Priti and my 18th Wedding Anniversay photographs...taken on Sunday, March 16th, 2008...

Priti and my marriage has entered adulthood today (Sunday, March 16th). We are celebrating our 18th Wedding Anniversary today.

There has been a miraculous improvement in Priti's health between today and exactly eight weeks ago when (on Sunday, January 20th) she was admitted to Apollo Hospital ICU in a very critical condition and put on life support. She was on life support for the next four days.

We are celebrating our marriage anniversary today because of Priti's miraculous recovery caused by the prayers, wishes and support of hundreds of friends, relatives and office colleagues - and due to the dedicated efforts of our team of doctors and the wonders of modern medical science. After five weeks in hospital and three weeks on dialysis thereafter, she is completely cured of septecemia and recovering her strength gradually. Hopefully, her kidneys will also recover in due course.

I am thankful for all the support my family has received that has enabled us to see this day...and enabled our family to be together to take the attached photographs.

Best wishes on International Women's Day...

Standing tall...

Eight feet tall and one of the world’s tallest men, Dharmendra Singh, poses in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.

16-year-old delivers second set of triplets!

A 16-year-old girl from Argentina is now a mother to seven children after giving birth to triplets for the second time.

Pamela, who comes from the remote town of Leones in the central Argentine province of Cordoba, had her first set of triplets at the age of 15, when she was already having a son, whom she gave birth at 14, reports BBC .

Both sets of triplets are all girls and were born prematurely.

Pamela's case has now triggered a debate across Argentina, with the teenager's promiscuity being talked about in the South American country's cafes and bars.

Provincial authorities have supported Pamela's family by donating land and building them a house when the first set of triplets was born.

However, Pamela's mum, who supports her daughter and grandchildren by cleaning houses, said that they would now have to seek more assistance from the government.

According to some Argentines, Pamela needs more advice on contraception.

My wife has returned home this evening...

After 36 days in hospital (out of which 13 days were in ICU - the first 4 days of which were on life-support systems), Priti has returned home this evening (at 8 p.m.).

Priti is completely cured of septicemia and all her major organs, excepting for her kidneys, are functioning normally. By God's grace, her kidneys will also recover - until then she will be on twice a week dialysis.

Five weeks ago, this time, we had no assurance from the doctors whether Priti would leave the ICU alive. The marvels of modern medical science, coupled with prayers and good wishes from innumerable friends, relatives, office colleagues, SOS-India children and mothers and countless well wishers have brought Priti back to her family. My thanks to all of you.

My thanks also to the relatives and friends who have donated the innumerable pints of blood that were required during the early days of the crisis. Thanks also to all those who extended moral and physical help (including night stay duty) - and to the relatives and my Campus Law Centre friends for their direct and indirect financial support.

God bless you all!

Priti's Septicemia is almost cured...she has moved from bed to wheelchair...

Happiness...Priti's TLC count, this morning, has come down below the critical 11,000 mark - it is now 10,700. The blood poisoning seems to have been cured, though we will observe the count for a couple of days more for stability.

Priti is clear that her kidneys have started functioning a bit. The doctors have to confirm. A biopsy is planned.

Yesterday, after three and a half weeks of being in a horizontal position, Priti moved from bed to wheelchair.

Priti is making slow but steady progress...

Priti is making slow but steady progress. Her TLC count had come down to 14,800 three days ago - but then shot up to 16,200 the next day (after dialysis), giving us a bit of a scare. However, it came down to 13,300 the day after, and, this morning, after a very early morning dialysis, has come down further to 12,700. We are within reach of normalcy - which will be indicated by a TLC count of 11,000.

Doctors have discovered a thyroid problem - this could have been the reason for her sluggishness and lethargy and lack of appetite. It is being treated...in fact, this morning, Priti is extremely chirpy, God bless her! She is also eating well.

The prayers and wishes of all our friends, relatives and well wishers are working very well...I request you all to keep up the good work. I thank the children and mothers of SOS Children's Villages around the country and my co-workers for their regular prayers for my wife recovery.

Priti's kidneys are showing some movement towards recovery (in terms of urea and cretinine indicators). It is early days yet - but I am convinced that they will recover.

Priti's stay in hospital has been extended. She will not come home this week but, maybe, early next week. The antibiotic treatment will continue until the TLC count stabilises below 11,000. The alternate day dialysis will continue until the kidneys show stronger recovery.

Priti's BP, platelet count and HB count are stable and normal.

Thank you so much for your support. And those who gave blood - thanks again.

Priti's septicemia is almost cured...she is talking and eating normally...

Priti's TLC count is now down to 14,300 - just 3,300 points away from absolute normalcy. At this rate, she should be cured and out of the hospital by Tuesday/Wednesday. Her HB count is a normal 9.3. Her platelet count is 1,20,000...which is also high enough and good.

Priti's urea and cretinine counts are high - her kidneys are still not doing the job they are supposed to do. Therefore, alternate day dialysis continues - the next one being today.

We are hoping and praying that her kidneys resume functioning in a week or two.

Update on my wife's condition...

Priti is making steady progress, thanks to the wishes and prayers of innumerable friends and well wishers. Her TLC is down to 17,100 - down from 80,000 over two weeks ago. The requirement is 11,000 - this will show that the septicemia (blood poisoning) is out of her system. Hopefully, she will reach this figure in 3/4 days. Her BP is steady at 130. Her platelet count is maintained at an excellent 1,50,000. Her HB count is 9.8 - better than her normal count of just 7.4 earlier. She has stopped vomiting out bile - her liver seems to have recovered and she has started eating reasonably from yesterday.

Priti was slightly depressed for a couple of days - she was not talking, eating or opening her eyes. This has changed a bit yesterday - she is responding to family and friends. All that is now needed is for her kidneys to resume functioning. Until then she is on alternate day dialysis - to remove toxins from her system.

If the TLC count comes down to 11,000 in 3/4 days, she could be discharged from hospital and return home by middle/end of next week.

Family, friends and well wishers (including the vast SOS family worldwide - the organisation I work for) have rallied behind my daughters and me in our hour of crisis with prayers, blood donations and even financial support. I would like to place on record my thanks to my law college friends, some of who are now leading judges and lawyers of India, who organised a collection drive to help meet a part of Priti's hospitalisation costs. May God bless all my family members and friends for caring so much.

Priti is out of ICU...

Priti being transferred to her room...

Priti has been moved out of ICU after a 13 day stay and is now comfortably settled in her own private room in Apollo Hospital.

The prayers and wishes of friends, relatives, office colleagues, neighbours, acquaintances and well wishers (not to mention the large numbers of blood donations) have ensured that she is out of danger - she is no longer critical.

Priti's TLC is down to 24,000 (it was 80,000+ last week). This means that the septicemia is slowly but surely receding.

Her platelet count has gone up from under 20,000 to 1,77,000 (without the support of any plasma or platelet transfusion in the last 3 days). Her blood pressure is finally stable (it has gone up to 120+ from under 70).

Priti's HB is 8.9 - it was only 7.4 yesterday, but a blood transfusion in the evening has pushed it up.

We are now waiting for her kidneys to start functioning again. A MR scan two days ago indicated that the collapse has been "acute" - so the recovery may take a little longer. She needs dialysis every alternate day. Please pray for her complete recovery.

I thank all friends, relatives, office colleagues, neighbours, acquaintances and well wishers for their support and prayers.

Priti is critical...

On Saturday, January 19th, Priti - my beloved wife of 18 years - underwent a minor gynecological operation in a reputed hospital near our home. The operation was a success. Priti was scheduled to return home the next morning.

While Priti rested in her room with my mother-in-law sitting by her bedside, my two daughters and I went to a nearby restaurant for a celebratory lunch.

