Woman calls police over spider in kitchen

A woman rang police asking officers to deal with a spider in her kitchen.

The unidentified person was frightened after spotting the arachnid in her home in Coventry, reports The Mirror.

However, she was told that the matter was deemed not urgent enough and was warned not to abuse the emergency service line.

A police spokesperson said: "People who call 999 for inappropriate reasons are potentially putting lives at risk by taking call handlers' time away from genuine emergency calls.

"Each call takes several minutes to deal with as staff have to clarify what is going on. If someone is trying to get through to report a genuine emergency, a minute is a very long time to wait."

A man in Norway recently called police over what he felt was a bad haircut.(Digital Spy)

Starved dogs eat owner

JAKARTA: Seven dogs starved of food and water for two weeks are suspected of eating their Indonesian owner after he returned to his hometown in Manado from a holiday, local media reported.

A neighborhood guard was curious when he saw luggage lined up at the front of Andre Lumboga's house, days after the 50-year old arrived back home. He approached the house, smelled something foul and called the police, according to a report.

"His skull was found in the kitchen, and his body was found in the front of his house," Eriyana, a local police chief in Batam, an island off Sumatra, told VIVAnews website.

Lumboga arrived home last Wednesday, but his body was just discovered on Monday.

"We suspect that the dogs were hungry, so they attacked Andre, because they had not been fed for 14 days," he said. Police also found bones of two other dogs, believed to have also been eaten by the hungry canines.

Lumboga was from northern Sulawesi island, a predominantly Christian area, where the local spicy diet is famous in Indonesia for including dogs, bats and forest rats. (Reuters)

NASA twin spacecraft to map the inner Moon

WASHINGTON: The US space agency plans to launch two unmanned spacecraft Thursday that will chase each other around the Moon as they use gravity measurements to draw an unprecedented map of its inner workings.

Known as the GRAIL mission, or Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, the satellites will launch together on a single Delta II rocket as early as 8:37 am Thursday (1237 GMT), when the launch window opens.

Researchers hope GRAIL will answer some of the mysteries about the far side of the moon, which humans have never explored, and also shed light on how other rocky planets like Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury may have formed.

"GRAIL is a mission that will study the inside of the Moon from crust to core," said the 500-million-dollar project's principal investigator Maria Zuber.

The project is part of NASA's Discovery program, which has launched 10 spacecraft since 1992 to study the solar system.

Zuber noted that the Moon has been amply studied since the dawn of the space age in 1959, with a total of 109 missions of various kinds.

Twelve humans have stepped foot on the lunar surface, and 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of rocks and soil have been brought back to Earth for further study.

In addition, three science satellites are currently orbiting the moon, she
said.

After GRAIL, the US space agency plans to launch its Mars Science Laboratory in November on a nearly two-year journey to the red planet. (AFP)

Philippines catches ‘largest’ crocodile on record

BUNAWAN: A giant saltwater crocodile weighing more than a tonne was captured in a remote Philippine village following a spate of attacks on humans and livestock, officials said Tuesday.

The 21-foot (6.4-metre), 1,075-kilogramme (2,370-pound) reptile may have eaten a farmer who went missing in July, along with several water buffaloes in the southern town of Bunawan, crocodile hunter Rollie Sumiller said.

A crocodile also bit off the head of a 12-year-old girl in Bunawan in 2009, according to the environment ministry.

Josefina de Leon, wildlife division chief of the environment ministry's protected areas and wildlife bureau, said it was likely the biggest crocodile ever captured.

"Based on existing records the largest that had been captured previously was 5.48 metres long," she said.

"This is the biggest animal that I've handled in 20 years of trapping,"

Sumiller added, estimating the male to be more than 50 years old.
The team, employed by a government-run crocodile breeding farm, began laying bait using chicken, pork and dog meat on August 15, but the reptile simply bit off both meat and line it was skewered on.

An eight milimetre (0.31-inch) metal cable finally proved beyond the power of its jaws and the beast was subdued at a creek on Saturday with the help of about 30 local men.

The local government decided against putting down the reptile and will instead use him as the main attraction at a planned nature park in the area.

"He's a problem crocodile that needs to be taken from the wildlife so that it can be used for eco-tourism," Sumiller said.

Crocodylus porosus or estuarine crocodile is the world's largest reptile that usually grows to five or six metres long and can live up to 100 years.

