Man looking for birth mother finds her in the same shop

For people who are adopted, there is a quest to try and locate their natural parents; sometimes it is successful, sometimes not. In many cases, you have to go great distances in this quest. Here is a case where the natural mother was a colleague, and the child only discovered after some amount of intensive searching:

PLAINFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. --
Steve Flaig's long search for his birth mother ended at an incredible place: the checkout line of the home-improvement store where he works. Flaig had met Christine Tallady after she started working at Lowe's several months ago, but it was only recently that the 22-year-old delivery driver figured out she was the woman who had given him up for adoption. It took him a few weeks, and some help from the adoption agency, to give her the news.
Tallady, head cashier at the Lowe's, was astonished to learn that the son she had given up for adoption 22 years earlier was a co-worker. "I started crying," the 45-year-old said. "I figured he would call me sometime, but not like this."

This is a good story for a time like Christmas, and shows the strong emotions due to human bonds.

Woman found in car after car towed away

Mighty strange occurrence this. One day after a car had been towed away from the scene of an accident, the body of an elderly woman was found under the deployed air bag of the car. Rescue services had already been through the car, and her injured son had been picked from the car earlier, so it is all the more strange as to how she came to be missing:

The presence of the body of Shirley Lee Williams, 72, came to the attention of investigators Sunday after family members said two relatives were missing, not one.
"We conducted a follow-up to the tow yard, and we discovered the woman inside the vehicle," said police Officer Mike Lopez. "She was dead."
Doctors will investigate whether Williams died instantly or was alive when the car was towed away, an official said.

This incident could get much serious if it was found that she had not died during the accident, but was alive when the car was towed away; in that case, she could have been saved if she had been found.

Eight-limbed girl getting operated upon

The normal human body has 2 hands and 2 legs. Any more, and people see a person as a freak. However, once in a while, the development of fetuses inside the human womb can lead to strange conditions. In the case outlined below, a girl was born with 4 hands and 4 legs. She actually had a twin conjoined with her inside her mother's womb, but the development of the twin stopped, so there were limbs and torso that was developed, but the head for the twin was not there. Doctors believe that unless these excess limbs are removed, the girl will not survive into adulthood, and are hence doing a marathon 40 hour operation to separate them.

Surgeons in India said a mammoth 40-hour operation on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs was going according to plan. Patil told reporters the team of 30 surgeons had begun the process of severing Lakshmi from her conjoined twin, which stopped developing in the mother's womb and has a torso and limbs but no head.
He said the spinal cord had been successfully separated and that body tissues vital for the girl's survival had been isolated and retained.
When Lakshmi was born into a poor, rural Indian family, villagers in the remote settlement of Rampur Kodar Katti in the northern state of Bihar believed she was sacred. As news of her birth spread, locals lined up for a blessing from the baby.

This is an mammoth undertaking, given that the life of the girl is at stake. 40 hours means that the operation needs to have multiple doctors, and with multiple teams for each shift so as to make sure that her condition does not suddenly sink.

Sinkhole in Guatemala

*GUATEMALA CITY**, **Guatemala* - A 330-foot-deep sinkhole killed at least
two teenagers as it swallowed about a dozen homes early Friday and forced
the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City
neighborhood. Officials blamed the sinkhole on recent rains and an
underground sewage flow from a ruptured main.

The pit emitted foul odors, loud noises and tremors, shaking the surrounding
ground. A rush of water could be heard from its depths, and authorities
feared it could widen or others could open up.

Rescue operations were on hold until a firefighter, suspended from a cable,
could take video and photos above the hole and officials could use the
documentation to decide how to proceed.

The dead were identified as Irma and David Soyos, emergency spokesman Juan
Carlos Bolanos said. Their bodies were found near the sinkhole, floating in
a river of sewage.

Their father, Domingo, was still missing, according to disaster coordinator
Hugo Hernandez.

Squirrel on rampage

One is afraid of big animals such as wild dogs, lions, tigers, snakes, etc. It is far easier to live in a city as such dangerous animals are not present in the city, and the only thing you need to be afraid in the city are other humans, whether the are muggers, careless drivers or junkies. You do find very cute animals in the city, such as small birds, puppies, cute cats, and even wilder animals such as squirrels and racoons. However, even such a small animal such as a squirrel can become dangerous:

An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.
The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

It takes a lot for a small animal such as this one to become agitated; doubtless there must have been some of irritation caused to the squirrel for it to become violent like this one did.