Our happiness was terribly premature. Destiny has not been kind to us. On Saturday evening, hours after the operation, Priti had to be rushed to the ICU in a critical state. Apparantly, a blood transfusion post-surgery caused a severe reaction in Priti's body - some of her organs (kidneys and lungs) had shut down and her blood had got badly infected - she had become a victim of blood poisoning (septicemia).

On Sunday morning, she was shifted to one of the best hospitals in Delhi (Apollo) - and she has been in the ICU there ever since, on life-support. She remains extremely critical. Please please pray for her.

She may have a surgery tomorrow morning.

Friends, relatives and office colleagues have overwhelmed us with their support. We have received innumerable pints of blood - more has been committed.

Priti's life hangs on a thread - my daughters Piya and Panvi and I need your prayers.

Squeezed!

Lost man survives a week by eating snow

A Japanese climber lost in the mountains for more than a week in frigid conditions survived by eating snow before making his way down to a ski resort on January 11, Japanese media said.

Masayuki Nakamura headed into the Azuma mountain range about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo on December 30, saying he planned to be back on January 2. But he became disoriented in the snow and wandered the area for more than a week, reports said. He had no mobile phone and his food supply ran out after a few days. A ski resort employee found Nakamura walking along a road close to the ski hills Friday, Kyodo news agency said.

He was taken to hospital suffering from mild frostbite. "I really thought I was done for, so I was truly happy that I made it," Kyodo news agency quoted him as telling a reporter. "I never want to climb a mountain again."

Stressed? Go for e-curse

Greeks fed up with their pesky neighbours, old flames, the government, or society in general can find release in a new Internet site that posts e-curses for free.

"Have you been dumped, harassed or angered? Why not unload with a curse?" offers e-curse.com , which currently has more than 150 entries.

Most postings on the site are from jilted lovers but there are also contributions aimed at Greek taxi drivers - a favourite target - banks, the public sector and even Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.

"May his next pasta meal give him salmonella poisoning," one user rants against the premier, whose love of food is a popular barb among opposition media.

In Athens, locals usually relieve stress through a variety of offensive hand gestures, most frequently whilst caught in one of the capital's trademark traffic jams.

"Studies by Eurostat show that Greeks have gone from being positive and relaxed to having the worst stress in Europe over job uncertainty and the collapse of traditional social structures," sociology professor George Piperopoulos told the daily Ethnos , which publicised the site on January 12.

Boss fires staff for not smoking...

The owner of a small German computer company has fired three non-smoking workers because they were threatening to disturb the peace after they requested a smoke-free environment.

The manager of the 10-person IT company in Buesum, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper that he had fired the trio because their non-smoking was causing disruptions.

Germany introduced non-smoking rules in pubs and restaurants on January 1, but Germans working in small offices are still allowed to smoke.

"I can't be bothered with trouble-makers," Thomas was quoted saying. "We're on the phone all the time and it's just easier to work while smoking. Everyone picks on smokers these days. It's time for revenge. I'm only going to hire smokers from now on."

Man finds diamond ring inside candy!

A woman in Lafayette, USA, whose diamond ring vanished while she was making fudge for a bake sale was despondent after scouring her home and finding no sign of it.

But Linda Vancel recently got a sweet surprise: A relative of the woman who bought the fudge found the ring when he bit into a piece of the candy.

``It's a very sentimental ring,'' Vancel said of the white gold ring her mother, who died 15 years ago, wore for 50 years before passing it on.

Linda Rhoades bought the fudge during a bake sale in West Lafayette. She took some of it to her sister-in-law's father, Charles ``Red'' Matson, in hopes of cheering him up after recent health problems.

When Matson snacked on a piece of the fudge, he bit into something hard - the ring.

Rhoades said Matson called her and said, ``Well, Linda, it's got chocolate all over it, but it doesn't look adjustable. It's got a stone that's really shiny.''

Vancel said she had looked all over her home, even dumping the trash can on the kitchen floor to sort through the rubbish for the ring. Finally she thought to track down Rhoades and sent her a long-shot e-mail, which Rhoades returned as soon as she got back from vacation.

``It renews your faith in people,'' Vancel said. ``Sometimes there's so much negative in the world, to hear a story like this is reassuring.''

Robbery suspect has an identity crisis...

A burglary suspect in the United States who gave a false home address to police after his arrest didn't count on one thing, getting robbed himself.

Daniel Cabral, 22, was arrested on December 26 and charged with burglarising a University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth building, police said. He was arraigned and released until his next court date.

Hours later, he was robbed at gunpoint while walking home from a bar. He reported the robbery to police, this time giving them his real address instead of the phony one he reported earlier in the day, according to authorities.

Police arrested two suspects and a man accused of being an accomplice after the fact. They also obtained a search warrant for Cabral's real address and found computer equipment that had been taken from the UMass building as well as power tools that had been reported missing from a local theater.

Cabral was released on his own recognizance. Police were not sure if he had an attorney, and there was no telephone listing for him in New Bedford.

Dead father wins girl concert tickets

An essay that won a 6-year-old US girl four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert began with the powerful line: "My daddy died this year in Iraq”.

While gripping, it was not true - and now the girl may lose her tickets after her mom acknowledged to contest organisers it was all a lie.

The sponsor of the contest was Club Libby Lu, a Chicago-based store that sells clothes, accessories and games intended for young girls.

The saga began this Friday (December 28th) with company officials surprising the girl at a Club Libby Lu at a mall in suburban Garland, about 20 miles (30 kilometres) northeast of Dallas. The girl won a makeover that included a blonde Hannah Montana wig, as well as the grand prize - airfare for four to Albany, New York, and four tickets to the sold-out Hannah Montana concert on Jan. 9.

The mother had told company officials that the girl's father died April 17 in a roadside bombing in Iraq, company spokeswoman Robyn Caulfield said.

She had identified the soldier as Sgt Jonathon Menjivar, but the Department of Defense has no record of anyone with that name dying in Iraq. Caulfield said the mother has admitted to the deception.

"We regret that the original intent of the contest, which was to make a little girl's holiday extra special, has not been realised in the way we anticipated," said Mary Drolet, the CEO of Club Libby Lu.

Drolet said the company is reviewing the matter, and is considering taking away the girl's tickets.

Dead man 'sends' holiday greetings!

This one is from Ashland in USA. An Oregon man known for his sense of humour gave his friends and family a start recently when they received Christmas cards from him two months after he died.

Chet Fitch died in October at age 88. Weeks later Christmas cards, 34 of them began arriving- written in his hand with a return address of "Heaven".

The greeting read: "I asked Big Guy if I could sneak back and send some cards. At first he said no but at my insistence he finally said, 'Oh well, what the heaven, go ahead but don't (tary) there.' Wish I could tell you about things here but word cannot explain."

"Better get back as Big Guy said he stretched a point to let me in the first time, so I had better not press my luck. I'll probably be seeing you (some sooner than you think) Wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Chet Fitch."

A friend for nearly 25 years, Debbie Hansen Bernard said, "All I could think as, 'You little stinker."

"It was amazing," she said. "Just so Chet, always wanting to get the last laugh."

The mailing was a joke Fitch worked on for two decades with his barber, Patty Dean, 57.

Pigeon falls head over heels for a man!

A pigeon in England has fallen head over heels in love with a British man.

Andy Maw of London brought a pigeon into his home after taking pity on the bedraggled bird when it turned up on his doorstep after a storm.

And now Pokey, the little pigeon has fallen in love with its rescuer.

"It sounds crazy but she's fallen head over heels for me." The "Sun" quoted Andy as saying.

