In a town where the lovestruck can select from a roster of Elvis lookalikes to marry them at 4am, what happened two weeks ago in Las Vegas was pretty strange, even by the locals' standards.

Late on the morning of February 21 - nobody is precise about the exact time, location or identity of the first caller - someone rang a locksmith and complained that the remote-control locking system on the caller's car was refusing to respond.

The old-fashioned key, linked to the same circuitry, wouldn't work either, so could the locksmith fix whatever had gone wrong?

A couple of minutes later, another locksmith's phone rang. Different caller, different make of car, different security system, same problem.

By the end of the day, the best estimate is that police, fire brigade, locksmiths, car dealerships and tow-truck services had received at least 200 calls from stranded motorists. Many who are still puzzling over the February 21 incident put the figure as high as 1000.

"Maybe it's those little green men," joked Mike Estrada, a spokesman for the United States Air Force's Nellis Air Base, which sprawls over 4100 square kilometres of desert 160km north of Vegas.

He was referring to the Area 51 military research facility, which sits in the middle of Nellis' bombing range and where UFO buffs and conspiracy theorists maintain the Pentagon picks apart space aliens and their crashed flying saucers.

While no one seriously blames intergalactic vandals for the lockouts, the general belief in Vegas is that Estrada, whose own car also was locked tight, might have been pointing reporters in the right direction.

The likely culprit, say some, was a top-secret test of equipment intended to fry an enemy's circuitry.

Is this the biggest exercise in paranoia since a drug-addled Hunter S. Thompson mistook the desk clerk at Circus Circus for a man-eating lizard? Only if you label weapons analyst John Pike, director of the Washington-based Global Security think tank, a fruitcake, which he most definitely is not.

"The idea that a military test of some sort was responsible isn't that far-fetched," Pike said, noting that hush-hush electronic weapons and counter-measures are among special projects funded by the Pentagon's "black budget", details of which are withheld even from the congressional Armed Services Committee.

Still, being a man of science, Pike advocates checking the most likely explanations first. Trouble is, none of them pan out.

Solar flares, for example, have been known to scramble electronics. But on the day in question, Old Sol was as peaceful as he had been in weeks.

Static electricity created by unusually dry air is another possibility. But according to weather records, Vegas actually saw a little rain on the day the locks froze shut.

By default, speculation returns to the rumoured goings-on at Nellis. And there the trail is littered with a host of tantalising clues.

Take what happened in March, 2001, when the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson returned to its port of Bremerton in Washington State. Automatic car locks went crazy there, too. A month later, when the USS Abraham Lincoln tied up at Puget Sound, the same phenomenon occurred.

And then there was an incident in Los Angeles when Air Force One flew low over the suburbs and garage doors sprang open without prompting. Like car locks, the doors' radio-activated mechanisms are prompted by low-power transmissions similar to those used by cellphones, hobbyists' models, and to relay signals from security systems' motion detectors.

There is another, more contentious, episode worth considering.

On September 11, 2001, after the first three hijacked jets hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the fourth aircraft crashed to earth in Pennsylvania. The official story is that a posse of heroic passengers fought their way into the cockpit, destroying their aircraft and themselves while grappling to reclaim the controls.

Several witnesses reported that the jet was being closely tailed by a small, white, unmarked aircraft. As the pair passed overhead, radios in the vicinity crackled and died.

Could that white jet - whose existence the Pentagon has denied - have been blitzing the larger aircraft with signals to confound its avionics and make it fall from the sky? According to some theorists, and not necessarily the sort who believe in alien autopsies, that is possible, if not entirely probable.

So what of the Las Vegas mystery? What do aircraft carriers, Air Force One and rumours of white business jets have to do with car locks?

Just this: In Iraq, the roadside bombs that have claimed so many US lives are triggered by devices borrowed from things such as remote control locks, cellphones and toys. The last such bomb, which killed three GIs, went off near Baghdad in mid-February - just days before everything went haywire in Las Vegas. Since then, all Iraqi blasts appear to have been detonated by suicide bombers or built-in timers.

Meanwhile, US bomb disposal teams have been defusing the devices in increasing numbers, according to the Pentagon's daily actions from Iraq.

Could the military have used Vegas as a test site for jamming and blocking technology before rushing it to Iraq for immediate deployment in the field?

Pike of Global Security has his doubts, pointing out that while it would be relatively easy to fry 1000 car locks, the military would need to protect its own equipment. But he concedes that such electronic immunity may have been developed.

"It's been widely reported that electronic countermeasures saved Pakistan's President [Pervez] Musharraf by stopping bombs from detonating as planned," Pike noted. "So we know this sort of technology exists, that it is being explored, and that it is being used.

"That said, can we tie what happened in Las Vegas - a genuinely fascinating incident, by the way - to the military? Not on what we know of the technology as of now."

Pike's reservations don't cut much mustard with people who had to pay emergency locksmiths to let them into their own cars in Las Vegas. There, it isn't Estrada's little green men who top the list of suspects, but blue ones - the blue of a US Air Force uniform.

Experts Say Watch For Warning Signs Of Pet Abusers

DENVER -- A dog was found mutilated near a Dumpster early Thursday morning.

Police say the dog was taken from the back yard of a home in the 2600 block of Williams Street. Police followed a trail of blood from the back yard into an alley and found the abused animal.

The dog had blood near its mouth and a stick up its rectum, authorities said.

Next to the dog was a makeshift cross with a sign reading "The work of the next King ... a pure Act."

A 17-year-old boy was arrested but police aren't releasing any more details about him. [...]

Comment: The text is Swedish, so we wrote a friend in Sweden about this phenomena. (Note: There are more pictures at the above link). He writes:

According to the text it's a combination of three factors: 1) it needs to be really cold 2) no wind 3) there are ice crystals in the air. The ice crystals will align in such a way that light is dispersed mostly vertically. The columns (technical term is "vertical pillar", roughly translated) can be up to 100m, depending on the wind (more wind=less crystal alignment->lower columns).

It appears to be fairly common. They note that such columns are often mistaken for UFO phenomena. FYI, ufo.se is a "everything is alright" kind of organization, and Clas Svahn in particular is almost always used as expert in various media to explain why UFO phenomena aren't. Sometimes he's right, and sometimes his explanations requires quite some imagination.

RAWLINS, Wyo. - Elk are starting to move out of an area where nearly 300 have died from mysterious causes in the past month.

The herds recently began migrating south from the Red Rim Wildlife Habitat Management Area near Rawlins toward Atlantic Rim and their spring and summer ranges, said pilot Dwight France, who has been monitoring the elk for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

During a recent flight, dozens of elk carcasses could be seen from the air. At least 289 elk have died or been euthanized since early last month as the result of an ailment that left many unable to get up, Game and Fish spokesman Tom Reed said. [...]

Confusion was sparked among shoppers at a city retail park when dozens of car alarms all went off at the same time.

The 100-space car park at the Kingsway Retail Park became a scene of confusion and noise on Saturday afternoon as shoppers struggled to get into their cars.

People had difficulty in using the automatic locking system on their key fobs, with many not working at all.

The reason why the alarms were activated at the same time remains a mystery.

Some suggest the problem may have been caused by signals from nearby mobile phone masts - others believe it was caused by radio waves or aircraft flying overhead.