Firefighters on high

Imagine taking a drug test of people on government rolls, and finding that most of them tested positive; further imagine that this drug test was held after they had completed a job, and still they tested positive. Indignation would go high, and there would be screams of investigations, suspensions and firing of these people.
Now imagine that people got high on a job. Well, that has happened. Firefighters reporting to a fire in a wareouse also had around 2,000 pounds of marijuana burnt, and the fumes of these drugs were so strong, that even after protective masks, the fire fighters inhaled enough marijuana fumes to reach a condition where they would have failed drug tests:

Firefighters who spent half an hour fighting a blaze in which 2,000 pounds of marijuana went up in smoke breathed so much of it that they would have failed a drug test, a fire chief said.
Snider said Thursday the firefighters were exposed to so much marijuana smoke that they would not be able to pass a drug test, despite wearing air packs to prevent them from inhaling toxic or hazardous fumes.

This is also another sign of how much people are dedicated to doing the jobs that make us safe. Firemen have volunteered to enter fires from which people are desperate to escape, in order to do their duty of rescuing people trapped, and to put out the fire.

British Man jailed in Slovakia for jumping nude into a fountain

Well, he was actually jailed in May end, sentenced to 2 months in prison for jumping naked into a fountain during drunken revelry, was released early (after 10 days).
What happened earlier ? Well, this guy was due to be married on June 15, so during some pre-marriage celebration in Bratislava near the end of May, he obviously had too much to drink, and then jumped naked into a fountain. This sort of display was obviously not appreciated by the Slovakian police, who arrested him, and he was then sentenced to a 2 month prison sentence.
He looked all set to miss the marriage date, and then his parents rushed to Slovakia to help him, and the British Foreign Office intervened as well, and he was finally released a few days ago; presumably his marriage date stands.

Wheelchair man gets long truck ride

Not as simple as it sounds. This was actually a pretty scary thing that scared a number of observers. Imagine if you will, a truck speeding down a highway, with a man in a wheelchair being pushed by the truck at high speed, with the man hanging on for dear life.
They moved along like this for some time, with the man in the wheelchair whizzing by at a high speed, but thankfully, after some time the truck pulled over and bystanders came and rescued the man. What probably saved the man in all this? The good quality of the wheelchair and the seat belt that kept him safely in the wheelchair. This actually happened:

A wheelchair user has been taken for a high-speed ride along a US highway after his handlebars became tangled up in the front grille of a lorry.
The driver was completely unaware that he had a new passenger, kept in his wheelchair by a seatbelt

Elephant robbing motorists

You must have heard of elephants sometimes running crazy, destroying crops and maybe humans as well. But in another sign of how closely we have managed to get wild animals to integrate their life style with us (not a very good sign), an elephant in India that has got old stops cars and does not let them pass until the inhabitants have given it food. Refer this article:

An elephant in eastern India has sparked complaints from motorists who accuse it of blocking traffic and refusing to allow vehicles to pass unless drivers give it food, a newspaper has reported.
The Hindustan Times said Monday the elephant was scouting for food on a highway in the eastern state of Orissa, forcing motorists to roll down their windows and get out of the car.
"The tusker then inserts its trunk inside the vehicle and sniffs for food," local resident Prabodh Mohanty, who has come across the elephant twice, was quoted as saying. "If you are carrying vegetables and banana inside your vehicle, then it will gulp them and allow you to go."

Yet another sign of how much the human civilization has encroached on the domain of wild animals, where the elephant has chanced upon this technique to get easy food. This is a very imperfect balance, because there is a very real chance that one of the car inhabitants will irritate the elephant, and then the situation could turn ugly.