The 42-year-old, who is also a dad of four, revealed that the pigeon literally attacks his wife Trude if she goes near him; sits on Andy's car dashboard for drives; uses the family toilet if it needs to go indoors; settles on Andy's knee when he takes a bath and stalks him if he tries to spend time alone.

"When Pokey is on her mating cycle and lays her eggs on her little bed in the bathroom, she sits on them for three weeks," he said.

"But when that part of the cycle is over and she wants a mate she comes after me and sexually harasses me.

"She will fly over for me to caress her beak, peck my fingers and strut about puffing up her chest to deter females," he added.

Pigeon expert Prof Danial Haag-Wackernagel, of the University of Basel in Switzerland, said: "Pokey is 'imprinted' to Andy as a mate."

Christmas card arrives 93 years late...

A postcard featuring a colour drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl was mailed in 1914, but its journey was slower than Christmas. It has just arrived in northwest Kansas.

The Christmas card was dated December 23, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, apparently from her cousins in Alma, Nebraska.

It’s a mystery where it spent most of the last century, Oberlin postmaster Steve Schultz said. "It’s surprising that it never got thrown away," he said. "How someone found it, I don’t know."

Ethel Martin is deceased, but Schultz said the post office wanted to get the card to a relative.

Man in Guinness for getting hit by car...

Matthew McKnight hopes nobody manages to top his feat in the Guinness Book of World Records. That's because McKnight holds the record for "Greatest Distance Thrown in a Car Accident" in the book's 2008 edition.

The 29-year-old record-holder lived to tell about being thrown 118-feet by a car that hit him while travelling about 70 mph. He was struck on Oct 26, 2001, while trying to help accident victims along Interstate 376 in Monroeville, about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh, USA.

He suffered two dislocated shoulders plus a broken shoulder, pelvis, leg and tailbone. He spent two weeks in the hospital and 80 days in rehab before returning to work in April 2002.

McKnight is a volunteer firefighter and paramedic, though he wasn't on duty when he stopped to help the accident victims. He works full-time as a communications specialist at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh.

McKnight's emergency room physician, Dr Eric Brader, submitted paperwork for the record, which Guinness recognized in 2003. It was not listed in the book until the 2008 edition, however.

"I thought it was a big joke. Dr Brader is known for joking around a lot," McKnight told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "But when he brought (the paperwork) to me, I saw how serious he was."

Thieves steal ham, leave Christmas message...

Thieves who stole 16 metric tonnes (17.6 short tonnes) of ham and bacon from a warehouse in Australia left behind a message taunting the business just weeks before the holiday season.

``Thanks ... Merry Christmas,'' the crooks daubed on a wall of the Zammit Ham and Bacon Curers warehouse in suburban Sydney as they made off with their haul.

Owner Anthony Zammit said that when he arrived for work on December 3rd he found a hole in a wall of the building where the thieves appeared to have entered. The stolen meat was worth up to 100,000 Australian dollars (US$88,000; euro 60,000), he said.

It appeared the thieves had manhandled the meat _ several fully loaded pallets worth of it _ through the hole and onto a refrigerated truck, local media reported.

Police Inspector Rodney Ormes said the crime should not be taken lightly. ``You're talking about a business that's been a victim of a serious crime, it's lost a significant amount of Christmas stock.''

Zammit said he was offering a A$5,000 (US$4,420; euro3,000) reward for anyone who helped to recover the meat, and that his company would work overtime to make sure all its Christmas orders were filled.

``We're working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and (have) put on extra staff,'' he said. ``We won't let anyone down.''

German woman becomes mom at 64

A German woman aged 64 has given birth to a healthy baby girl, her first child after years of unfruitful attempts and false pregnancies, a news portal reported on December 2nd.

"Mother and child are doing well," said doctor Elias Karam at the Aschaffenburg clinic in southern Bavaria, quoted by the Internet site of the Der Spiegel weekly.

The baby was born on Thursday and weighed two kilograms (4.4 pounds), the report said.

While the woman became the oldest German to give birth to a child, it was far from a world record.

At the end of 2006, a Spanish woman aged 67 gave birth to twins, breaking the record made the year before by another twin-bearer, this time a 66-year-old Romanian.

The German gave birth after a 25-year-old lady donated ovules but used the sperm of her husband, who is also aged 64, Spiegel Online reported.

The ovule operation happened abroad because it is banned in Germany, the report said.

"This woman came to me because she needed my help. As a doctor, I gave it without question," said Karam.

Judge jails everyone in court

A judicial panel in the US has removed an "egregious" judge, who objected to the ringing of a cell phone in the courtroom and ordered the arrest of 46 defendants present on the premise.

The ringing of a cell phone annoyed Judge Robert M Restaino in New York State's Niagara Falls so much that he asked the person whose instrument had made the noise to come forward.

Otherwise, everyone in the court room could take a week in jail. "Please do not tell me I am the only one who heard that," Restaino had said.

When no one came up voluntarily, the judge carried out his threat.

According to New York State Commission on judicial conduct, Restaino ordered 46 defendants to be held in custody and they were ultimately placed in holding cells.

The Commission was not amused by the judges conduct and recommended his removal, describing his action as "egregious and unprecedented abuse of judicial power."

The Commission found that while the judge "chastised" at length the defendants who claimed ignorance about the ringing phone's owner and accused the culprit of being "self-absorbed" for not coming forward, he never questioned "any of the prosecutors, defence attorneys, court personnel, programme representatives or others who were present in the courtroom" on March 11, 2005.

Restaino, for his part, attributed his behaviour to "certain stresses in his personal life," according to the report.

"It is tragic that in a crowded courtroom, only the individual wearing judicial robes, symbolizing his exalted status and the power it conferred, seems to have been oblivious to the enormous injustice caused by his rash and reckless behaviour," the Commission said.

Survivor meets savior after 62 years...

Golda Bushkanietz is not religious but when Irena Walulewicz helped save her from death at the hands of the Nazis, she thought an angel saved her.

After 62 years, the two met at JFK International Airport in New York City at an event sponsored by The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, a group formed in 1986 to give financial assistance to people who rescued Jews during World War II. Bushkanietz, who lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, hugged Walulewicz and spoke to her in Polish as Walulewicz, who is deaf and mute, wept. "Don't cry, don't cry," Bushkanietz said in Polish. Bushkanietz, 94, is a Jew from Swieciany, Poland who hid in the Walulewicz's home in 1943 when the Nazis were rounding up and killing millions of Jews in Europe and North Africa. "She knocked on the window and they opened up the door. She thought that there was an angel up there who saved her," said her son Joseph More, 59, translating for his mother, who spoke also spoke in Hebrew and Yiddish at a press conference. "My mother is not religious." Bushkanietz and her husband Szymon were rounded up in 1941 and sent to a slave labour camp.

Later, Szymon fled and joined up with partisans. Zofia Walulewicz and daughter Irena, then 17, hid Golda in their attic, bringing her food and regularly emptying a bucket that she used for a toilet. "It's in her religion that she needs to help somebody," said Anna Varshavskaya, her translator.

In November 1943, Golda joined her husband and the partisans, living in underground tunnels and shacks for the rest of the war. She saw Walulewicz once more in 1945. She and Szymon spent three years in a refugee camp in Germany and moved to Israel in 1949. Szymon died 33 years ago. Bushkanietz said she sent the family money over the years but did not visit Poland because they did not have enough money for traveling, More said. It is uncertain how many Jews were rescued by neighbors and other supporters. The Righteous Among the Nations programme at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem counts 21,310 people as helping to rescue Jews and 8,000 rescue stories. "She's very happy to meet (Irena)," More said. "She never forgot."

Fancy dress party for dogs in Britain

Darth Labrador. Dogzilla. Elvis the hound dog. No outfit is too outrageous for man's best friend. The British do love a party animal -- they have gone crazy dressing up their dogs for costume parties.