John Davies (57), a court usher from Mickleover, visited the new Marks & Spencer Simply Food store at Kingsway at about 4pm on Saturday.

He said: "When I came out, there was a heck of a din. There were people standing by the side of their cars scratching their heads wondering what had made them go off and how to stop them, I suppose.

"I didn't think much of it until I walked to my car. I pressed the key fob for the central locking and nothing happened. I had to open the door with the key and my alarm went off.

"Others started going off as well. As I drove off, I could still hear alarms going off all over the place.

"I have heard of it before when a mobile telephone mast had been put up and it was affecting all the car alarms."

The problem was confined to the main car park and cars in neighbouring Sainsbury's were not affected.

Mark Kynman, store manager at Halfords, said the store was inundated with people on Saturday who were desperately trying to find out what was happening to their cars.

He said: "One of my staff members said it felt as if the whole retail park had descended on him.

"I have heard that if an aeroplane goes over and hits a certain frequency at a certain speed, it temporarily disables things, such as car alarms."

A spokeswoman for East Midlands Airport said it was unlikely that an aeroplane would trigger that sort of commotion.

Darren Stonebridge, the store manager at Powerhouse, said a lot of customers were talking about the problem on Saturday.

He said: "It's very strange."

Kevin Shaw, a sales assistant at Car Electronics Ltd, in Ashbourne Road, Derby, said it could have been caused by anything from radio signals to a mini earthquake.

A family of five from Shallcross have approached the Post with an impassioned plea to be freed from a disturbing spirit.

The family claim to have been plagued by a tokoloshe for the past 20 years, are desperately looking for someone genuine to help them. [...]

Ghostbusters are to investigate mysterious bumps in the night at Glasgow's Museum of Transport.
The Evening Times reported how museum security guard Bill Mutch had experienced weird incidents on the replica street near the main museum entrance.

Now ghostbusters equipped with night-vision cameras and thermometers are to investigate the ghostly goings on which include children's screams, balls of blue light and sightings of a headless female. [...]

The two men aboard the international space station heard a strange metallic sound again Friday, four months after being startled by it the first time.

Cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri was talking to flight controllers in Moscow when he heard a loud drumlike noise coming from the instrument panel of the station's Russian-built living quarters.

Kaleri and astronaut Michael Foale first heard the mystery noise - described as a flapping sheet of metal - back in late November. Neither the crewmen nor flight controllers were ever able to identify the sound, although engineers suspected space junk may have damaged something on the exterior.

Kaleri said Friday morning's noise came from about the same place as before and sounded the same.

"I had the headset on, so I didn't hear it very clearly. But it sounded sort of like a drum. It sounds sort of like a sheet of something being bent," the cosmonaut reported.

Russian flight controllers told Kaleri that they would try to figure out where the noise was coming from, and speculated that perhaps one of the systems inside the station was the source of the problem, rather than something on the outside.

NASA officials, however, said all systems appeared to be operating properly.

"It's very strange," Russian Mission Control said. "I doubt that it would be a coincidence that you're hearing the same thing coming from the same place."

During a spacewalk in February, Kaleri and Foale were supposed to check the exterior of the space station where the noise originated last November. But Kaleri's spacesuit overheated and became damp, and the spacewalk had to be cut short, so the men did not have time to inspect the area.

Kaleri and Foale's six-month space station mission is almost over. Their replacements are due to arrive in another 2 1/2 weeks.

JOHNSTON COUNTY, N.C. -- Federal and local investigators have a mystery on their hands. More than a dozen animals in Johnston County have died, and experts said it was not from natural causes.

If investigators do not find what or whoever is responsible for the animal deaths quickly, it could mean trouble for the local environment.

Federal agents are on the case.

This week, Doug Holloman walked onto his family's field for the first time since November. That is where he discovered something gruesome.

He found three dead deer, three dogs and two foxes.

Holloman has a degree in environmental science, and he has farmed for years. He said he has never seen anything like this before.

"I knew it was a strange occurrence," Holloman said. "It was not normal to see this many dead animals in this close proximity to one another." [...]

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The three main theories to explain the origins of the mysterious "fairy circles" of Namibia have just been dismissed, following an in-depth study by South African researchers.

"They still remain a mystery," says Gretel van Rooyen, a botanist at the University of Pretoria, who headed the team conducting the study.

Fairy circles are discs of completely bare sandy soil anything from two to 10 metres in diameter. Found exclusively along the western coastal fringes of the Namib desert in southern Africa, they are easy to spot because they are barren in the middle yet have unusually lush perimeters of tall grasses, which stand out from the otherwise sparse vegetation of the desert.

From the time researchers began to take an interest in how they were formed in the early 1970s, three major explanations emerged: termites, radioactive soil and toxic debris left in the soil by Euphorbia damarana, the poisonous milkbush plant.

The radioactive soil theory was easily dismissed after van Rooyen sent samples to the South African Bureau of Standards to be tested for radioactivity and they were all found to be negative. "That would have been the perfect explanation," she says. "But they found no traces.

FLOCKS of sparrows seen floundering in a lake in Renmin Park in Luohu were thought to have part of a mass suicide, the Shenzhen Evening News reported Thursday.

The park's security guards said it seemed that the sparrows were trying to drown themselves.

Many guards jumped into the water to rescue the sparrows and saved more than 20.

One of the guards, Mr. Wang, said the sparrows seemed to spontaneously throw themselves into the lake at around 11:20 a.m.

Some guards said that the sparrows might have eaten poisoned food and been unable to fly when they fell into the water. The cause was unknown, the paper said.

From the time he was a child, Ted Phillips has been looking up into the sky. In those early years, growing up in rural Missouri, all Phillips saw was stars. But it wasn't long before he started hearing stories about things that went "whoosh" in the night -- things other people swore they had seen -- and he wanted to know what they were.

This weekend, Phillips will be preaching to the choir when he speaks at the 2004 Ozark UFO Conference in Eureka Springs. And he admits he'll hear stories even he doesn't believe. [...]

Although Phillips will speak this weekend about the two best cases of physical UFO evidence among his 3,059 investigations, that's not his primary subject. In fact, he's not sure that "Project Tatra" is related to UFOs at all. It is, however, a fascinating story.

The short version is that Phillips gained access to the diary of a Czech soldier injured in fighting in Slovakia during World War II. Rescued by a sheep herder, the soldier and two of his comrades were hidden in a cave in the Tatra Mountains -- and there, Phillips says, "Tony" found something extraordinary. It was a "huge black wall, overgrown by cave formations, 2 miles back in a cave, 2,700 feet below the top of the mountain."

The "artifact," as Phillips calls it, was 27 feet high, about 20 feet wide and curved. "It looked almost like looking in a mirror of steel," he describes, "totally smooth, no seams, no rivets."

The soldier slipped through a narrow crack in the wall and found himself inside a "huge structure, shaped like a fat crescent moon, with 7-foot-thick walls that extended up beyond the light of his torches," Phillips goes on. On subsequent visits, he found that he couldn't even scratch the surface of the artifact with a pick -- but he could dig down through the limestone floor. About 60 inches in, he found a prehistoric cave bear skeleton and, under it, grillwork with warmth coming up through it. He also heard a sound, which he described as "something like a distant turbine."

"Remember, this is a mining engineer with four degrees from the University of Prague," Phillips reminds. "He knows about the sound of dripping water versus a turbine."

