Monitor - April Fool special
12:44 UK time, Monday, 2 April 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Tony Blair is to tread the boards, a team of garden inspectors will fine barbecuers Β£50 if they do not pay to offset their carbon emissions, and Paris is to host the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics because "the French are very good at fireworks"... or so yesterday's news reports would have us believe.
But some of 1 April's seemingly spoof news stories are true. Here are 10 stories that could be pranks - but arenβt.
1. For nine years, an urn of ashes found on the Tube has sat unclaimed in the lost property office, the Observer reported. But now an amateur genealogist has tracked down the family who were robbed of the urn on the way to scatter their fatherβs ashes.
2. And an army of the undead took over Brisbane's streets, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News website reported. It was an annual Zombie Walk in which horror film fans spattered with fake blood staggered across the city. Its website explains that it was not an April Fool's joke "but serious, in a flippant sort of manner".
3. Gromit the Plasticine dog is to be the , replacing Nipper the terrier on the music storeβs logo. The Sunday Times quoted Gromitβs creator, Nick Park, as saying: "It's a great honour to be stepping in the same paw-prints of an icon as big as Nipper." All true, said HMV's press office.
4. Also genuine was the paperβs report that the moat around the Tower of London could soon be re-submerged, 177 years after it was drained. True, says the Royal Palaces' press office.
5. Musical lederhosen equipped with built-in MP3 controls were among five contenders highlighted in the Independent on Sundayβs Spot the April Fool contest. But the hi-tech leather shorts were unveiled at the annual CeBIT trade fair earlier in the week.
6. And the "Bill of Rights for abused robotsβ, an ethical code to prevent humans from exploiting machines, also reported in the Indie? South Korea drew up the proposal in early March, as reported .
7. South Korea has also unveiled robots equipped with machine-guns that can tell the difference between humans and trees, that it may use to patrol its border with North Korea, says the Times. On 2 April.
8. Sheep, the European Union, electronic tagging β perhaps the April Foolβs story that has everything? But this snippet in the Observerβs news in brief column is genuine. Asked about the European Union proposal for an electronic identity system for sheep, the Welsh MP Mark Williams said in a parliamentary question: βWe already have a robust system of identifying a species. If it's woolly and goes βbaaβ, it's a sheep.β The proposal has been on the cards for several years to track livestock movement.
9. Fascist leader Oswald Mosley was so upset at suggestions that he mistreated his pigs that he wrote irate letters to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Office to try to clear his name. Records released by the National Archives on 1 April show that he attempted to extract an apology after he was charged with over-crowding and under-feeding his pigs in 1945.
10. Cosmetic surgery is ripe for a send-up, but there are few limits to the lengths some people will go to in order to look youthful. The Indie on Sunday carried a double-page spread on how demand for hand lifts - either plumped up with fat from elsewhere in the body or by injecting cosmetic fillers - is up by at least 300%.
The 