Sales soared by 300 per cent over Halloween. Now costumiers have lined up a festive big seller -- the one-size-fits-all Santa pet hat for the dog determined to have a great Christmas. "Some cynics would say the British love their dogs more than they do other people," said Benjamin Webb, spokesman for Angels Fancy Dress, who have been supplying costumes for humans since 1840 and are now on a canine winning streak. "It's an American tradition that the British have made their own."

In Britain, the quiet man in accounts comes to a party dressed as Superman whereas the Americans go for crazy costumes. "The British are so quiet and reserved. That is why it's more like wishful thinking," he told Reuters. The costumes range in price from 10 to 20 pounds. Humans can hire outfits, canines are not allowed to. "Dogs can't put down a deposit," Webb explained.

At the Angels Fancy Dress shop in Shaftesbury Avenue, situated in the heart of London theatreland, proud pet owners bring in their dogs to pick a suitable outfit. If the demand keeps soaring, the shop may consider putting in a special fitting room complete with mirrors. Webb said "They use dressing up as an extension of their own personality. We have clients who have identical costumes for themselves and their dogs. It's the whole situation of -- Love me, love my dog." Appalling puns are clearly compulsory in the canine costume business -- as well as Dogzilla, owners can dress their dogs as football "Howligans" to celebrate "Happy Howloween."

One of the biggest sellers is the rock superstar dog -- for anyone who fancies bedecking their immaculately bred golden retriever in a diamante Elvis-style cape, collar and flared trousers. Webb is as bemused as anyone that the British have lifted silliness to new heights. "Nobody would have seen this coming. They really have taken this to their hearts. We love our animals and we have these secret desires we want to fulfil." But he said felines do draw the line at dressing up. "This is a canine fashion. Cats are far too single-minded and refuse to follow fashion," he said.

Couple divorce 4 days after wedding

An Israeli couple has sought divorce just after four days of tying the nuptial knot, making it the world's fastest divorce.

The couple arrived at the Rabbinical court yesterday asking for divorce less than a week after their wedding with the husband arguing that his wife refused to live in his parents house and the wife claiming that he had promised to rent an apartment and live on their own.

The newly weds apparently also had some financial disputes as the wife claimed that she should get a larger share of the wedding gifts and that the husband's family gave cheap gifts.

The rabbis, who failed to convince the couple to reconsider their decision, granted the wife her wish and gave both the divorce papers.

Latest data available from the Rabbinical courts have shown that five per cent of the marriages last only a year in Israel. Last year, 10,000 couples filed for divorce in Israel, an increase of 4 per cent compared to the previous year, with Tel Aviv leading the tally with 723 cases, the report said.

Jerusalem, with a large segment of religious population, surprisingly also showed 10.4 per cent increase in divorces.

One of the findings reveal that about 17 per cent of the total number of divorces in 2006 were filed less than three years after the knot was tied, the portal said.

However, if the marriage survives six years of matrimonial bliss the risk of divorce decreases although 17.5 per cent of the applicants looking for divorce were those who had spent 20-30 years together, it said.

Man forgets car at gas station

A German man forgot his car after filling it up at a petrol station, police said on November 9th.

"He just forgot about it and walked off home," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Wuppertal.

After the car had sat blocking the pump for about an hour, a woman working at the petrol station became suspicious and alerted authorities.

Officers contacted the 63-year-old from Remscheid, who came straight back to fetch the vehicle. He had paid to fill up the car before walking off.

New Yorkers rally to help online Romeo...

A tale of online love inspired usually cynical New Yorkers this last week to help a young man find the girl of his dreams after he spotted her on a crowded subway train.

For Web designer Patrick Moberg, 21, from Brooklyn, it was love at first sight when he locked eyes with a rosy-cheeked woman while riding in Manhattan on last Sunday night. She was writing her journal. The train was so full that he lost her in the crowd when they both got off, so he set up a website dedicated to finding the mystery woman.

He drew a picture of the girl, who was wearing blue shorts, blue tights, and a red flower in her hair, and posted his cell phone number, e-mail address and an appeal for help finding her. It worked. Within hours Moberg's inbox was overflowing with e-mails and his phone ringing non-stop. He told the New York Post that he even received e-mails offering him love. "Some people said I'm not the girl but you're so adorable, pick me instead."

On Tuesday night a friend of the woman contacted him and sent him a picture so he could confirm her identity. "Found Her! Seriously!" a notice on his website said. "We've been put in touch with one another and we'll see what happens." The mysterious subway brunette was named on Thursday as Camille Hayton, an intern at magazine BlackBook from Melbourne, Australia, who also lives in Brooklyn. "This is crazy. I can't believe it's happening," Hayton, 22, told the New York Post. But Moberg said he is now pulling the shutters on his love life, scribbling out the cell phone number on his Web site and leaving a message on his phone saying he will do no more interviews. "In our best interest, there will be no more updates to this website," he wrote. "Unlike all the romantic comedies and bad pop songs, you'll have to make up your own ending for this."

Some New Yorkers may already, wondering if Moberg had made it sound too easy to find a needle in a haystack in this city of eight million people.

Best wishes on the occasion of Diwali - the Festival of Lights...

Today, India celebrates Diwali - the Festival of Lights...



On this auspicious day, may you be blessed with peace and prosperity...

45 minutes in a bathtub with 87 snakes!

Jackie Bibby from Texas has spent 45 minutes in a bathtub with 87 rattlesnakes to create a new Guiness World Record.

Nearly 3,500 Chinese named 'Olympics'

The upcoming Beijing Olympics is more than just a point of pride for China - it's such an important part of the national consciousness that nearly 3,500 children have been named for the event, a newspaper has reported.

Most of the 3,491 people with the name "Aoyun," meaning Olympics, were born around the year 2000, as Beijing was bidding to host the 2008 Summer Games, the Beijing Daily newspaper has reported, citing information from China's national identity card database.

The vast majority of people named Aoyun are male, the newspaper said. Only six live in Beijing. The report didn't say where the others live.

Names related to the Olympics don't just stop with "Olympics." More than 4,000 Chinese share their names with the Beijing Games mascots, the "Five Friendlies."

The names are Bei Bei (880 people), Jing Jing (1,240), Huan Huan (1,063), Ying Ying (624) and Ni Ni (642). When put together, the phrase translates to "Beijing welcomes you!"

Chinese have increasingly turned to unique names as a way to express a child's individuality.

In a country with a population of 1.3 billion, 87 percent share the same 129 family names. That's why 5,598 people have the same name as basketball player Yao Ming and 18,462 share a moniker with star hurdler Liu Xiang, according to the Beijing Daily report.

Parents have turned to unusual combinations of letters, numbers and symbols when choosing their child's name, Li Yuming, deputy director of the National Language Commission, told the Xinhua News Agency in an August interview.

At least one couple wanted to call their child "1A," he said, while others use the e-mail address symbol (at), which in Chinese is pronounced "Aita," meaning "love him".

Couple from 'Hell' wins lottery...

Life in Hell (Michigan) just got a little easier for John and Sue Wilson. The couple, who live in the small town of Hell, 45 miles west of Detroit, were blessed with a $115,001 windfall from the Michigan Lottery.

They won the big prize in the Fantasy 5 drawing held on Wednesday, October 31st - that is, Halloween.

"How cool is that?" said Sue Wilson, 43, a teacher's aide. Her husband is an electrician.

The couple said they plan to use their winnings to pay off bills, make some home improvements, buy a video game system for their 13-year-old son and possibly visit relatives in Georgia.

Parking Mishap...

Picture of a car that pulled a bit too far into its parking space on the third level of a garage.