When Tony left the cave, he sealed off the crawlways that led to his discovery. According to Phillips, bombing later in the war also damaged the cave. But on trips to Europe in 1998 and 2001, Phillips located the cave and found confirmation that it is indeed the one where three wounded soldiers were sheltered in 1944.

Now, he wants to shore up the cave's interior and look for the unexplained black wall.

"Of course, funding is always difficult," Phillips admits, "because it's such a farfetched story -- unless you've spent 30 years looking into it!"

In the meantime, Phillips has found two more artifacts that might be related to the one in Slovakia. He won't even venture a guess what they are or where they came from, except to note that the one described in the soldier's diary had 6,000 years of limestone deposits inside it, along with the skeleton of an animal that had been extinct for 11,000 years.

"At first I thought it might be some kind of directional beacon, some kind of transmitter, but why? And who?" he wonders. "If I can figure out some way to get down into the lower section, maybe I'll figure it out."

GHOSTLY goings on are creating a major paranormal disturbance for a pensioner near Great Yarmouth.

Percy Blyth, 86, a former BT engineer, has been seeing ghosts in his Bradwell home for the past four years.

The pensioner, who lives in a semi-detached bungalow with his handicapped daughter Jane, told the Evening News the apparitions were visiting him nearly every night, often two or three of them at a time.

Mr Blyth, who moved into the property when it was brand new 10 years ago, said: "We've been seeing things for a few years now and it seems like a week hasn't gone by without us seeing something. But now it's got much worse.

"My wife saw them when she was alive. She saw a lady walking up the hallway towards her.

"But I see two men and a woman at the end of my bed when I wake up in the night. The man comes towards me and then just disappears.

"Once the woman was offering me something. They never say anything but I've shouted at them to clear off. It's quite sinister."

The pensioner, whose wife died last year, has now moved out of his normal bedroom into the one next door to try to avoid the spooks, which only appear at night.

He has previously made attempts to find out why his home seems to be attracting paranormal activity and four years ago invited a priest there to say prayers in each of the rooms, but he said it had not seemed to make any difference.

Mr Blyth's daughter, Susan Goddard, said: "It's got so bad he's dreading going to bed. It is scary. If he has to get up out of bed in the night, he's terrified [...]

Lumps of ice the size of a clenched fist fell this week from a clear sky over a playground just north of Stockholm, Sweden.

No one can explain where the lumps of ice came from, according to the Swedish paper Aftonbladet. The ice shower occurred between 5:40 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. Tuesday. The large ice lumps came falling out of a perfectly clear sky at a playground at Hammarbyvägen at Upplands-Väsby.

"I walked over to the playground around five in the morning," explained the 70- year-old Bengt Eurs to the paper. "When I came back at seven, the roof of the gazebo was destroyed and there were large lumps of ice on the ground."

"I have a hard time finding an apparent explanation of the phenomena, " said Isagel Cederfamn, a Swedish mythologist.

However, Aftenbladet points out that the playground is on the approach route for Stockholm's main airport Arlanda.

Between 6:35 a.m. and 7.00 a.m. on Tuesday, 11 planes passed over the area, but both SAS and the airport management at Arlanda claim that it is highly unlikely that the lumps of ice came from any of these planes.

Whitehorse - There is nothing elementary about the mysterious, sudden disappearance of northern pike from Watson Lake in Yukon.

"It's weird," Aaron Foos of the Yukon Department of the Environment said.

In one year, the community on the British Columbia-Yukon border went from a destination for anglers in search of trophy pike to a lake devoid of the fish.

In the summer of 2002, anglers caught 1,680 of the fish and kept 158.

Based on 2002 catch-and-release figures, Mr. Foos said it would be reasonable to expect there to be more than 20,000 pike in the lake.

For the summer of 2003, however, there is no known record of any pike being caught. Nor did any show up in an intensive search by ministry officials.

Mr. Foos said the rest of the fish in the lake - lake trout, grayling, white fish and burbot - are doing just fine.

Watson Lake conservation officer Ryan Hennings received reports of dead pike on the lake's surface last spring but did not recover any of the reported fish.

PYRAMID LAKE, Nev. - For people who have grown up around here, Pyramid Lake has sort of a mystical reputation, said Alexia Bratiotis of the Nevada Museum of Art.

"Yeah, fishermen have gone missing up there - just vanished," added Amy Oppio. The two were chatting after a preview tour of the museum's new Impressionist exhibit. Oppio has grown up hearing stories about the lake from her dad, who delivered fishing boats there - about an hour north of Reno. [...]

An Arborg cattle farmer made a horrific discovery Monday when he found the partially skinned carcass of one of his animals that was missing its tongue and apparently drained of its blood. "The whole thing has turned out to be more sinister than I thought," said Yvonne, a neighbour, who examined the mutilated animal. She asked not to have her last name used to protect her family.

"What sort of weirdos have we got travelling in our neighbourhood?"

Gordon, who would only allow The Sun to print his first name, said he discovered the carcass on his farm Monday afternoon.

"I don't really want to speculate on what happened. I know what I saw," he said, adding he is still shaken up by the find.

Arborg is 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg. [...]

An East Texas rancher is looking for a logical explanation after seventeen of his cows fall dead within hours, with no obvious reason. It was Sunday that rancher Ronny Blasengame and his longtime neighbor A.D. Varner began finding dead cattle on a ranch off of Cherokee trace near Gilmer.

"As I'm dragging one off i happened to see another one laying on the ground" says Blasengame. "It seemed like the more we looked the more we found... After that second one I knew something was going on then" says Varner.

They found numerous others dead or dying , and at the end of the day 17 were dead... With no visible marks as to what killed them.. All of the animals they found were near a new oil rig that was being worked on their property.

ROME -- In a small room, well away from the street so that no one hears the screams, Father Gabriele Amorth does battle with Satan. He is a busy man.

As the Vatican's top exorcist, Amorth performs the mysterious, ancient ritual dozens of times a week. A confused world engulfed in tragedy and chaos is turning increasingly to black magic, the occult and fortune-telling, he said, proof that the devil and his handmaidens are having a field day.

"These customs open the door to evil spirits and to demonic possessions," Amorth said. "Exorcism is God's true miracle."

[...] Amorth said his calendar is always full. "I have three this afternoon," he said matter-of-factly recently.

With little prompting, he whipped out his equipment, sheathed in a weathered leather bag that is always at his side: a silver and wooden crucifix, an aspergillum for sprinkling holy water and a container of baptismal oil.

He acted out simple steps from the ritual, wrapping his purple priest's stole around the shoulders of a visitor and making the sign of the cross on her forehead. (All clear, he pronounced.)

Yana and Eric Johnson, of Madden Avenue, have been living with strange spectral entities for several years now and have been visited by a whole range of mediums and paranormal investigators.

Mrs Johnson said: "We've been told so many different things and now we're just confused.

"We don't know exactly what they are. Someone told us they were my husband's ancestors.

"They look like balls of light and some of them have got wings or strands coming off them and they come up from the corner of the living room.

"But they're in every room. They're not aggressive. They just keep moving things and they follow us about and lay on my shoulders.

"They seem like they're playful but they're quite annoying."

Cripple Creek - An odor sickened at least two Cripple Creek workers early Thursday and caused authorities to block off streets, evacuate homes and lock down schools.

