Saturday, February 16, 2013

Give us a kiss

Orangutan is introduced to little person


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Polish police involved in lengthy pursuit of pig

For more than two hours on Wednesday, police, municipal guards and the owner of a shelter for dogs pursued a pig which had escaped from a farm in New Kamionka.


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Full story, with large picture gallery here.

Store clerk pulled sword on knife-wielding would-be robber

A clerk in New Bedford, Massachusetts turned the tables during a convenience store robbery. When the would-be robber pulled out his knife, clerk Brian Patel pulled out a sword.

Patel says the robber's knife was about eight inches long. Patel didn't hesitate to reach under the counter and respond with his sword, about three feet long, that sent the robber running empty handed.

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A customer also got into the act, taking a kick at the crook as he ran out the door. A little over a year ago Patel confronted another knife-wielding would-be robber. Patel couldn't get to the sword, but he punched the guy in the face and sent him packing.

 Patel was stabbed in that encounter but the don't-back-down clerk says it's in his nature to resist giving the money and to fight back. “It’s not good to give it up ‘cause they’ll do it over and over again,” Patel said.

Woman gave birth to healthy boy and headless baby

For a 30-year-old first-time mother in Mumbai, India, Thursday was a day of mixed emotions. She delivered a healthy boy along with a headless baby. The malformed foetus, known in medical terms as acardia monster baby, was stillborn, said doctors at Bombay Hospital, near New Marine Lines.

"The parents are still in a state of shock after seeing the stillborn baby," said Dr Shilpa Ambekar, the gynaecologist who was treating the mother throughout the pregnancy. The incidence of acardia monster that occurs mainly in twins, is one per 40,000 live births. Dr Ambekar said the baby only had an abdomen and no head, neck or face.



"It had one limb as well as fingers emerging directly from the abdomen," she said. Acardia is a rare malformation that occurs mainly in monizygous twins who develop from a single egg. The condition is characterised by the absence of a functioning heart. Doctors said the acardia twin survives like a parasite, drawing blood and nutrition from the normal twin.

As Thursday's twin didn't have a head or brain as well, the case is being called as acardius acephalus baby. The parents, who don't want to be identified, were told about the problem during the fifth month of pregnancy. "They were offered medical termination of pregnancy, but the mother said she didn't want to harm the normal twin. Hence, she decided to carry on with the pregnancy," the doctor added.

Boy seriously ill after contracting bat virus

An eight-year-old boy is in a coma after catching the Bat Lyssavirus - only the third ever confirmed case in Australia. The boy was bitten or scratched by a bat in north Queensland about two and half months ago but his parents did not know about it at the time, according to Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young. Dr Young said the case was ‘‘very sad’’ and the boy is in a coma in a Brisbane hospital with the outlook quite grim.



‘‘He’s critically unwell, the previous two cases did not survive and the vast, vast majority of people who contract rabies overseas die,’’ she said. ‘‘Very few people survive unfortunately. But we only have had three cases in Queensland so it is hard to say [what the boy’s survival chances are].’’ It is not known if the boy was bitten or scratched as he did not tell his parents about the contact with the bat when it happened and is now too sick to say what happened. He began having fits about three weeks ago in north Queensland and was eventually diagnosed with Bat Lyssavirus which is similar to rabies.

His family have been keeping a bedside vigil and have all been offered medication for potential exposure to the virus. ‘‘This is an extraordinarily difficult and distressing time for the family,’’ Dr Young said. It is only the third confirmed case of Bat Lyssavirus in Australia so far, with the other two diagnosed in Queensland in the 1990s. In the earlier cases, both patients died. It can take years for Bat Lyssavirus to show symptoms in patients and Dr Young urged anyone who had been bitten or scratched to seek medical attention, even if the incident was years ago.


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She did not specify where in north Queensland the boy contracted the virus saying it would be ‘‘harmful’’ for people to think just because they are not in the area they do not need to go to a doctor for a bat scratch or bite. ‘‘It doesn’t make any difference,’’ she said. ‘‘We have bats, both flying foxes and bats, that live throughout Queensland and indeed most of Australia, and any bat or flying fox can actually carry a strain of the Bat Lyssavirus. So the message is really, you shouldn’t handle any bat, there is no specific reason to be concerned about the bats in north Queensland.’’ Theoretically the virus can be passed from human to human but is extremely rare.