Pets and their owners share traits: Study

Believe it or not, pets and their owners are just like married couples and they get more alike over a period of time, a study has indicated.

In a survey, Prof Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire asked about 2,500 people to complete online questionnaires about their characters and those of their pets.

The survey found that many dog lovers, cat owners and even reptile keepers said they shared many of the same traits - such as happiness, intelligence, independence and sense of humour - as their pets.

Wiseman also discovered that the longer an animal had been with its owner, the more likely it were to have picked up his/her characteristics.

Prof Wiseman told The Daily Telegraph : "For years, owners have insisted their pets have a unique personality.

"Not only does this work suggest they might be right, it also reveals people's pets are a reflection of themselves."

He said: "Similarity promotes liking in humans. Research has shown couples that are like each other stay together longer.

"Extending this to the animal kingdom, I think it is likely someone who is fun and playful is more likely to go for a dog, for example", Wiseman said.

Crocodile arrested for chasing fishermen...

An "aggressive" crocodile spent a night behind bars at a remote Australian police station after being "arrested" for having a go at a group of fishermen.

The fisherman told police they were retrieving their vessel from a boat ramp at the Nhulunbuy Yacht Club in eastern Arnhem Land when they spotted the crocodile in the water on November 1st.

The aggressive animal then "had a go at them", the fishermen were quoted as saying.

They alerted police in the small mining town on the Gove Peninsular east of Darwin and warnings were broadcast on local radio until the reptile was captured by wildlife officers in shallow water about 30m from the ramp.

The fiesty animal was then put in the Nhulunbuy police station watch house for the night, police said, adding the reptile was to be released from its cell shortly and moved to a crocodile farm.

German teen escapes prison in a suitcase!

A 19-year-old German woman has escaped from prison by hiding in a friend's suitcase.

The fugitive hid inside the large case when her 17-year-old fellow inmate was released from the youth prison in northwest Germany on Friday, Lower Saxony ministry spokesman Dennis Weilmann said on October 29th.

The girl simply walked out of the building with her friend concealed in her luggage, Weilmann said.

"Our staff are going to make sure they inspect big suitcases more carefully in the future," Weilmann said.

Neither of the teenagers has since been caught. Both had been jailed for theft. The escaped prisoner had less than two weeks left to serve.

Graveyard marriage for Ohio couple...

As well-wishing zombies and witches looked on, a couple got married at a haunted house where they work in Berea, Ohio, USA.

Tina Milhoane, 22, and Robert Seifer III, 24, exchanged vows on October 24th at the entrance to the haunted house's outdoor cemetery.

The groom made his entry in a hearse, emerging from a coffin borne by six pallbearers.

"It's weird watching your son get out of a coffin," said his father, Robert Seifer II. "Usually when you see someone in a coffin, they're going the other way - in, not out."

The minister, clad as the Grim Reaper, read The Lord's Prayer from a scroll clutched in bony-gloved hand.

"This is the sweetest wedding that I've ever been to," said co-worker Tim Perrien, his face caked in make-up. His date, Jessica Repas, was dripping with blood as the lead character in the horror move "Carrie".

The last word on the subject (see comment) has come in from the bride: "This was a very 'typical' wedding in a very 'unique' location"...Here's wishing the the newly weds a very long and happy married life!

Escalators to a gymn...only in America!

New York seeks help of 720,000 ladybugs to kill pests

Ladybugs, 720,000 of them, have been released in the middle of New York City to help protect one of the city's biggest apartment complexes from pests. In the next days and weeks, they will crawl into plants, flowers and shrubs in the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex in search of insects whose smell attracts them - soft-bodied, leaf-sucking aphids and mites.

Buying the bugs - at $16.50 (euro11.5) for 2,000 - means the complex's owner, Tishman Speyer, can avoid using chemical insecticides.

``In most cases, we reach for a can of pesticide - and we kill not only the 'bad guys,' but the 'good guys,''' said Eric Vinje, owner of Planet Natural, which supplied the pest-killers.

``All we're doing here is putting more of the 'good guys' to tip the scale, to get some kind of pest population control.''

He said a ladybug can eat up to 50 pests a day, plus insect eggs.

A church on the move in Germany

A 660-tonne stone church was lifted lock stock and barrel on to a giant rolling platform in eastern Germany on October 22nd to make the 12-kilometre journey to its new home.

The church in the village of Heuersdorf had to be moved because it was sitting on extensive deposits of lignite, or brown coal.

Mining work to extract the lignite, a fuel used in power generation plants, is expected to start soon. Packed tightly into a cradle of wooden supports, the 750-year-old church complete with tiled bell tower was separated from its foundations and lifted 1.5 metres to be placed on the rolling platforms.

It started its painstakingly slow journey to the village of Borna on October 24th and is expected to arrive by October 31st, said Regina Messinger of the Mibrag mining company that is moving the church in a project costing $4.2 million.

After 27 years, US couple gets wedding photos...

Karen and Mark Cline of Mansfield, USA, were teenagers when they got married and didn't have $150 to pay a photographer for their wedding photos.

But now they have the pictures, just in time for their 27th anniversary on Thursday.

Their photographer located Karen Cline last week at the diner where she works and surprised her with a photo album.

"About a month ago, I was just cleaning out some of my old things and I found it," said photographer Jim Wagner, who is now 80. "I knew she didn't have any money back then, and I just thought she might like to have it."

It was too much for Karen Cline. "I just stood there and cried and cried and hugged him," she said.

She said she was 18 at the time, and felt heartsick because she and her husband, who was 19, could not afford to pay Wagner. All they had was a single photo that someone else took.

Wagner said he was able to track down Karen Cline after running into her stepfather a few weeks ago. He said she immediately wrote him a check for $150 (euro 105.41).

Leaping Alligator

With less dentists, Britons get desperate; extract own teeth themselves...

Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released recently.

Others have used superglue to stick crowns back on, rather than stumping up for private treatment, said the study. One person spoke of carrying out 14 extractions on himself with pliers.

More typically, a lack of publicly-funded dentists means that growing numbers go private: 78% of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service dentist, and only 15% because of better treatment. “This is an uncomfortable read for all of us, and poses serious questions to politicians from patients," said Sharon Grant of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health.

Overall, 6% of patients had resorted to self-treatment, according to the poll of 5,000 people, which found that one in five had decided against dental work because of the cost. One expert involved in compiling the study — carried out by England's Patient and Public Involvement Forums — came across three people in one morning who had pulled out teeth themselves.

Wierd accident...

Parrot wakes up owner to shoot burglar

A parrot chirping "hello" woke his Texas owner up to find, and then shoot, a burglar in his garage on October 16th, police said.

"I guess you could call him a stool pigeon," owner Dennis Baker told the Dallas Morning News.

It was the fifth time the home, which is also used as a locksmith shop, was burglarised this month.

So when Baker woke to the sounds of Salvador, his Mexican Red-headed parrot, saying "hello, hello" he knew something was wrong.

Baker grabbed his gun and shot the burglar in his garage at about 1:30 am. The man died at hospital, police said.

"I have tools in my garage, my house and my van," Mr Baker said. "They were coming here like they owned the place. I hate what happened, but somebody has to do what's necessary."

The bird also chirped "hello" when police arrived, Baker said. "Sometimes he says 'hi,' but you can't get him to speak on cue," Mr Baker said. "He has a mind of his own."

Texas has recently eased restrictions on people confronting intruders in their homes, businesses or cars. They are no longer obligated to retreat before responding with deadly force.

Unusual car accident...

Humans had beach party 164,000 year ago!

In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show.

Call it a beach party for early man. But it is a beach party thrown by people who were not supposed to be advanced enough for this type of behavior. What was found in a cave in South Africa may change how scientists believe Homo sapiens marched into modernity.