In the end, the origin of the solvent-like smell that produced headaches and caused burning sensations in the city workers' throats was a headscratcher.

"They did find something there", Cripple Creek Police Chief Larry Hamilton said. "But they just don't know what it is."

The mystery began about 9 a.m., when two workers from the Utilities Department who were building a sidewalk in the 200 block of Masonic Avenue reported feeling ill from an unidentified odor.

Not long after, the police barricaded streets and began going door to door, evacuating about 25 residences.

Cresson Elementary and Cripple Creek-Victor Junior/Senior School were locked down.

The Teller County Courthouse, the county office building and the post office were evacuated.

An evacuation center was set up at a community center, but no one checked in.

Letter carrier Norman Gillard's work was disrupted, so he bought a box of doughnuts to hand to people who also were inconvenienced.

"I didn't smell anything," he said. "but I guess they just don't want to take any chances."

Because Teller County doesn't have a hazardous-materials team, a unit from the Colorado Springs Fire Department was dispatched.

The Colorado Springs firefighters in protective suits and masks walked up and down the streets of the historic mining town with monitors, checking the air for the noxious odor. They found nothing.

Slowly, police lifted the barricades and the evacuation orders. The school's lockdown was lifted about 2 p.m.

After hazmet team members checked the area, they returned to the spot where the workers said they fell ill.

They dug in the ground and checked the air, which showed a slightly elevated level of hydrocarbons--residual effects of combustion.

"It's still a mystery to me," Hamilton said.

"They thought whatever was there may have been in the soil for a long time. When they started digging, they disrupted it. We don't think it's that big of a deal at this time."

The firefighters spent the early evening cleaning up the 6-foot-by-6-foot area where the odor was detected.

NIAMEY (Reuters) - The mayor of Niger's capital has ordered "qualified" sorcerers to chase away evil spirits reported to be making terrifying appearances at night.

Nightlife lovers in Niamey have repeatedly complained of a woman who appears from nowhere, curses and threatens them before vanishing as if she had "evaporated." Young women in skimpy outfits have been particular targets for the evil spirits.

"Given the rumor which has been circulating for at least three weeks now of strange apparitions stalking people, notably young women, I have ordered all the elderly chiefs of Niamey to resort to the traditional sacrifices, with qualified people, to stop this curse," Niamey Mayor Jules Oguet said Monday. [...]

FIRST there was a fence post in Sydney that supposedly bore a remarkable resemblance to the Virgin Mary, and now Queensland has its own religious phenomena.

Hundreds flocked to a Catholic church in the Brisbane suburb of Inala on the weekend to catch a glimpse of statues which have apparently been weeping blood and rose-scented oil.

Yesterday a squad of volunteers was enlisted - each with hand-written "security" tags pinned to their lapels - to direct crowds and explain the strange happenings at the little-known Vietnamese community church.

Digital cameras and video recorders jostled to capture images of the sacred seeping objects, now tucked away in glass display cases.

"It looks genuine enough, but then I suppose I don't know what a fake one looks like," Toowoomba visitor Mark Power said.

"I'd like to believe, but (I'll) wait and see what the church says." [...]

Farmers at loss to explain how Jannie the Jersey could have vanished

It is not your average missing-persons inquiry, but a Beckington farming couple have this week issued a mooving appeal for help.

Geoff and Kim Bowles, who own Ivy House Organic Farm, say one of their Jersey cows has mysteriously disappeared, leaving no clues to its whereabouts.

They do not think that Jennie the Jumping Jersey has been attacked by one of the area's "big cats", but say that because they live near Cley Hill, alien abduction is one possibility.

But whatever has happened, they are desperate to find her so that she can be reunited with her temporarily orphaned baby calf, Juniper.

Mr Bowles said: "This one always kept getting out and wandering around neighbouring fields, but like all cows she would always come back to the herd for milking time.

"We have searched all around our land and the three neighbouring farms, so perhaps it's postnatal depression and she has run away. [...]

A team of top-notch ghosthunters will be roaming Devonport Naval Base over the weekend as a team of experts in paranormal activities look into reports of strange events in parts of the historic South Yard.

The Paranormal Research Investigators will be particularly keen to bring their skills to bear on the 18th century Ropemaker's House and the Hangman's Cell.

The Master Ropemaker's House, a Grade II Listed historic building, was built in the late 18th century as part of the great South Yard Roper.

This facility was a major producer of rope and cordage for the whole of the Royal Navy until March 191, when all production ceased because of bomb damage.

The person in charge of the Roper lived in the Master Ropemaker's House until World War II, at which point it was used as a residence for dockyard officials.

It has lain empty for four years, and is in an area designated as part of the site for the development of the Naval Base Visitor Centre.

Over a number of years the house has built up a reputation as one of the most haunted houses in Plymouth, with a number of former residents reporting paranormal activities - and guards patrolling the area have confirmed strange happenings at the house. [...]

Simon Mowbray from DOC tells Newstalk ZB's Paul Holmes about the mysterious case of birds falling from the sky in South Auckland.

Seem to have died "violently."

MORE than 10,000 birds died mysteriously in eastern China's Jiangsu province, dropping like rain from the sky, state media reported yesterday.

Farmers and other witnesses in Sangongdian village in Taizhou city saw flocks of bramble finch suddenly fall from the sky on Tuesday, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

Most of the birds were dead when they hit the ground and some were injured, it said. The birds look like sparrows and are small in size.

Officials from the local centre for disease prevention and control rushed to the scene. Samples from the birds were taken to a lab in nearby Nanjing city for testing to determine the cause of death.

Experts from the Jiangsu province agriculture department said that because the birds died while in flight, the cause of death may have been contamination in their food, water or environment. [...]

A boat party in an exclusive area of Long Island Sunday night was interrupted - when a severed human hand mysteriously dropped out of the sky onto the deck of a boat, police said yesterday.

The bizarre incident occurred in the water just off the Lawrence Village Marina, where a group of boats had gathered to have a party.

One owner was in the cabin when "he heard a noise, goes out to check and finds the hand on the rear deck of the boat," said Nassau Detective Sgt. John Azzata. "At this point, we don't have a clue where it came from. It's a mystery."

The Catholic Church has enlisted a retired chemistry professor to determine whether religious objects in a small Brisbane church are actually bleeding and weeping.

Judicial vicar and investigator Dr Adrian Farrelly said the professor may be able to provide a scientific explanation for the phenomenon which many have hailed as miracle. "We've got a retired professor of chemistry," Dr Farrelly said. "He wants to remain private, given the sensitivities of the matter. "He's not Catholic, he's agnostic, but he's got the required skills I need."

Thousands of people, from as far away as Melbourne and New Zealand, have flocked to the Vietnamese Community Church in the south-western Brisbane suburb of Inala to view religious objects, including crucifixes and a statue of the Virgin Mary, which have either bled or leaked rose oil over the past three weeks.

Dr Farrelly, an expert in church law who also preaches in the inner north Brisbane suburb of Clayfield, said he had not investigated weeping statues before. He had no idea when the investigation might be finished or when he could hand his report to Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby. [...]

Church spokesman Vincent Do said the abnormalities began when rose oil started flowing from the eyes, nose, forehead and fingers of a statue of the Virgin Mary. A small cross on the altar has also bled, as have religious figurines.