While not considered an endangered species globally, it is "critically endangered" in the Philippines, where it is hunted for its hide to feed the fashion industry, de Leon said. (AFP)

Source: Geo.tv

Graphene finding could lead to super-fast Internet

LONDON: British scientists have devised a way of using graphene, the thinnest material in the world, to capture and convert more light than previously, paving the way for advances in high-speed Internet and other optical communications.

In a study in the journal Nature Communication, the team - which included last year's Nobel Prize-winning scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov - found that by combining graphene with metallic nanostructures, there was a 20-fold enhancement in the amount of light the graphene could harvest and convert into electrical power. (Reuters)

Stolen parrot helps catch thief in China

A thief has been caught after selling a stolen parrot to a pet shop.

Lu Wang from Beijing, China visited the same pet shop later on and was greeted by his African parrot, who "shouted out" for him, reports Metro.

Lu said: "The shop owner hadn't been able to make the bird talk, but as soon as he saw me, he wouldn't stop.

"He even did impressions of the geese on our farm."

Police soon retrieved the burglar's details from a staff member before arresting the man, Hu Feng, on theft charges.(Digital SPy)

Black Widow eats 183 chicken wings in NY contest

BUFFALO: The Black Widow of eating contests has scarfed down 183 chicken wings in 12 minutes to break her own world record set last year in Buffalo, N.Y.

Sonya Thomas took first place Sunday at the tenth annual National Buffalo Wings Festival. She beat eating marvel Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, who came in second with 174 wings.

The two won titles at the July Fourth hot dog eating contest on Coney Island.

The 100-pound Thomas of Alexandria, Va., is the reigning wing-eating champion. She downed 181 wings to win the 2010 contest. Chestnut of San Jose, Calif., settled for second with 169 wings.

The winner gets $1,500. The runner-up wins $750, and third place gets $300.

Thomas is called the Black Widow becomes she often beats male competitors in eating contests. (AP)

Chile declares national mourning after plane crash

SANTIAGO: Chile on Sunday declared two days of national mourning after rescuers gave up hope for 21 people believed killed when an air force plane crashed off Robinson Crusoe island in the Pacific.

The tragedy has prompted nationwide grief and only four bodies have been recovered since the CASA 212 turbo-prop plane, believed to have been thrown off course by strong winds, went down late Friday during a failed attempt to land.

The search resumed on Sunday but Chilean officials said earlier there was no hope of finding survivors as all on board would have died on impact.

President Sebastian Pinera said mourning on Monday and Tuesday would allow people to express solidarity with the families of victims, who included one of the country's best-known television personalities.

Thousands gathered at state broadcaster TVN to remember daily morning talk show host Felipe Camiroaga, who was traveling to the island with a crew to report on reconstruction efforts after a massive earthquake and tsunami caused devastation last year.

"I cannot imagine the morning without Felipe," said one devastated female fan in tears outside the television station, whose headquarters has been deluged in flowers, stuffed animal toys, candles, and messages of condolence.

Robinson Crusoe, the island which is believed to have been the setting for the famous novel by 18th century British author Daniel Defoe, is the main island of the Juan Fernandez archipelago, which lies in the Pacific some 700 kilometers (435 miles) west of the South American coastline.

General Maximiliano Larraechea, the air force chief of staff, said Sunday the search would continue "until we find each one" of the 17 missing.

The Chilean navy are using sonar equipment to try to locate the fuselage of the aircraft, where the remaining crash victims are likely to be found.

"Yesterday, the bodies of some victims surfaced fairly rapidly, which leads us to believe that the rest are with the fuselage," Larraechea said.

Chilean Defense Minister Andres Allamand told reporters Saturday that the air force plane had made two abortive attempts to land before radio contact was lost.

Although winds are being blamed for the crash, the accident's official cause remains unknown.

Government spokesman Andres Chadwick said the four bodies identified were those of Erwin Nunez, an air force corporal; Galia Diaz, with the National Cultural Council; Roberto Bruce, a TVN network journalist; and Silvia Slager, a TVN producer.

Tributes for the victims have poured in from across South America. Foreign ministers from member nations of the Organization of American States, gathered for a meeting in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso, held a moment of silence.