Instead of undergoing a revolution into modern living about 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, as commonly thought, man may have become modern in stuttering fits and starts, or through a long slow march that began even earlier. At least that is the case being made in a study appearing in the latest issue of the journal "Nature" last week.

Researchers found three hallmarks of modern life at Pinnacle Point overlooking the Indian Ocean near South Africa's Mossel Bay: harvested and cooked seafood, reddish pigment from ground rocks, and early tiny blade technology. Scientific optical dating techniques show that these hallmarks were from 164,000 years ago, plus or minus 12,000 years.

"Together as a package this looks like the archaeological record of a much later time period," said study author Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.

This means humans were eating seafood about 40,000 years earlier than previously thought. And this is the earliest record of humans eating something other than what they caught or gathered on the land, Marean said. Most of what Marean found were the remnants of brown mussels, but he also found black mussels, small saltwater clams, sea snails and even a barnacle that indicates whale blubber or skin was brought into the cave.

Then they put them over hot rocks to cook. When the food was done, the shells popped open in a process similar to modern-day mussel-steaming, but without the pot.

Marean also found 57 pieces of ground-up rock that would have been reddish- or pinkish-brown. That would be used for self-decoration and sending social signals to other people, much the way makeup is used now, he said.

Dice illusion...

THE LONGER YOU LOOK, THE MORE IT MESSES WITH YOUR HEAD!

No male rulers for Kumbwada...

In six generations no man has ever spent more than a week as ruler of Kumbwada, a kingdom in Muslim northern Nigeria. All have died mysteriously just after ascending to the throne.

The father of Hadiza Ahmed, the current queen, was no exception. "My father decided to see if he could break the spell but he failed. In his first week on the throne he became so sick that he had to abdicate and was rushed out of the village. He died three weeks later," said Hadiza, during a recent interaction with representatives of the western media.

That was nine years ago and Hadiza, 55, has ruled this community of half a million people ever since, despite being part of a culture where leaders are normally men.

According to Hadiza, the curse of Kumbwada kingdom started more than two centuries ago when the warrior princess Magajiya Maimuna led her cavalry from Zaria, a town to the north and conquered the kingdom.

"After the conquest Maimuna decided to leave her brother here as ruler but he fell sick and died within a week. The same thing happened with her second brother and in the end she decided to stay herself and she ruled for 83 years," Hadiza said, adjusting the white veil covering her head and shoulders.

Despite the widely-held view in the conservative Muslim north that it is an abomination for a woman to lead traditional and religious institutions, Hadiza looks very much in charge of her domain.

"I don't face any resistance from my subjects, they obey my commands as they obey their God because I'm a fair ruler who ensures justice in my kingdom," she said as the muezzin called the noon prayers.

A handful of her male subjects led by the village's imam Musa Muhammad, who have come to pay homage, listen and nod submissively, clustered around the blue silk-upholstered chair that serves as Hadiza's throne.

The monarch is flanked by her eldest son Danjuma Salihu and her eldest daughter and heir apparent Idris who wears a purple muslin veil.

Danjuma, Hadiza's eldest child does not seem to bear any grudge against his younger half sister Idris, the declared heir to the throne.

"I know and everybody here knows that no man can rule this kingdom and survive. It is not in my own interest to be heir apparent," Salihu said.

Local people say the curse is linked to a large rock, visible from the village. No one goes there to find out more however as the few who did never returned.

Married to a local businessman, Hadiza is the only female chief who bore children, thanks to her three marriages before assuming the throne, which produced five children, three of them girls.

The people of the village believe that any woman who assumes the throne becomes barren.

"I'm the chief here but I discharge my domestic duties as a wife and mother. However my husband knows his limits, royalty is royalty," Hadiza said with a dignified smile.

Four hundred kilometres (250 miles) away in Kano, northern Nigeria's commercial hub and a flashpoint for sectarian and political strife, Muslim leaders frown at the idea of a woman leading a community.

"The fact that any man who assumes the throne dies in a week strongly suggests the use of black magic which Islam absolutely condemns," Aminuddeen Abubakar, a prominent Muslim cleric said. "Once there is evidence of magic in any situation Islam considers it a deviation which must be reversed."

However, Musa Muhammad, the imam of Kumbwada thinks differently. "This is an exceptional situation none of us can change. A woman chief is a necessity given our peculiar circumstances," Muhammad said.

Vodka drip saves poisoned Italian in Australia...

Australian doctors used an intravenous feed of vodka to keep an Italian tourist alive after he consumed large quantities of a poisonous substance.

The 24-year-old man, in an apparent bid at self-harm, had swallowed ethylene glycol, found in antifreeze, which can cause death. Doctors administered pure alcohol, the conventional antidote, but exhausted the hospital's supply.

Desperate to continue the treatment the doctors at Mackay Base Hospital in Queensland state hooked up an intravenous feed of vodka, hospital officials said. "The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit," Dr Todd Fraser said in a statement on 10th October.

"Fortunately for him he was in a medically induced coma for a good portion of that. By the time he woke up I think his hangover would have well and truly gone," Fraser said.

"The hospital's administrators were also very understanding when we explained our reasons for buying a case of vodka."

The Italian man was treated in the hospital two months ago and has since made a successful recovery. News of his treatment was only released on October 10th.

Gossip leads to nasty surprise for Czech couple

A Czech couple who decided to take a DNA test to squash persistent pub gossip and prove that their 10-month-old baby was their own got a nasty surprise.

The couple, from the southeastern town of Trebic, had some doubts about the child as her hair was blonde and they both had dark hair. Fellow drinkers' suspicions got on their nerves.

But the test showed neither of the parents had the same DNA as the baby, Czech news agency CTK reported October 3rd, suggesting a mix-up at the hospital.

I will return to this blog after five days...

I am leaving for the airport for a five day business trip to Mumbai and Ahmedabad. I will get back to this blog on my return.

International Non-Violence Day...

Today, the world celebrates International Non-Violence Day, on the occasion of the 138th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

His message: "I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life."

Wackiest path to record books...

Australian John Allwood smashed 40 watermelons with his head in just one minute. Using only one hand, Germany's Thomas Vogel unfastened 56 bras in 60 seconds.

When it comes to the world's weirdest achievers, nothing beats the ultimate accolade — a place in Guinness World Records for demonstrating bizarre skills.

Nothing is too wacky.

Can you catch 77 grapes in your mouth in under a minute, keep nine yo-yo's spinning at the same time, hold your breath for more than 14 minutes or throw a washing machine? Then Guinness has a spot for you.

The annual compendium, whose latest edition is published on September 28th, even has a section entitled Trivial Pursuits. Few would argue with the title as Guinness lists the globe's finest practitioners at putting the cover on a duvet, kicking yourself in the head and throwing paper aircraft into a bucket.

Italian Michele Santana wins an entry for typing 57 books backwards.

Indian yoga instructor GP Vijayakumar snorted eight fish up through his mouth and out of his nostrils in a minute. American Jackie Bibby shared his bath with 75 live western diamondback rattlesnakes.

The latest edition also has a four-page pullout of the world's grossest records.

China's Wei Shengchu gains notoriety for most acupuncture needles in the head and face.

Man steals 1,500 pairs of shoes, caught

A man in USA pleaded guilty of stealing more than 1,500 pairs of girls' shoes from schools in a deal that calls for prosecutors to recommend probation.

Erik D. Heinrich, 26, of Kenosha, Wisconsin, pleaded guilty on September 27th to three counts of burglary and was scheduled for sentencing on October 23.

He was arrested after a security video showed him entering North High School on May 20 and leaving with some items. Police tracked him through his vehicle registration, searched his home and a rented storage unit and found the shoes.