On Eimad Abdulaziz's wall in Chico hangs a 14 inch by 18 inch portrait of the Virgin Mary, who is holding a young Jesus with both her hands. Her head tilts delicately down to her left and an angel floats on each side of her face. The portrait is mounted onto a piece of carved wood and coated in lacquer. On the glossy surface, about ten small drops of yellowish-green oil form. They are like raindrops on a windshield.

They began appearing around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 8.

That Sunday, they were declared a miracle by Archbishop Clemis Eugene Kaplan of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch. Since the miracle was announced, hundreds of visitors, from as far as Lake Tahoe and Los Angeles, have come to the Abdulaziz house to pray.

Jeff Sayegh, a family friend, was called to the home after the miracle occurred.

"We feel it is a blessing for the house, for the community and for Chico," he said.

Abdulaziz's wife asked him to bring a bottle of milk for their son, Sayegh said.

After giving her the bottle, Abdulaziz went into a trance and told his wife he was seeing a bright light. He then told her that their portrait of the Virgin Mary downstairs was dripping oil.

Downstairs she confirmed her husband's vision and found the wall and carpet soaked in odorless oil, Sayegh said. She made a holy cross on her forehead with the oil and then made one on her husband's head upstairs, which took him out of his trance. He said he didn't remember anything of what had happened.

For Durghali's son, Matthew, it is the second portrait of the Virgin Mary dripping oil he's seen. The first time was in Detroit for a youth church convention.

"It surprises you and it brings back your faith," he said.

He said some people think there is a message within the miracle, but others think the miracle is the message.

"For me, it's bringing people back to their faith," Durghali said. "It gives you faith; it's a sign of hope."

KATHMANDU, India (Wireless Flash) -- Hindu priests in a remote Nepal village are breaking out in a cold sweat over a stone statue of a deity that has also begun to mysteriously sweat for no apparent reason.

The priests take the sweaty signal as a sign that bad things are about to come and are now praying to spare the country and the people from disasters or calamities, according to Reuters.

BOSTON -- The numbers are down, but some people are still going to Milton Hospital near Boston not for medical care but to view what some say is a miraculous apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Last summer, more than 75,000 people poured into the hospital's parking lot to look up at the window containing what many believed was an image of Mary holding her infant son. A hospital physician had noticed the image, and word quickly spread.

Milton Hospital staff said that the image was likely formed when a sealant around the window ruptured, allowing heat and moisture to seep through and leave a chemical deposit. The archdiocese of Boston has taken no position on the image, saying only through a spokesperson last year, "If it leads to a deepening of faith . . . it's a good thing."

IQALUIT - Samples taken from three dead polar bears found near Arctic Bay have been sent south for analysis.

The dead bears were found near the floe edge in the last three months. They were in a straight line, about two to three kilometres apart from each other.

Curtis Didham, a wildlife officer with the Nunavut government, went to Arctic Bay to take the samples and assess the situation.

Didham says the cause of the deaths is under investigation.

"The bears could have died from a number of natural causes, such as starvation, fighting with each other, disease and parasites, or from other causes such as ingesting toxic substances or somebody shooting and leaving them to die."

Didham says about 500 polar bears die every year from natural causes in Nunavut. And he says 350 to 400 bears are harvested each year.

There are about 12,000 bears total in the territory.

KATHMANDU: Nepal is in a cold sweat -- because the statue of a deity in the central part of the country is said to have "perspired" last month just as it has done before on the eve of national calamities.

According to local belief, the statue of Bhimsen in the Maoist stronghold of Dolakha in central Nepal breaks out in sweat just before something disastrous happens in the country.

When it "perspired" in 2001, a massacre wiped out the royal family in the palace at Kathmandu.

In 1989 and 1934, a sweating Bhimsen heralded two devastating earthquakes.

The deaths of two kings -- that of the present king's father Mahendra in 1970 and the passing away of King Tribhuvan in 1953 -- are also said to have occurred after the idol "sweated".

According to tradition, the country undergoes an upheaval within six months of the phenomenon.

This year the deity is said to have sweated on June 22 and 23, a spectacle that is now bringing villagers in droves to offer penance. [...]

Primary school in Kiboga district was closed in May after parents reported that their children were being attacked by demons.

Bisika Primary School, located in Butemba sub-county, was later re-opened but the pupils continued to live in fear. Another demon attack was reported on June 29, in the same school.

The parents accused Isma Sserunkuuma, a man, who lives near the school, of bringing the demons locally known as mayembe. They said Sserunkuma wanted the demons from a witchdoctor to help him acquire wealth.

Acting on the parents' report, the Kiboga resident district commissioner (rdc), Margaret Kasaija, ordered for the arrest of Sserunkuuma and the closure of the school until the demons would be driven out of the school. Sserunkuuma is still in detention.

At the time of arrest, Sserunkuuma said he could not afford the demons' enormous demands. He said the demons demanded for 300 virgin girls and cows to provide them with blood for sustenance.

Sserunkuuma added that when he failed to provide the virgins and cows, he set them (demons) free. They then attacked the pupils. He pleaded that he had no intention of harming the school, but only failed to control the demons.

The demons reportedly affected primary four, five, six and seven pupils below 12 years. When attacked, the pupils gabble and run around the compound. Others undress and foam around their mouths.

They also shake violently as if shocked by an electric current. Parents also said they had to tie their children on pegs with ropes to avoid their disappearance.

OCEAN SPRINGS - Something fishy happened during the hailstorm that pounded the city Tuesday evening.

Gulf Islands National Seashore Ranger Melissa Perez and volunteer Adam Wilson were pelted briefly with small, very cold fish while on the park's pier.

It was around 6 p.m. Tuesday when the storm had eased briefly. The two ran out to try and locate minnow traps that had been left on the pier.

The traps were gone, but while Perez and Wilson were looking, something began falling into the water near them causing splashes. Then two icy cold fish hit the deck of the pier and one hit Perez's hat.

"I was pretty upset that I had lost those traps, when fish fell from the sky," Perez said.

"We went for cover. One was incredibly cold and one of them actually was icy," she said. Fellow workers told her it was a rare phenomenon.

"But sure enough, it happened here," she said.

Perez didn't know how many fell into the water; the event took her by surprise. But it all happened in an area that had roughly a 20-foot diameter.

The fish that hit the deck were small, about 3 inches long, and she said that she didn't immediately recognize the species.

"The weather was so bad that we threw them off and ran for cover," she said.

Crowds are flocking to a hardware store in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, to see an image of Jesus that has appeared on a tinted window at the business.

The image first appeared on a True Value store window on July 19 and caused employees to wonder where it came from.

Since being discovered, the image has not faded.

People at the store agree that the image resembles the face of Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns.

"I go to church whenever I get a chance, but I'm not a spiritual person. I do believe, especially now," a resident said after seeing the window.

GRAPEVINE - Centuries ago, the fires that cremated the Buddhist masters left something unexpected among the ash -- tiny, crystalline droplets as pale and white as pearls.

Some believe that they have a powerful and mysterious affect. Visitors burst into tears, feel energized, purified, connected to the world.

Huei-Min Wu of Dallas snapped a picture with her cellphone at the free, three-day exhibit that runs through Saturday at Unity Church in Grapevine.

