Self-destructing Euro Banknotes.

More than 1,000 Euro banknotes of denominations varying from 5 to 100 have been disintegrating in Germany since this June. Deutsche Bank has ruled out printing errors on those affected notes. But it suspects that the robbers might have used special cleaning agents to remove the snatched notes’ colored theft-prevention identification codes. However, the residual sulfuric acid contamination that caused the banknotes to immediately destroy themselves.

If you got those defective paper money, don’t panic! The German central bank promises to exchange them.

Link (to the Chinese news report in sina.com)

Update 11/5/06 by Alex: fixed up the language a little bit. BBC story: Link