Police have said Heinrich worked for a cable company and collected keys to the schools as he responded to calls. He used the keys to break into three Waukesha public high schools and one middle school six times during the past two years, according to a criminal complaint.

Police discovered the break-in at North High School after several female students reported that the locks on their lockers had been cut and their shoes stolen.

Heinrich has a previous shoe-stealing conviction, in 2005, that was dismissed at prosecutors' request after he completed a year of probation, counseling and 50 hours of community service.

Russian woman's 12th baby weighs 7.75 kg

A small Russian city has welcomed a large new citizen: a 7.75-kilogram (17 pound, 1 ounce) baby whose mother had already delivered 11 other children.

Tatiana Khalina, 42, delivered the girl at a maternity clinic in Aleisk, a town of 30,000 people in the Altai region in southern Siberia, a nurse at the clinic said on September 27th.

Some Russian media reports said it was the heaviest baby on record, but that could not be confirmed.

Nurse Svetlana Gildeyeva said the birth went smoothly, and mother and the child were fine. She said the baby, Nadezhda, was transferred from the small clinic to a maternity hospital in Barnaul, a larger city.

The girl is developing normally, said Irina Kurdeka, a doctor at the Barnaul hospital.

The daily Moskovsky Komsomolets quoted the local social services chief, Marina Alistratova, as saying the family had modest means. She said Khalina's husband was on contract with a local military unit.

"We have presented them with a good washing machine, a food package and a card," Alistratova told the newspaper. "We will keep supporting them in the future."

Average weight for newborn babies is around 3.2 kilograms (7 pounds, 1 ounce), according to international statistics.

The Guinness Book of Records says the heaviest baby ever was born in the United States in 1879. It weighed 10.4 kilograms (23 pounds, 12 ounces) and died 11 hours after birth. The book also listed 10.2-kilogram (22 pounds, 8 ounces) babies born in Italy in 1955 and in South Africa in 1982.

Wierd accident...

Cop sacked for taking a second wife...another demoted for same reason

One policeman in mainly Muslim Malaysia has been sacked and another demoted -- both for taking a second wife.

A newspaper said on September 23rd that the pair, who were married abroad, had not sought prior approval from their respective commanders.

"In the force, we have to vet whom they (policemen) want to marry as a policy," the New Straits Times quoted the country's police chief, Musa Hassan, as saying.

"You can't just simply marry anyone for security reasons. They got married overseas and they didn't even inform they went overseas," he said. "Let this be a lesson to other police officers."

Just over half of Malaysia's 26 million people are Muslims. Islam says a man can take up to four wives if he is able to support them.

Bank robber falls asleep on the job

A Turkish man who broke into a Cyprus bank to steal from the ATM machine was found fast asleep on the floor by a cleaner who raised the alarm, Cypriot police announced on September 17.

The cleaner stumbled over the suspect two hours before opening time and called in the police, who turned up to catch a tired man staggering out of the building.

Bank officials said the would-be robber tried to break into the ATM machine - after entering the building through a window - but could not crack the code to access the cash.

The 30-year-old Turkish national appeared before a Nicosia court where he was remanded in custody.

'Dead' man wakes up under autopsy knife

A Venezuelan man, who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realise something was amiss when he started bleeding. They quickly sought to stitch up the incision on his face.

"I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Camejo said, according to a report on September 14 in leading local newspaper "El Universal" .

His grieving wife turned up at the morgue to identify her husband's body only to find him moved into a corridor - and alive.

Hello from China...

I will return to this blog after two weeks...

I am going to Thailand and China on a 17 day trip. I will resume updating this blog on my return.

Uniquely painted truck trailer...(doesn't the driver look real?)

Bar launches index-linked cocktails

A London bar is launching a series of index-linked vodka cocktails in a bid to promote Russian business in Britain.

Potemkin, one of the capital's leading vodka bars, has named five cocktails after the top Russian companies currently traded on the London Stock Exchange -- Tatneft, Rostelekom, Evraz, MMC Norilsk Nickel, and Surgutneftegas -- and will adjust alcohol levels according share price performance.

Entrepreneur Roger Shashoua developed the idea to promote his book "Dancing with the Bear" about making money in Russia.

"Most British people are unaware of just how successful Russian businesses are proving to be in London," he said in a statement. "This provides them with an opportunity to do their homework, and eat, drink, and make money."

Potemkin will assess the performance of the five companies on a weekly basis. If their share prices rise, so too will the alcohol used to prepare each cocktail.

The price will remain the same at 4.95 pounds per cocktail, but drinkers should be aware that, just like share values, alcohol content can fall as well as rise.

Wierd accident...

Housewife hid $3 million in forex gains

A financially savvy Tokyo housewife who made 400 million yen ($3.44 million) trading in foreign exchange markets was fined by a Japanese court on August 24.

Yukiko Ikebe, 60, got a suspended jail sentence and was fined 34 million yen after she used relatives' names to make her gains look smaller and avoid paying tax, public broadcaster NHK said.

"She felt it was unfair to have to pay tax on her gains, when she made losses some years," NHK quoted the judge as saying. "She spent the money on kimonos and jewellery."

Forex trading has become more popular in recent years in Japan, where low interest rates have led retail investors to seek new sources of profit.

Uniquely painted truck trailer...

The curse of the Pharaohs...

Last month a German handed in a package containing part of a Pharaonic carving to Egypt's embassy in Berlin, with a note saying his stepfather had suffered a "curse of the Pharaohs" for stealing it.

The note said the man felt obliged to return the carving to make amends for his late stepfather and enable his soul to rest in peace, Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities has announced.

The stepfather had stolen the piece while on a visit to Egypt in 2004 and on his return to Germany suffered paralysis, nausea, unexplained fevers and cancer before dying recently, the anonymous man said in the note.

The Egyptian embassy in Berlin had sent the fragment back to Egypt by diplomatic pouch and it had been handed over to the Supreme Council for Antiquities, where a committee of experts was trying to ascertain its authenticity, the statement said.

The belief in a curse that strikes down anyone who disturbs the tombs or mummies of ancient Egypt's Pharaohs has been around since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 and the subsequent death of the excavation's financier Lord Carnarvon.

Father of 78 eyes two new wives

A one-legged Emirati father of 78 is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 children by 2015, "Emirates Today" has reported.

Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time.

"In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children," the local tabloid quoted Abdul Rahman as saying. "After that I will stop marrying. I have to have at least three more marriages to hit the century."

The UAE newspaper splashed its front page with a picture of Abdul Rahman surrounded by his children, the eldest of whom is 36 years old and the youngest of whom is 20 days old. Two of his current three wives are also pregnant.

Abdul Rahman said his large family lived in 15 houses. He supports them with his military pension.

Uniquely painted truck trailer (those giant books sure look real!)...

Burdened by debt single mother postal worker lottery-winner now richer than kings...

In the West, modern fairytales start here and never get any more glamorous, with a porky single-mum postal worker from a provincial Scottish town scaling odds of 76-million-to-one to become Britain's biggest-ever lottery winner and richer today than royal princes and pop stars.

Angela Kelly, daughter of a postman and a low-earning transport manager in a Glasgow postal office, has won a staggering £ 35.4 million, making her richer than Princes William and Harry and the massed ranks of many other celebrity millionaires.

Kelly can now expect to earn £ 21,000 per week in interest from her earnings. As a postal worker, she earned the same sum - £ 21,000 – in a whole year. It would have taken Kelly about 1,500 years to earn the amount of her win.

Kelly confessed on Wednesday, two days after she learnt she had won, that the multi-million-pound cheque came as she was heavily in the red. "I was in overdraft", the 40-year-old separated mother-of-one admitted, even as she described her sense of shock at her good fortune.