"I feel good," she said. "I feel peace."

The relics include the remains of the religion's founder, Siddhartha Gautama, and have drawn thousands of curiosity seekers and devout Buddhists. They have not been scientifically tested, organizers say.

But they have been scrutinized by living Buddhist masters who are convinced of their authenticity.

A reader sent us the following:

There's been a handful of stories on the web lately about strange bird behaviour. It might tie into this magnetite they also have in their bodies and use for navigation, as bees do. I collected some of the stories in a document over the past two days. This is a part of the file I have so far, with stories where it seems their 'navigation systems' weren't working properly:

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Organizers of a race for homing pigeons were still scratching their heads in wonder Thursday after about 1,500 of the birds, famous for their ability to find their way home, went missing during the contest.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's endangered brown pelicans are mysteriously starving to death during a bumper year for anchovies, their preferred prey, wildlife officials said.

Hundreds of the ungainly sea birds appear to have flown off course in search of food during their annual migration from the Baja California peninsula to British Columbia, with young pelicans turning up in Arizona deserts, biologists said.

Where have all the American white pelicans gone? To Becker and neighboring counties, for starters. For unknown reasons, virtually the entire population of 35,000 pelicans at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge north of Medina, N.D., left about a month ago.

These above are from the last 10 days, the next two are older ones:

Wildlife experts in the German city of Stuttgart are baffled after a flock of starlings made a mass suicide attempt leaving dozens of birds dead.

Pedestrians watched as hundreds of birds flew over the city before suddenly nose-diving to the ground from a height of 65 feet.

Bird expert Guenther Schleussner, from the Wilhelma Zoological and Botanical Gardens in Stuttgart, said the scenes were like something from a horror film.

"I've never seen anything like it in my life," he added.

Around 100 dead and injured birds covered the busy Steinhalden Street. Residents out for a Sunday stroll reporting a loud "thud" as the flock of kamikaze starlings hit the pavement.

The ornithologist added: "It's unbelievable, I'm stunned. This kind of behaviour in birds is very, very unusual."

Schleussner said the incident could have been down to a sudden squall or simply a "freak accident".

PHILADELPHIA (AP): [...] About 1,600 pigeons vanished out of 1,800 competing in a 200-mile race from northern Virginia to Allentown, Pa., on Oct 5. And 600 out of 700 birds were missing after a 150-mile race on the same day from western Pennsylvania to Philadelphia.

Some of the stories cite the Concord flights, others telephone towers...etc as explanations for these behaviours. Reading these stories I found myself thinking that maybe the birds are responding to the magnetic field of the world going more and more out of balance.

I also came across a lot of stories over the past two days about colonies of birds dying off in large numbers....from penguins in the Falklands to Herons in the US, where toxins or some type of influenza or starvation (warmer temperatures changing their natural feeding environment) were cited as the cause.

Don't know, just a lot of sad and strange bird stories lately.

[...] I was told another crazy, unverified story this past week about Tahoe's darkest legend of all. As the story goes, a fisherman snagged something for a moment in the deep water just offshore of the South Shore casinos, but it easily broke free. When he reeled up his line, to his shock, on his hook was the top of a human ear.

This might sound crazy, but in the past 25 years, I've heard different versions of this story at least a dozen times. In one account, a fisherman snags up, gets it loose, and reels up a partial hand where two of the fingers had been lopped off Mafia-style. It is a tale passed around called "The Legend of Three-Fingered Tony."

Many have told me that, if you were to take a submarine down 900 feet just off South Shore, you would see hundreds of bodies suspended in the water, preserved perfectly like an underwater wax museum, most wearing clothes from the 1920s, '30s and '40s.

The legend is that this is where the Mafia killers dumped bodies after executions. Some fishermen even call the spot The Grave. At Tahoe, many locals talk as if everybody knows about this, that there are lots of gangsters down there, wearing pinstriped suits, with sneers on their faces and bullet holes in their foreheads.

This makes sense. It has long been verified that Tahoe is a lake that does not give up its dead. That is because the lake is so deep, with an average depth of 989 feet, and so cold, with the temperature hovering just above freezing. So that prevents the creation of gases that would otherwise bloat and float corpses to the surface as in other waters.

This reality brings bizarre possibilities.

Lake Tahoe, as first theorized by the famed geologist Josiah Whitney, was created by a colossal earthquake where a center block of land collapsed between two faults. It might be possible that another massive earthquake here would disrupt the underwater currents and suddenly float all the suspended corpses to the surface at once.

Another possibility is that the bodies will remain submerged for eons of time, just as the woolly mammoths were preserved in glaciers from the last ice age 14,000 years ago.

Even famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau is said to have had a brush with something horrific in a deepwater dive in the mid-1970s. "The world isn't ready for what was down there," is the quote most commonly credited. Cousteau never released any photographs or data from the dive, adding to the mystery and legend. [...]

IT'S a mystery why so many people are suffering burned feet after walking on red hot coals at the weekend, the Islander who led the event said today.

Experienced firewalking instructor Mathew Howard-Houston insisted there seemed to be no obvious reason why up to one third of the 60 firewalkers have attended Accident and Emergency.

It was reported yesterday that doctors and nurses had treated and dressed several pairs of feet following a Breakthrough Breast Cancer fund-raising fire walk on Friday at Ransoms Garden Centre.

'I really cannot explain it that much,' said Mr Howard-Houston. 'There are one or two things that can happen, but I think it's great that they raised so much money for charity.

(Dolagobind, Orissa) - In a bizarre incident, a girl's school here has been closed after its students started behaving abnormally.

Teachers claim that at least a dozen girls have taken ill under mysterious circumstances in the past two weeks, all fainting without a cause, only to wake up and start behaving like cats.

Dolagobind, a remote hamlet in Orissa, has since been affected by so many incidents that necromancers have been called in to remove these so called evil spirits.

According to the teachers, all the affected girls are aged between eight to twelve. They were seen clawing their own faces and shrieking like felines. Some even fainted, leaving the management with no option but to shut the school.

People have pondered dates, disasters, and deaths linked to Mothman from 1966, to the present. Since it has become fashionable in recent years to create lists of those who have died by association to the JFK assassination, Bill Clinton, and even the movie Poltergeist, here is "The Mothman Death List" of events and deaths linked to the original series of Mothman sightings of 1996- 1967, to the release of the movie in January 2002, to the various cable premieres, and VHS/DVD releases later in 2002 and 2003. [...]

#80: Jennifer Barrett-Pellington, wife of The Mothman Prophecies director Mark Pellington, died on July 30, 2004, in Los Angeles, and was buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. Ms. Barrett-Pellington was born December 18, 1961. [...]

#81: Martin Becker, 49, a special-effects coordinator and the co-owner of Reel Efx, an innovative North Hollywood company, died of pancreatic cancer on August 13, 2004, at his Glendale, California, home.

ATHENS (AFP) - Thousands of migratory birds in the Greek nature reserve of Lake Koronia have died in recent months in what birds specialists are calling "an ecological catastrophe," several sources said.

Hundreds of dead gulls, tern and ducks -- at least 15 species in all -- were discovered just in the last few days, the sources said Thursday.

Autopsies and tests of water samples from the lake are underway, but experts do not yet know what is responsible for the sudden wave of avian fatalities, described by Xenofon Kappas, spokesman of the Greek ornithological society, as "a major ecological catastrophe."