Border divides a library

You got to see this. There is a town in Vermont on the US - Canada border that has facilities on both sides of the border. So, for example, if you take the library, if you are at the front door, you are in the US, but walk to the circulation desk, and you are now in Canada. There is a white line on the floor that depicts the border. There are streets that cover both countries. For a long time, the cross-border controls were lax, but as these started to be misused, and US Border Control grew more active, this particular town and its uniqueness is coming into focus. Refer this article:

Step through the front door of the Haskell Library and you're in the United States. Walk across the carpeted floor to the circulation desk and you're in Canada. But if you sit down on the couch, you're back in the U.S. The 106-year-old Romanesque building, which straddles the international border, has enjoyed a kind of informal immunity from border restrictions through the years.
"There's been an increase in illegal activity, both north and south, in the last little while," said Mark Henry, the operations officer for the Border Patrol's Swanton sector, which runs across northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. "There have been some significant cases."
Under the crackdown, instead of parking their cars outside the library in Quebec and walking to the front door in the U.S., Canadian patrons would have to detour through one of two ports of entry linking the municipalities.
"For as long as I've lived here, the practice was if they were only going to the library, they didn't have to report," said village trustee Keith Beadle, who also sits on the library board. If the streets are closed, smugglers will just walk across lawns or through the woods, Beadle said.
Smugglers have learned the side streets are unguarded, and while surveillance cameras monitor activity on other streets, border agents on both sides can't always get there in time when illegal activity is spotted. Even though Derby Line and Stanstead are separate municipalities, they share water and sewer systems and emergency crews, which respond to calls on both sides of the border.

For a long time, people have lived their life without worrying about the actual border between the countries, but all that seems to be changing now. With more terrorism, more smuggling and more people knowing about the easy border crossing, things are going to get more official.

2 kids rob store using water gun

It's bad enough that you get robbers using a plethora of legally available weapons stealing from banks and stores, but it gets real bad when kids (and that too very young kids) steal from a store using a plastic gun. One wonders about the kind of education that these kids are getting, maybe they are watching the wrong stuff on TV. Refer this story:
Two kids, aged 11 and 14, using a water gun concealed in black tape stole cash from a discount store. They walked into the store, and demanded cash while showing the weapon, eventually fighting with the clerk and stealing the money.
They were arrested by police soon after, but it must be equally hard for the policemen, who would have seen hardened criminals, to witness such young kids displaying such behaviour. The kids will be charged with stealing using a weapon.

Couple re-united by illness

In a bitter-sweet affair, a couple married for a decade, had separated (but not divorced) more than 5 years back. They were seeing other people, and had divorce proceedings underway. But then a life-threatening situation brough the relationship alive again.
When the husband was hospitalized with kidney failure, the wife offered one of hers. When they had married, she had agreed to donate one if required; and she had known that he might need one because he had had juvenile diabetes. So, when the need came, even though they were separated, she still stood by her promise.
This gesture brough the couple back together, with no more talk of separation and divorce. Read this article over here.

Alligator blocks traffic

Traffic can choke on freeways for any reason, but an alligator being the reason for the choking is something that is unusual. In Texas, an alligator moved onto a busy freeway, and stopped traffic. Police responding to the scene were puzzled; after all, their training certainly does not cover this.
Police tried their sirens to scare the alligator off, didn't work; they threw orange traffic cones at the alligator, it just snapped at the cones, but couldn't care less otherwise; in fact, at one point, the alligator even assaulted a police car, but no one filed charges against it.
In the end, they use lassos and metal poles to force the alligator off the road, and into a drainage ditch leading to a lake. Read the CNN story here.

Ghost ship: Nobody on board

A yacht was found in pretty good condition floating off the Australian coast. Rescuers found a ship floating silently 80 nautical miles off the northeast coast. Refer the CNN story.
The yacht seemed in pretty fine condition, the only problem being that one sail was in a shredded condition. Other than that, the engine of the yacht was running, food was on the table, a laptop was turned on, but of the crew members there was no sign.
A proper mystery as to what happened to the 3 crew members. The yacht had passed through an area where weather and sea conditions were rough, but they actually don't have any more clues. Rescuers are looking at the yacht's GPS records to figure out the past route of the yacht to see whether they can get any clues.

Clerk's mistake turns into money

In a town in North Carolina, a store clerk mistakenly rang up 2 duplicate Powerball tickets for a customer by mistake instead of one, she bought the second ticket for herself at the end of the day after she was not able to sell it to any other customer. Normally this would have counted as money lost, and that would be a natural reaction.
The next day when she reached back to the store, she found that the ticket that was extra and which she had bought matched all the numbers, and she was entitled to the jackpot, and get this right, she won $200,000. Think of this as the equivalent of a costly mistake, but in the reverse way. Wouldn't you also want to get lucky like this ?