Pope Benedict XVI said he was "deeply saddened" to learn of the accident, in a message relayed by the archbishop of Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati. (AFP)

Wild world: Millions of unseen species fill Earth

WASHINGTON: Our world is a much wilder place than it looks. A new study estimates that Earth has almost 8.8 million species, but we've only discovered about a quarter of them. And some of the yet-to-be-seen ones could be in our own backyards, scientists say.

So far, only 1.9 million species have been found. Recent discoveries have been small and weird: a psychedelic frogfish, a lizard the size of a dime and even a blind hairy mini-lobster at the bottom of the ocean.

"We are really fairly ignorant of the complexity and colorfulness of this amazing planet," said the study's co-author, Boris Worm, a biology professor at Canada's Dalhousie University. "We need to expose more people to those wonders. It really makes you feel differently about this place we inhabit."

While some scientists and others may question why we need to know the number of species, others say it's important.

There are potential benefits from these undiscovered species, which need to be found before they disappear from the planet, said famed Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who was not part of this study. Some of modern medicine comes from unusual plants and animals.

"We won't know the benefits to humanity (from these species), which potentially are enormous," the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wilson said. "If we're going to advance medical science, we need to know what's in the environment."

Biologists have long known that there's more to Earth than it seems, estimating the number of species to be somewhere between 3 million and 100 million. Figuring out how much is difficult.

Worm and Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii used complex mathematical models and the pace of discoveries of not only species, but of higher classifications such as family to come up with their estimate.

Their study, published Tuesday in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science, estimated the number of species at nearly 8.8 million.

Of those species, 6.5 million would be on land and 2.2 million in the ocean, which is a priority for the scientists doing the work since they are part of the Census of Marine Life, an international group of scientists trying to record all the life in the ocean.

The research estimates that animals rule with 7.8 million species, followed by fungi with 611,000 and plants with just shy of 300,000 species.

While some new species like the strange mini-lobster are in exotic places such as undersea vents, "many of these species that remain to be discovered can be found literally in our own backyards," Mora said.

Outside scientists, such as Wilson and preeminent conservation biologist Stuart Pimm of Duke University, praised the study, although some said even the 8.8 million number may be too low.

The study said it could be off by about 1.3 million species, with the number somewhere between 7.5 million and 10.1 million. But evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges of Penn State University said he thinks the study is not good enough to be even that exact and could be wrong by millions.

Hedges knows firsthand about small species.

He found the world's smallest lizard, a half-inch long Caribbean gecko, while crawling on his hands and knees among dead leaves in the Dominican Republic in 2001. And three years ago in Barbados, he found the world's shortest snake, the 4-inch Caribbean threadsnake that lays "a single, very long egg."

The study's authors point to other species as evidence of the growing rate of discovery: the 6-inch, blind, hairy lobster-type species found in 2005 by a submarine looking at hydrothermal vents near where the Pacific meets Antarctica and a brilliant-colored frogfish found by divers in Indonesia in 2008.

Of the 1.9 million species found thus far, only about 1.2 million have been listed in the fledgling online Encyclopedia of Life, a massive international effort to chronicle every species that involves biologists, including Wilson.

If the 8.8 million estimate is correct, "those are brutal numbers," said Encyclopedia of Life executive director Erick Mata. "We could spend the next 400 or 500 years trying to document the species that actually inhabit our planet." (AP)

Neil Armstrong urges return to the Moon

SYDNEY: Neil Armstrong has urged a return to the Moon to train for missions to Mars as the United States contemplates the future of its space programme following the end of the shuttle era.

The first man to walk on the Moon is due to address the US Congress on new directions for NASA in coming weeks.

He has previously criticised US President Barack Obama for being "poorly advised" on space matters and said it was "well known to all that the American space programme is in some chaos at the present time, some disarray".

"There are multiple opinions on which goals should be the most important and the most pressing," he told a function in Sydney late Wednesday.

The US shuttle programme came to an end last month with the Atlantis cruising home for a final time, 42 years after Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission.

Critics have assailed NASA for lacking focus, with no next-generation human space flight mission to replace the shuttle programme.

Now 81, Armstrong said the agency had become a "shuttlecock" for the "war of words" between the executive, legislative and congressional arms of US government.

The normally private and reserved space veteran said Mars should be the next frontier for exploration but urged more missions to the Moon as the vital next step.