"For the moment, we are in the process of counting the number of dead birds," Kappas told AFP.

The Greek news agency ANA put the Lake Korina avian death toll at 3,000, but experts said that more than 10,000 dead birds have been found on the lake in recent months.

The Mayor of Salonika, 520 kilometers (320 miles) north of Athens, adopted "emergency measures" to deal with the crisis, reported ANA, and water samples have been sent to Salonika University for testing. Fishing has also been banned, though no dead fish have been found.

Lake Korinia is one of 27 parks in Greece that are part of the Natura 2000, a European Union-sponsored network of bird sanctuaries and threatened habitats.

The Lake is also one of 10 Greek ecological sites protected by the Ramsar treaty, and international convention on wetland ecosystems adopted in the mid-1970.

ANS

HYDERABAD: Mysterious mild tremors rocked parts of Andhra Pradesh's Vijayawada city Sunday night and early on Monday, damaging some houses and causing panic.

The tremors were experienced in Krishna Lanka and surrounding areas, and panic-stricken people spent the night on roads as the tremors continued through the night.

Seismologists from Hyderabad and Kolkata are rushing to Vijayawada to study the tremors.

Surprisingly, the seismology observatory in Hyderabad recorded no earthquake.

Lakshmi, a resident of the Krishna Lanka area, said she watched asbestos roof of her house vibrating and windowpanes rattling. Another resident, Sandhya, said the tremors continued throughout the night and until 9 a.m. Monday.

The authorities swung into action to provide temporary shelters as people rushed out of their homes.

District officials were surprised over the phenomenon.

V.P. Dimri, director of the National Geological Research Institute (NGRI) here, said the observatory did not record tremors. He said the tremors could have been very small in magnitude, may be less than 1.5 on Richter scale.

Municipal Commissioner V. Usha Rani said the experts informed her that the tremors were not recorded on Richter scale. She said the experts would look into phenomenon.

Vijayawada has never recorded tremors in the past. She said the geologists would also look into the drying up of Krishna River bed as a possible reason for the tremors.

She said the climatic change due to release of water from Krishna barrage downstream could have led to some seismic activity. The barrage and surrounding areas also felt the tremors.

The great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, contains numerous legends about the powerful force of a mysterious weapon

The archaeological expedition, which carried out excavations near the Indian settlement of Mohenjo-Daro in the beginning of the 1900s, uncovered the ruins of a big ancient town. The town belonged to one of the most developed civilizations in the world. The ancient civilization existed for two or three thousand years. However, scientists were a lot more interested in the death of the town, rather than in its prosperity.

Researchers tried to explain the reason of the town's destruction with various theories. However, scientists did not find any indications of a monstrous flood, skeletons were not numerous, there were no fragments of weapons, or anything else that could testify either to a natural disaster or a war. Archaeologists were perplexed: according to their analysis the catastrophe in the town had occurred very unexpectedly and it did hot last long.

Scientists Davneport and Vincenti put forward an amazing theory. They stated the ancient town had been ruined with a nuclear blast. They found big stratums of clay and green glass. Apparently, archaeologists supposed, high temperature melted clay and sand and they hardened immediately afterwards. Similar stratums of green glass can also found in Nevada deserts after every nuclear explosion.

A hundred years have passed since the excavations in Mohenjo-Daro. The modern analysis showed, the fragments of the ancient town had been melted with extremely high temperature - not less than 1,500 degrees centigrade. Researchers also found the strictly outlined epicenter, where all houses were leveled. Destructions lessened towards the outskirts. Dozens of skeletons were found in the area of Mohenjo-Daro - their radioactivity exceeded the norm almost 50 times.

The great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, contains numerous legends about the powerful force of a mysterious weapon. One of the chapters tells of a shell, which sparkled like fire, but had no smoke. "When the shell hit the ground, the darkness covered the sky, twisters and storms leveled the towns. A horrible blast burnt thousands of animals and people to ashes. Peasants, townspeople and warriors dived in the river to wash away the poisonous dust."

Astounding mysteries of India's ancient times can be found in the town of Shivapur. There are two enigmatic stones resting opposite the local shrine. One of them weighs 55 kilograms, the other one is 41 kilograms. If eleven men touch the bigger stone, and nine men touch the smaller stone, if they all chant the magic phrase, which is carved on one of the walls of the shrine, the two stones will raise two meters up in the air and will hang there for two seconds, as if there is no gravitation at all. A lot of European and Asian scientists and researchers have studied the phenomenon of levitating stones of Shivapur.

Modern people divide the day into 24 hours, the hour - into 60 minutes, the minute - into 60 seconds. Ancient Hindus divided the day in 60 periods, lasting 24 minutes each, and so on and so forth. The shortest time period of ancient Hindus made up one-three-hundred-millionth of a second.

HALIFAX - Passengers from a cruise ship that docked in Halifax Tuesday told a harrowing tale of furniture flying and people breaking bones when the ship lost power near the edges of hurricane Karl.

The Atlantic Ocean was rough, with swells reaching 10 to 15 metres, when all four engines aboard ms Rotterdam failed at about 6 p.m. Friday, three passengers told the CBC.

The loss of the Holland America Line ship's electrical systems and stabilizers sent the 237-metre-long vessel tilting at 35- to 40-degree angles on its North Atlantic trip from Ireland to eastern Canada.

"It was more or less the cruise from hell," said passenger Herman Veder of Boca Raton, Fla. "Furniture was flying all over the place. Pianos were not bolted down. In the gym, which is an extensive gym, all the weights came loose and started rolling around."

In one onboard restaurant that had 1,000 plates on hand, 800 came loose and crashed to the floor, he said. "In the cabins, refrigerators came loose, TV sets were flying through the rooms."

Passengers grew more terrified as a message came over the intercom that stretcher teams were needed, Veder said. An unknown number of people suffered broken collarbones, gashes and bruises.

None of the injuries was life-threatening, the cruise line said. A Holland America spokesperson said the ship is structurally sound, and promised an investigation into what caused the engines to quit.

"Some of us were concerned that the boat was going to tip over because it was rocking and swaying so hard that things were flying across the cabins," said Rachel Youngman, a California resident making the trip with her husband Richard.

"And the captain - it took him about an hour to come on and say, 'This is very uncomfortable but the ship is in no danger.' And at that point I think we all relaxed a little bit."

Up until then, she said, many passengers had grabbed a lifejacket and were ready to abandon ship.

The 62,000-ton Rotterdam, built in 1997, can accommodate 1,316 passengers with 593 crew members on board.

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) -- A fiberglass statue of Jesus that washed up on a sandbar in the Rio Grande three weeks ago is attracting scores of devout pilgrims to a police department lost-and-found and being hailed as a miracle.

Police in Eagle Pass, Texas, said up to 40 people a day are coming to pay homage to the five-foot-tall figurine, known as "The Christ of the Undocumented," which was found by U.S. Border Patrol agents in the river.

"Some come to pray, and some come and just touch it," police lieutenant Daniel Morales said by telephone on Monday. "We have never experienced anything like this before, and interest is growing by the day."

The border city, which lies opposite Piedras Negras in northern Mexico, has a large Mexican community. Many arrived illegally by way of the river, and most are devout Roman Catholics.