A house full of garbage

In a tragedy at a house that left investigators stumped, an elderly woman was found in a dehydrated condition in a house buried underneath a pile of debris, garbage and animal feces in a home. An elderly man was found dead. The woman was found after fire-fighters went to the two-story house in Long Island, New York, after relatives said that they could not reach her.
When they reached the house, they found every room piled high with debris mixed with human and animal waste, in some rooms, all the way to the ceiling.
The investigators were not sure how long they were like this, but neighbours had seen them last over a week ago. A strong stench was in the house. The house now sports a sign on the front saying that it was unfit for human occupancy. Read the CNN story.

Treating a bank robber with kindness

This is a new tactic about how to deal with bank robbers. Till now the established method of dealing with bank robbers has been to treat them gingerly, not confronting them, and to take measures that essentially deal with trying to catch the robber later. This would include either activating an alarm and/or dropping an exploding dye into the cash bag.
Now, there is a new element dropped in these measures. This measure is excessive friendliness. The premise is that an overdose of courtesy will unnerve would-be robbers and get them to rethink the crime. This is part of the 'Safecatch' system created by an FBI Special Agent and being adopted by banks in the Washington area. The concept is that a normal customer thinks friendliness and courtesy is great; but a robber really gets scared and does not understand the reasons for the same.
As an example, in a bank, when a robber walked in, the manager greeted him, and guided the robber to an equally friendly teller. This must have worked, for the robber asked for a roll of quarters and left.

Pilot ejected from his own flight

Imagine getting on an airplane and watching the pilot behave in a very animated way on the phone while getting on. Imagine further trying to talk to the pilot about it, and being abused by the pilot. This happened to the passengers of a Northwest Airlines flight with 180 passengers on board. Based on this, FAA authorities and the police were called, who promptly took the pilot aside and began questioning him.
The FAA officals in turn called the airline authorities who removed the pilot from the flight and took him to airline headquarters for further questioning. The flight was cancelled, and the passengers could only suffer as they had to re-scehdule their plans; that too on a Easter weekend when family related plans would be on the minds of a number of passengers.
Read the story here.

Man shot by pistol thrown in trash

A man in Kansas was helping unload trash and accidentally hit the trigger of a thrown short-barreled pistol. This caused the pistol to fire and hit his left hand. In addition to the pain felt by the man, the nearby witnesses heard the pop of the gun and saw blood on the man'es left hand.
This was a very unexpected thing, even in a gun rich country such as the United States. After all, a loaded gun in the trash is not something that you would ever expect to see. The gun was loose in the trash and covered with mud.
The common assumption in such a case is that this gun was disposed off after the commission of a crime. Detectives are investigating this possibility.

Police found stash of women's underwear in man's room

In a strange case, police, following up on an investigation, found 93 pounds of women's underwear at a man's house. A witness found a man taking underwear from a laundry, and based on the photograph from his license, police eventually caught up with the man. When they searched his room, they found 1500 pieces of underwear, enough to fill 5 garbage bags.
The man used to steal the women's underwear from apartment complex laundry rooms, and has now been arrested on charges of theft. One ticklish problem for police; how to return these stolen items back to their neighbours, and whether the owners would actually want them back. Read the CNN article here.

Peeking at roommates through hidden cameras

Technology works in strange ways, it can assist criminal activities by misuse of available technology. For example, the technological drive towards making things smaller makes it far easier to conceal cameras in inconvenient ways. So, camera phones are now banned from a lot of gyms and public swimming pools.
In another incident, a voyeur placed a small camera concealed in a shampoo bottle inside a bathroom used by female roommates so as to be able to take pictures and videos of them when they were undressed. He was caught only when another roommate got curious about the shampoo bottle and noticed wires trailing from the back (does that mean if he used a wireless camera, he would never have been caught ?). When police were called in to investigate, they found the wires eventually leading to another roommates TV.
Now the fellow is sitting in jail with numerous charges on him. However, what he has done will make the other roommates more paranoid, and far less willing to trust someone or share with another person. Such invasion of someone's privacy and betrayal of trust needs to be severly punished.