Friendly ferret found in wheelie bin

A bin man said he was shocked to find a ferret popping its head out of a wheelie bin while on his round in Cambridgeshire. Darren Chandler, 30, was emptying bins on Flint Lane, Waterbeach, when he spotted something moving.

"I just lifted the lid before hooking it up to the lorry. I realised it was a little ferret and got one of my colleagues to fetch a box," he said. The one-year-old ferret, now called Flint, was taken to an animal charity.



Wood Green's small animal welfare manager Marie Channer said: "It is not uncommon for ferrets to find their way into bins and skips to find food. However, if it wasn't for Darren, there is a chance Flint wouldn't be with us today.

"This little boy is very friendly and so we believe he once belonged to a family. Unfortunately nobody has come forward for him and he isn't microchipped, so we haven't been able to reunite him with an owner. Therefore he is looking for a new home."

Giant stomping rabbit scared burglar out of family home

A petrified burglar fled a family home in the middle of the night after coming face to face with their giant pet rabbit. Kimberley May, her fiance Martin, and their three-year-old daughter Olivia were all sound asleep when the thief broke into their house. But as the raider rifled through cupboards the noise woke up Toby the family’s British Giant bunny in his kitchen cage.

The 4.5kg, two-feet long pet began stomping so loudly on the floor that the intruder was caught on the hop and left. Kimberley, 30, said: “We went to bed on Wednesday at about 10pm. In the early hours of the morning Toby our rabbit did five loud thumps. I sort of half woke up then realised he’d stopped and went back to sleep. When I went downstairs every single cupboard and drawer were open, there were bits out everywhere, then we started noticing things were missing and we phoned the police.”



Kimberley is convinced that two year-old Toby’s thumping scared the thief off from their house in Plymouth, Devon. She found a hoard of items left piled up on the sofa which she thinks the burglar was preparing to take but left behind. She added: “We think that when the rabbit thumped it scared the burglar off and they left all the stuff they were going to take. He’s like a little dog, if you whistle him he comes.

“The rabbit was just traumatised in his cage, shaking. He’s usually really friendly but he tried to go for the policeman.” Although the thief managed to take some valuables Kimberley fears the break-in could have been even worse had it not been for Toby. She added: “If he hadn’t been scared off he could have come upstairs looking for things. My daughter was asleep up there – it could have been really dangerous. Toby has done the job of a guard dog. We’re so proud of him.”

Gay thief given ASBO banning him from every public toilet in central London

A thief who preyed on the gay community in Soho for more than a decade has been banned from every public toilet in central London.

Charles Omishore, 32, pick-pocketed men while engaging in sexual activity in bars, public toilets and the rose garden in Hyde Park.



Westminster Magistrates’ Court granted an ASBO banning him from the West End, a central part of Camden and any purpose-built public toilet in the whole of Westminster or Camden for the next five years.

Westminster Council’s cabinet member for community protection, Cllr Nickie Aiken, said: “We suspect Omishore has been getting away with this for so long because his victims have been reluctant to come forward and report attacks and thefts. A crime is a crime, and victims should feel they are able to report it, whatever the circumstances.”

Car crash uncovers 1902 'time capsule'

A "time capsule" has been found at a Tudor house in Ipswich after a car crashed into its front door on Tuesday. The vehicle took out a wooden pillar at the entrance of Curson Lodge on St Nicholas Street, on Tuesday evening,



Now a blue medicine bottle, containing a shopfitter's receipt and business card dated 1902, has been found in the dislodged brickwork. Francis Street, the building's owner, said: "It's fantastic and just adds to this house's long history."

Curzon Lodge was built in about 1480 and is regarded by preservation groups as the finest domestic house in Ipswich. The building was a pharmacy when the bottle was hidden in the brickwork inside the hollow wooden pillar.


Photo from here.

The receipt in the bottle is headed with the name of the chemist, George Nelson Edward, and it records the signatures of the foreman, carpenters and bricklayer who carried out the work. Mr Street said: "It's a bit like an old classic car, where the man who built the engine will always put his name on it with pride - the person who built this shopfront did very much the same thing."