Sections of the British media described the down-at-heel postal worker as "the embodiment of Lady Luck - a Scottish postal worker picked out by the fickle finger of fate to become the UK's biggest National Lottery winner."

In an amazing turnaround, Kelly was, till last week, concerned like thousands of her mail office colleagues, with job security even as Britain's Royal Mail faces industrial action, swinging national cutbacks and consequently reduced pay cheques. Kelly said she had been preoccupied the morning she learnt of her lottery win with the reduced salary she expected at the end of the month. "Even one day less of pay makes a difference," she said. But now, Kelly is rich enough to bankroll the entire Royal Mail, if she chooses, quite apart from being rich enough to buy multiple stately homes, her own yacht, charter a plane or indulge in a champagne-fuelled life less ordinary.

Her stupendous win is the largest lottery payout ever in Britain. Kelly won after buying a £ 1.50 ticket on the Euromillions lottery, which is played across nine European countries – the UK, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland. Recently, India's largest lottery operator lost out in its bid to run the UK's National Lottery.

Kelly's public appearance on Wednesday, before hundreds of journalists, made the UK gasp with the suppressed yearnings of the hundreds of thousands who play the National Lottery every week in the hope of winning millions.

Kelly said she was utterly "flabbergasted" at becoming the UK's biggest lottery winner. She described how she did not realise she had won until Monday, August 13, a full 48 hours after the winning number was announced. It was during a routine break while at work on Monday, she said, that she checked her ticket. She said she had to get five colleagues to check that she had won because she could not believe it. "I couldn't even say anything, I just pushed my chair back and put my head between my knees, I was so flabbergasted," Kelly said.

She said she only checked her lottery ticket after she read in a newspaper that the lottery windfall the cash had gone unclaimed. Kelly, who blew a small fraction of her extraordinary win on her first-ever indulgence – a manicure costing less than £ 50 – said she was still deciding how to spend her money. "I feel totally in limbo. I just need to sit down to get my thoughts together", she said.

Kelly's win is seen as one of the most remarkable in Britain and the continent. The biggest EuroMillions jackpot to date was £77 million, won by mother-of-six Dolores McNamara, of Limerick, Ireland, in July 2005.

Britain's 13-year experience of lottery sweepstakes has been alternately admiring and controversial. Many hail it has a success story that has made nearly 2,000 ordinary people into millionaires overnight and helped thousands of charitable causes. But many others have criticized it as a sneaky further means of government taxation, an excuse to top up government coffers and make gambling more socially acceptable and accessible.

The lottery's extraordinary purchase on the minds – and spending habits - of British and European punters has also been described as a vulgarity that enshrines the idea that money can buy happiness.

With some bankruptcies and the occasional suicide among lottery millionaires, the newest lottery-winner may have her work cut out trying to prove that sudden and unexpected monetary good fortune does not automatically bring moral hardship.

Uniquely painted truck trailer...

Get paid to shed flab in Italy

Overweight residents of an Italian town will be paid to lose weight.

Men living in the northwestern Italian town of Varallo, which has 7,500 residents, will receive 50 euros ($70) for losing 4 kg (9 pounds) in a month. Women will get the same amount for shedding 3 kg (7 pounds).

If they can keep the weight off for 5 months, they will get another 200 euros ($280).

Goat crowned king of Ireland at ancient fair

Jimmy, a feisty white mountain goat, was crowned king of Ireland on August 10 at one of the country's oldest fairs.

Dating back centuries, the Puck Fair is an annual festival of drinking, music and dancing celebrated in the town of Killorglin in southern Ireland. Each year a male goat is caught in the surrounding mountains, paraded through the town to a beat of drums and pipes, and then placed in a 40-feet (12 metre) stand where he reigns as king for three days.

The origins of the fair are not totally known, but it always falls on August 10-12. One theory suggests mountain goats alerted residents of the town to an impending attack by English leader Oliver Cromwell's forces in the 17th century.

Another theory says it may have pre-Christian links due to the goat being a pagan fertility symbol like the god Pan.

Around 100,000 to 150,000 visitors are expected to attend this year. Precautions have been taken at the event, which also features separate horse and cattle fairs, due to a foot and mouth outbreak in England. Disinfectants have been used, and mats have been placed wherever there animals are displayed.

Jimmy himself will receive regal treatment, being fed regularly and checked by his own personal vet. At the end of 3 days, when he is dethroned, he is brought back up to the mountains and released to join his fellow nanny goats to resume his pastoral duties.

Wierd car accident...

Spanish thief saw himself as Robin Hood

Spain's most wanted thief, "The Loner," saw himself as a Robin Hood-style figure and said he robbed banks only because they stole from the public, his lawyer said on Thursday.

Accused of killing three policemen and holding up more than 30 banks, Jaime Jimenez Arbe was planning to move on to insurance companies when he was arrested last month, Spanish media reported, citing lawyer Jose Mariano Trillo-Figueroa.

"I am not a killer and if I was obliged to shoot at officers of the law, it was always against my will and in order to avoid being arrested," Jimenez said in a letter reproduced on the websites of newspapers El Pais and El Mundo.

Trillo-Figueroa said Jimenez, who robbed the banks disguised in a false beard and a wig, thinks of himself as Curro Jimenez, a Spanish 1970s television bandit in the style of Robin Hood.

“The Loner” was arrested in Portugal, armed with a submachinegun in preparation for another bank robbery.

Underwater parking...

Tight parking space (now that takes talent!)

Telekom model waits 3 months for phone line from the company she endorses

A fashion model who features in a high-profile advertising campaign for Deutsche Telekom has threatened to seek another provider after waiting three months for the company to install a new phone line at her apartment.

The 27-year-old model, known as Dora, can be seen smiling brightly in posters across Germany for Telekom's new high speed connection service. But she told Bild newspaper on August 7 that she was fed up with waiting for her Berlin home to be connected.

"I'll give them another week but that's it. After that, I'm going to switch to another provider," the model said.

A Deutsche Telekom spokesman could not be reached for comment. But Bild quoted a Telekom official saying they would be in touch with Dora right away.

British motorists can't read maps

As many as 11 million British motorists are unable to read a basic road map, according to a survey released on August 6.

The poll revealed over three quarters of British drivers were unable to identify the motorway map symbol, while only one per cent of motorists would pass the Cub Scout Map Reader badge test.

"It's pretty embarrassing the majority of Cub Scouts have better map-reading skills than the majority of the adult population," said Colin Batabyal, head of underwriting and business development at eSure, which carried out the survey.

Sixteen percent of British drivers have become so heavily reliant on satellite navigation systems that they have given up keeping a map in their car.

"It's time for motorists to take a refresher in map-reading skills," said Scott Sinclair of national mapping agency Ordnance Survey. "Technology is great but the batteries won't run out on a paper map.

Passenger smuggles monkey onto plane under hat

A man smuggled a monkey onto an airplane on August 6, stashing the fist-size primate under his hat until passengers spotted it perched on his ponytail, an airline official in New York said.

On a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to New York's LaGuardia airport, people around the man noticed that a marmoset, which normally lives in forest and eats fruit and insects, had emerged from underneath his hat, Spirit Airlines spoksewoman Alison Russell said. The man's journey had begun in Lima, Peru.

“Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him,'' Russell said.

The monkey spent the remainder of the flight in the man's seat and behaved well, said Russell. She did not know how the monkey skirted detection in Lima and during the man's several-hour layover in Fort Lauderdale.

LaGuardia airport police were waiting for the man and his monkey when the plane landed, and he was taken for questioning. It was unclear if he would face any criminal charges.

The city's animal control agency said the monkey appeared healthy. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was planning to take it for disease testing and keep it quarantined for 31 days, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

If the monkey is healthy it could wind up in a zoo.

Crazy accident...