SAN FRANCISCO: A Nobel Prize-winning economist joined another elite group when an environmentalist slapped him in the face with a coconut cream pie.

Economist Milton Friedman was talking last night with people attending a conference on education when Al Decker, a member of the Biotic Baking Brigade, told him, ``Mr Friedman, it's a good day to pie'' and gave him a taste all over his face. Friedman, who could not immediately be reached for comment, took the attack in stride. According to Decker, the economist said: ``I guess that sometimes this happens.''

Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic science in 1976.Decker said he pied Friedman because the brigade opposes the privatisation of education, which is responsible for the destruction of our environment, the deterioration of our social structure and has brought the world to the brink of an economic collapse.''

Decker, 27, was arrested for misdemeanour and released.

Law catches up with pigthief

FLORIDA: More than four decades after Robert Andrew Hollinger walked away from an Alabama prison where he was serving a year for each of the 15 pigs he stole, the law caught up with him.

Hollinger, 69, made the mistake of using his real name when applying for social security benefits. He was arrested on Thursday and could be sent back to Alabama. Hollinger had served two years of his 15-year sentence when he escaped from the Loxley work center in Alabama in 1956. Due to his good behaviour, he was allowed to drive a truck to and from work sites. One day, he parked the truck and walked away. After that, he moved back and forth between New York and Florida, mostly using the name Henry Stallworth. He married in 1962 and apparently stayed out of trouble.

Hollinger's wife died in 1995. He lived with his 19-year-old daughter and worked as a groundskeeper at a hospital.

Churchill's letters
LONDON: A selection of letters spanning the 56-year marriage of Winston and Clementine Churchill hasgone on display offering a window on a relationship that bolstered the late British leader during the burden and stresses of war.

Fifteen of the thousands of letters the couple wrote to each other from their marriage in 1908 until former British Prime Minister Churchill's death in 1965 will be on display at the cabinet war rooms here until February.There is what you would expect from Churchill, telling Clementine about political affairs of state,'' said Phil Reed, the war room's curator. Her letters were more emotive and about her personal and family life.''

There is one letter written in June 1940 where she tells him off for being overbearing with his staff,'' Reed said. He was shown publicly as a strong and powerful man, and she seems to be the only one who could have questioned that.