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| - From a rat braver than Danger Mouse to a Cuban shrink set become a people's hero by running backwards up the Italian Alps... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world: When it comes to going backwards, its hard to beat Cuba. Meet psychologist Wilfredo Diaz, the communist island's Yuri Gagarin of retrorunning -- the strange sport of reverse running. Diaz, 46, is daring to take retrorunning where no man has reversed before -- competing against forward-facing runners in a half-marathon through Italy's jagged, towering and deadly dangerous Dolomite mountains. The veteran has been running backwards for 32 years after reading about the sport in a Russian magazine before the collapse of communism. And dangers of his latest challenge on Sunday do not worry him a jot. "I am going to give my maximum for Cuba," he told AFP in a declaration worthy of Fidel Castro or even Che Guevara. Cubans may be short of many creature comforts, but there is no shortage of humour, with one wag tweeting that Diaz should win easily. "It's child's play for us, we've had decades of training" at going backwards, he joked. The most maligned creature on the planet after bed bugs, cockroaches and mosquitos is finally getting his due. Magawa the rat who has sniffed out scores of landmines in Cambodia was given a big retirement do this week, with all the bananas and peanuts he could eat. The giant African pouched rat was the first rodent ever to get Britain's highest animal bravery award alongside Paddy the Irish pigeon who carried messages through German machine-gun fire on D-Day. His handlers say Magawa has been "getting a bit tired" of late -- ratty is not a word we use, that would be ratist -- after a long and dangerous career sniffing out explosives and alerting de-miners by scratching the ground. The Tanzania-born rodent can sniff out an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes, something a human with a metal detector would take four days to do. Just big enough to be on a leash, Magawa is light enough not to set off the millions of mines that still litter Cambodia. Ever wondered what your head would look like served up on a plate? Then hurry along to Zagreb's Museum of Illusions. Its "Alice in Wonderland" halls of mirrors, mind-bending brain teasers and optical illusions have become a hot tourist ticket as Europe opens up after pandemic lockdowns. It's "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" type optical illusions have become an Instagram sensation. The neurological Disneyland inspired by the US series "Brain Games" is shortly to open franchises from Paris to Kuala Lumpur and Berlin to Cairo, and will soon also be cutting New Yorkers down to size. bur-fg/jmy/wai
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