Armstrong said working on the Moon would allow scientists to practise "a lot of the things that you need to do when you are going further out in the solar system" while maintaining relatively close contact with Mission Control.

Communication is the major problem for trips to Mars, he added, with the relay of a message between Earth and the Red Planet delayed by about 20 minutes, compared with 1.5 seconds between here and the Moon.

Travel time is also a major concern, with the quickest journey of two months only possible when Mars is closest to Earth -- when it also happens to be spinning most rapidly, meaning massive amounts of fuel are required to land.

Armstrong said Mars was a "worthy challenge" but it was expensive, time-consuming and carried substantial risks not faced in the lunar programme, predominantly to do with radiation. (AFP)

Giant Rat Killed With Pitchfork At Brooklyn's Marcy Houses (PHOTO)

Huffington Post: A gigantic, white rat was killed after being speared with a pitchfork at the Marcy Houses in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

Jose Rivera, a Housing Authority worker, was clearing a rat hole when three of the mutants popped out, The New York Daily News reports, but he was only able to nab one. It appears to be almost three feet long, including the tail.

Naomi Colon, head of the Marcy Houses Tenant Association, told the News there have been sightings of the humongous rats for at least six years.

Residents described some horrifying confrontations with the rodents to BlackandBrownNews.com:

“In one day eight big size rats were killed,” said a Marcy Houses resident who declined to be named for fear of reprisal from city or property management. They were found in and around the buildings of the Nostrand-Myrtle avenue section of the property and have been seen on the playground. “They come out at night and the daytime,” said another resident who also did not want to provide a name.

Even before the mega-rats appeared, residents say the infestation of average rats was a problem. One resident recently described a frantic scene in which rats began scrambling across the nearby playground: “Adults had to grab children and run because a lot of rats came on the playground. The kids were screaming.”

An expert at the Wildlife Conservation Society told the News the slain monster was likely a Gambian pouched rat, and was probably an escaped or discarded pet.

Importing Gambian pouched rats to the United States was banned almost a decade ago after they caused an outbreak of monkey-pox that sickened 100 people.

Even the normal, Norway rats are huge at the Marcy Houses-- where Jay-Z was famously "raised in the projects, roaches and rats".

Pam Davis, 43, told the News, "They're here day and night. We don't dodge bullets. We dodge rats.They're so big, they should charge them rent."

Earlier this summer, pest control experts warned staff cuts to the Pest Control Bureau would cause a "rat epidemic" in the city.

Colonel Gaddafi 'kept photos of darling Condoleezza Rice'

A photo album only featuring images of Condoleezza Rice has been found in the ransacked complex formerly occupied by Colonel Gaddafi.

It has been speculated that under-pressure Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi owned the album, having publicly referred to the former US Secretary of State as a "darling" in a 2007 interview.

"I support my darling black African woman," he said to Al-Jazeera at the time. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza... I love her very much."

MSNBC has published images of the photo album, which features various shots of Rice. The Independent has reported that the ownership of the album is currently "unknown".

Meanwhile, a passport belonging to Gaddafi was also found by rebels in the complex, and features the only known spelling of his name in Latinized text. Gaddafi refuses to speak any language other than Arabic in public.

It appears that Gaddafi's family and the leader himself use the spelling "Gathafi", rather than other well-used forms.

TheAtlantic quipped that it would stick to its own variant "Qaddafi" for reasons of consistency "until such point as Muammar Qaddafi specifically requests otherwise in a letter to the editor - preferably one with a return address".

Fossil find shows life on Mars possible

LONDON: Scientists have found Earth's oldest fossils in Australia and say their microscopic discovery is convincing evidence that cells and bacteria were able to thrive in an oxygen-free world more than 3.4 billion years ago.

The finding suggests early life was sulphur-based - living off and metabolizing sulphur rather than oxygen for energy - and supports the idea that similar life forms could exist on other planets where oxygen levels are low or non-existent.

A natural defense mechanism used by cells in the gut to neutralize harmful toxins may lead to new ways to fight Clostridium difficile, the most common cause of hospital-acquired bacterial infections, researchers said on Sunday. Tests of an experimental compound that mimics this defense mechanism that has shown promise in the lab and in mouse studies, and the researchers say they are already planning human clinical trials. (Reuters)