Cow that relishes chicken

In a rural chicken farm, suddenly chickens started vanishing. Such an occurrence is bound to pinch, although initially the neighbouring dogs were suspected. It was only when a watch was kept that a most incredible sight was seen. A calf was found to be the chicken eater, having devoured 48 chickens.
The family watched at night as the calf went over to the coop and grabbed a chicken with amazing precaution. This is very strange behaviour. In India, Hinduism considers a cow to be holy, and such a behaviour is most unusual.
The local vet thinks that this could be caused by a lack of vitamins in the body, and has asked for further investigation. Read the story here.

Cat injures its owner over jealousy

A cat sent its owner to a hospital for treatment, when threatened by the introduction of another cat in the house. When a neighbour showed up at the door with another cat (thinking it was the house cat), the house cat severly attacked its owner, a lady in her 60's. The injuries were pretty serious, and the lady had to be taken to the hospital with over 20 injuries.
Now, it appears that the cat is going to be sent to a shelter since this was not the first time that such an incident happened. Read the CNN story.

New Mexico to declare Pluto as a planet

Sometimes one reads news that brings a smile to one's face. A few months back, the International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto essentially does not fit the definition of a planet, and hence should no longer be called a planet.

Now, apparently the state of New Mexico in the United States feels that there are not too many pressing things before the legislature, and is going to introduce a bill for reversing this declaration. State lawmakers will vote Tuesday on a bill that proposes "as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet." Read more about this story here.

One factor that is important for this proposed law is that the discoverer of Pluto hails from New Mexico. One would have expected scientists to react with some humour at this news, but actually they welcome anything that will bring astronomy into the public eye.

A peculiar gift item

What people will do to impress their loved ones ? In an unusual trial, a young New Jersey doctor was accused of cutting a hand from a body that was scheduled for cremation. He wanted it for purely personal reasons. A stripper he had met earlier wanted a hand, and he eagerly complied.
However, it is very clear that you just cannot cut a hand from a dead body, and is illegal. The doctor's defense is that he was immature and did not know that it was illegal. He was sentenced to 15 months probation, which means that if he does this again in the time period of 15 months, he could be sentenced to 5 years in jail. In a slap on the wrist, he was fined $5000. The stripper was also charged with the crime, and was sentenced to counselling. Read the full story.

US city sets time limit for how long a dog can bark

A city in New Jersey has got so tired of complaints of people against dogs barking that they are going to outlaw it. That's correct, the city is planning to pass an ordinance that will make it illegal for dogs to bark more than 30 minutes over 2 consecutive days. Right now, they are not planning on defining the type of instrument that will be used to measure and identify the dog that is specifically barking. DNA for dogs to uniquely identify their barking, anyone ?
The city already has nuisance laws that could be used to curtail annoying barking, but they are difficult to enforce. I guess this new law will be easier to enforce. Fines for an offence against this ordinance could be upto $250.
And just so that you know that I am not making this up, read the original story.

Police officer tickets himself

In an interesting touch about honesty, a police chief in Wisconsin (US) had committed a traffic violation by driving past a stopped school bus that had lights flashing. No one seemed to notice, except for this guy's honesty, since he wrote himself a ticket, fined himself $225 and docked some points off his driving record. And the way the story seems to originate is through court records and getting slowly picked up by the media.
This has naturally put a lot of people interested in such a honest person. He has got emails from far and wide, and got offers by people to pay off the fine as well. Read the full news here.

Man slathers vaseline in hotel room

Get this. A man was arrested for covering everything in a hotel room with vaseline. Robert Chamberlain, a resident of Virginia, US was charged with mischief for damaging a Motel room. He did not break anything in the room, instead, he used 14 bottles of vaseline to cover every single thing in the room - mattresses, pillows, sheets, furniture, TV, everything. When this was discovered by a motel clerk, the motel filed a complaint with the sheriff's office. The police found Robert in a nearby Econo Lodge, covered head to toe with vaseline.
Read the original story here.

Older software to cause meeting problems

In a scene reminscent of the Y2k issue (where computer were not able to move from 2 digit years of the 90's to the 4 digit years of the 21st century), the change in Daylight Savings time (decreed in a 2005 law that changed the daylight savings time period) will cause problems for those users who use the calendar in devices to do transactions, set meetings, etc. For example, if you using Office 2000 and have set a meeting for the last week in March, you will run into problems because the software has not automatically rolled over to the new DST, while in the real world, this change would have happened.
What can you do ? Examine your meetings more carefully, and live those weeks more carefully. And read this article more carefully.

