Paris (AFP) - From a bear cooling down in an ice cream parlour to Japanese staff who took quality control too far. Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

- And one or two for the crew… -

A swanky Japanese sleeper train has suspended crew members for helping themselves to expensive wines for years in the name of “quality control”.

“Some were repeatedly drinking more than they were allowed to as part of quality control testing,” JR East, which runs the luxury Shiki-Shima train that boasts Michelin-starred chefs, solid cypress bathtubs and a snug with a roaring fire.

So many were living it up that the operator had to cancel an August 30 jaunt around the bucolic regions of Niigata and Nagano because of “manpower” shortages.

The two-night trip cost upwards of $3,000 and promised French haute cuisine, expensive wines and a winery visit.

- Have you got honeycomb? -

A bear looking to cool off made itself right at home behind the counter of a California ice cream shop.

Stunned police shooed the ursine invader out of the parlour in South Lake Tahoe but not before snapping a few pictures of it staring bemusedly over the counter at them.

“With some encouragement, the bear ultimately left, but only after showing interest in the strawberry ice cream,” the El Dorado County sheriff’s office said.

“Thankfully, Fuzzy the bear caused barely any damage and there was barely any cleanup,” it added, emptying its larder of bear puns.

- Poleaxed -

A foreign tourist could face up to three years in prison in Turkey for offending “the nation’s moral values” by performing a pole dance on a flagpole.

The young woman in blue leggings and a white T-shirt performed several gravity-defying manoeuvres on a flagpole on a hilltop in Uchisar in Cappadocia.

But her 12-second performance drew the wrath of Turkish authorities, who are hugely sensitive about their national symbols.

“The governor’s office is closely monitoring this heinous incident, which we see as showing disrespect for our nation’s moral values,” officials said.

Disrespecting the Turkish flag can carry a jail term of up to three years, and the offence of “insulting Turkishness” or the Turkish nation another two.

- Visa for Lodonia? -

Finally, six men have been arrested in India for posing as police and demanding “donations” from their rented “crime investigative bureau”.

“The perpetrators presented themselves as public servants,” police in the New Delhi satellite city of Noida said, and claimed they were affiliated “with Interpol”.

The arrests come weeks after a man was held for running a fake embassy from a house near the capital. Police say he claimed to be an ambassador offering visas and jobs in “West Arctica, Poulvia, Lodonia” and other fictional nations.

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