Morales said the life-like statuette, which turned up without a crucifix base, would probably be given to a church in the border city if no-one came forward to claim it within 90 days.

Police in West Norfolk believe that a calf whose mutilated body was found in a field may have been shot before having its tail cut off.

Officers investigating the brutal killing at Pott Row, near King's Lynn, say that the three-month old animal had bite marks round its mouth and hooves when it was discovered by a member of the public on Sunday afternoon.

Its tail had been cut off cleanly with a sharp instrument and was missing from the scene.

PC Caroline Eleftheriou, who is investigating, said: "This is a very strange case and distressing for all those involved. I have never come across anything like this before. We can think of no reason why anyone would want to inflict such cruelty.

"It is very upsetting for the owner that the calf has been killed in such a painful way," she said.

Officers are awaiting the results of an autopsy to confirm whether the hole in the calf's body is a gunshot wound.

PC Eleftheriou said that it is believed the attack could have been premeditated.

It is not yet known what caused the bite marks, although it is believed a dog could have been responsible.

The calf, valued at £275, was one of a herd that grazes on a field in Back Lane.

It was last seen alive at around 6.30pm on Friday.

Its body was discovered by a member of the public at 2.30pm on Sunday.

The calf's owner, a local farmer, was too distressed to talk to the EDP.

PC Eleftheriou said: "We are appealing for anyone with information about this offence or anyone who may have seen or heard anything strange in the vicinity at the relevant times to come forward."

An RSPCA spokesman said: "We condemn anyone attacking an innocent animal like that. It seems completely uncalled for and unnecessary.

CRAIG, Colo. -- Authorities are investigating the mutilation and killing of three cows on a small ranch in northwestern Colorado.

The two steers and one heifer were killed and had their genitals removed last week but there were no visible marks on the cattle indicating how they were killed, Moffat County sheriff's deputy Courtland Folks said. The state veterinarian has been asked to investigate.

"Possibly it could have been done for some type of worship with the organs," Folks said. "It's something that makes livestock owners uncomfortable."

Rancher Jacque Osburn said the cattle, which had already been sold to a buyer, were in a pasture near the Craig-Moffat County Airport when they were killed. The animals were worth about $2,400.

"I guess if it's going to happen anytime, it's going to happen around Halloween," she said. "I hope it's not the start of something but you never know."

Osburn, who has 200 head of cattle, has been telling other ranchers about what happened so they can watch their livestock.

She said livestock mutilations were rampant in the area about 20 years ago but this was the first time any of her cattle have been hit. She has moved the calves in her herd to a different pasture.

"It's scary," she said. "People feel pretty immune from crime when out here, but we're not. It wasn't a good trick, and it sure as hell wasn't a treat."

A KEEN gardener got the shock of her life when a freak storm rained 20 crabs down on her.

Kate Walker was picking beans in her garden when she felt what she thought was heavy rain hitting her.

But the 33-year-old got a fright when she looked up and saw the brown coloured creatures falling from the sky.

Miss Walker, of Powder Mill Lane, Dartford, collected 19 of the crabs and put them in her neighbour's pond.

The 20th crab died and she is currently keeping it under a pot to show disbelieving friends.

She said: "They think I'm mad, I thought it was something out of the X-Files. The crabs were covered in sand.

"Where have they come from? I've heard of fish falling from the sky but this is ridiculous.'' Miss Walker, who is currently unemployed, lives next to Brooklands Lake and speculates the crabs could have come from there or the Thames, which is about two-and-a-half miles away.

She said: "The lake is a possibility. They could have also come from the salty end of the Thames.'' Fish and frogs falling from the sky are not common occurrences but have been reported many times around the world.

It happens when a mini-tornado passes over water and sweeps up objects of all shapes and sizes.

If the item is lightweight, like a fish or a small frog, it may be caught in a strong storm or a cloud updraft for a long time rising higher until it is thrown out like a hailstone.

Met Office spokesman Barry Gormett said: "It can happen because of the dynamics of the atmosphere.

"When there is a convective motion of air beneath a cloud, it can draw things upwards. I've heard of fish and frogs but crabs are a first.''

Falling from the heavens

*In 1995, Nellie Straw of Sheffield was driving through Scotland in a storm when hundreds of frogs suddenly pelted her car.

*In 1881, a thunderstorm in Worcester brought down tons of periwinkles and hermit crabs.

*In 1890, bird's blood rained down on Messignadi in Calabria, Italy.

* From about 1982 to 1986, kernels of corn rained down on several houses in Evans, Colorado. Oddly, there were no cornfields in the area.

*In 1877, several 1ft-long alligators fell on J L Smith's farm in South Carolina.

*In November, 1996, a town in southern Tasmania was slimed. Apparently, it had rained either fish eggs or baby jellyfish.

* A Korean fisherman, trolling off the coast of the Falkland Islands, was knocked unconscious by a single frozen squid which fell from the sky.

* In a town in Guatemala, money, blue rain, frogs and toads, fish, gold, cigarettes and Star Wars figures have on occasions rained from the sky.

A poor village in Mexico was showered with gold. Supposedly, a treasure chest from a ship sunk off the nearby coast was whipped up by a tornado and deposited on the village.

KENT - Its a "chilling" mystery -- how did chunks of ice wind up in an 8-year-old's bed in Kent?

Troy Hualte and his family came home Thursday night around 6 p.m. from their daughter's ballet practice and weren't prepared for what they saw.

"I tucked my ballet shoes under my bed," 8-year-old Breeze Haulte. "Then I saw a big hole in the ceiling. I turned the light on immediately... and ran out and got my dad."

"My daughter went into her room to put her things away and came out quickly and said 'Dad, there's something silver hanging over my bed,'" her father Troy added.

That "something silver" was insulation. There was a hole in the ceiling. On her bed were grapefruit-sized ice balls.

"I climbed up on the roof and noticed that there was one very large hole and must have busted whatever it was up on impact," Troy said. Understandably, it left Breeze a little uneasy.

"She was frightened last night," her mom Rachel said. "She didn't want to come and get her pajamas out of her dresser and she slept in her brother's room (Thursday) night and then she came into our room last night scared that it might happen again."

Troy called the FAA and was told the ice probably did not come from a plane. The ice in his daughter's room was clear. Ice chunks that fall from passing planes are blue. But the FAA will investigate.

In the meantime, the mystery continues.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- An olfactory offense sent officials sniffing for the source of a stench that wafted across Philadelphia.

A mysterious invisible cloud carried an odor that left sour faces and perplexed officials in its wake Thursday.

Emergency dispatchers began receiving the first of hundreds of 911 calls about the strong smell shortly past 2 p.m., first from the southern tip of South Philadelphia, then further north as the scent drifted on the wind.

Transit officials, fearful of a gas leak, evacuated a subway line in South Philadelphia for about 45 minutes.

Some people said it smelled like propane. Others said it smelled more like sulfur.

Authorities collected air samples, phoned nearby refineries and checked the pressure of natural gas lines, trying to determine if there had been an industrial mishap.

"We don't know what it is. But we've gathered enough samples to know that it's not toxic. It's just offensive," said mayoral spokeswoman Barbara Grant.

A police spokesman said authorities were checking out theories that the odor came from dust released as a substance was transferred between two train cars, or that it may have originated at a refinery in Paulsboro, N.J.