Following in the footsteps of parents

A teen tried to do exactly that, but it led to some rather painful lessons. The boy wanted to copy his dad's tradition of trying to run around the garden when the Super Bowl game is in halftime, barefoot. One minor point, this was in Buffalo (Minneapolis), 17 below zero. So this hero went outside, took off his shoes and socks and ran around the garden barefeet for 5 minutes. At the end of 5 minutes, he came inside, and his feet start burning and blistering. Doctors pronounced it as a case of frostbite which would take a few weeks to get fully cured.
Now he believes that he has learnt a lesson, and will not try such stunts again.
Read the original story here.

Giant banana to float over Texas

Of all the things to happen ! In an expression of artistic commentary on Texas politics, a Canadian artist has a plan to put a giant banana (actually a helium blimp in the shape of a banana) into the sky over Texas.
The plan is to have a $1 million blimp, and a monster blimp at that, 1,000 feet big floating in the atmosophere at a height of over 100,000 feet. This will actually be a test of engineering devices, and if it manages to take off, will remain in the atmospehere for around 1 month.
Read the complete story at Wired.

Man dressed as Joker gets Dutch ID card

In Europe, to get a national ID card, the rules have become more stringent. The rules prohibit grins, funny faces, and head gear. In addition, to avoid confusing scanners that are based on facial recognition, travellers in Europe have been ordered to not look too happy, eyes must be open and clearly visible, no glasses must be worn, and so on. One is supposed to look straight and without any emotion. In the middle of all this, a practical joker managed to beat the system by dressing up as The Joker from the Batman series.
He painted his face, and managed to convince the staff that because of his religious convictions, he could not take off his hat. And he now has a ID card with this very face.



This has now caused a political issue. Read more about this story here.

Woman found from jungle

A family in Cambodia had some good news. A woman who emerged from a jungle a week back was claimed by a family as their long missing daughter. Read the CNN story.
However, where she was upto, what she speaks is all a mystery. Biggest current mystery is that her hair was trimmed short, so if she was lost in a jungle all these years, who was taking care of her ? And it will take some time before she can be claimed to be 'civilized' again.

Man tries to steal gold by swallowing

It sure is difficult for a man to make a honest living nowadays by theft. Modern technology is coming in his way more often. In this story from The Register, a man walked into a jeweller's shop, and asked to see a gold ring for his financee.
When the jeweller turned his back, the man swallowed the ring and denied having the ring. The jeweller, not believing him for one minute, called the police who used a common medical instrument called the X-ray to detect that he did indeed swallow the ring. After a few days, he passed out the ring from his body in the natural way.
Given that the ring was in his body and that he passed it out along with other wastes, the jeweller is not sure whether a customer will be comfortable with buying the ring, so the jeweller will have to sell it to another jeweller.

Bad hiding place

A burglary suspect was caught by the police and was being taken away by the police in their car. Then the fun part starts. He managed to kick out the car window and get away from the car. Still wearing handcuffs, he got away from the police pursuing him and sought safety in a nearby building. It would all have gone according to plan, except for one thing. He somehow missed seeing the big star on the entrace of the building where he sought safety. It was actually a sheriff's office.
A deputy inside the building noticed a man in handcuffs rushing inside and managed to catch him and hold him till the pursuing car police ran in. The burglar now faces an additional charge for attempting to escape. Read the story here.

Committing robbery to get back into prison

People really try their best to get out of jail; so meet this guy who desparately wanted to get back to jail. In an incident that would have astonished bystanders, a man walked into a bank, told the teller that he was robbing her and then told her that he was waiting for the police. He then waited for the police to arrive.
Turns out that this guy had been sentenced some years earlier, spent time in jail and then been released. After he came out, he never did appreciate the life he was leading and wanted to get back to the jail life.

China heralds year of the fluorescent green pig

China has a tradition of naming each year after an animal. The year 2007 is supposed to be named as the Year of the Pig. In a twist (or maybe in a foretaste of what scientists will be able to do), Chinese scientists injected genetic material from a jellyfish into a pregnant sow to produce transgenic pigs. What this means is that there are 3 pigs on the face of the earth which look different under ultraviolet light. The mouth, trotters and tongue of the pigs are green under ultraviolet light. Read this story at CNN.