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Pet mouse grounds plane

A pet mouse grounded a plane in China after it escaped from a passenger's pocket.

The mouse was taken on board by a female passenger, Liu Yulian, who hid it in her coat pocket and smuggled it past airport security.

"I went to sleep, and after I woke up, I found the mouse had gone missing. So I contacted the crew to see if they could help," says Liu.

Wolf

German police dogs to wear shoes

Police dogs in the western city of Duesseldorf will no longer get their feet dirty when on patrol - the entire dog unit will soon be equipped with blue plastic fiber shoes, a police spokesman said Monday.

"All 20 of our police dogs - German and Belgian shepherds - are currently being trained to walk in these shoes," Andre Hartwich said. "I'm not sure they like it, but they'll have to get used to it."

Bug

Turkmen president sacks staff after insect's walk-on part in TV news bulletin

For the viewers of Turkmenistan's popular nightly news programme, Vatan, it was another routine bulletin. But as the newsreader began the 9pm broadcast, viewers across the central Asian country spotted something unusual crawling across the studio table: a large brown cockroach.

Smiley

Chicken Run: Live hen found on lorry engine after 100 mile trip

A lorry driver was an accomplice to a real-life Chicken Run after making a 100-mile trip with a live HEN under his bonnet.

The trucker only heard it clucking when he arrived at an Asda depot near Chepstow, Monmouthshire.

It had been sitting on his engine since he left Staffordshire.

Cow

Sarkozy said "get lost" to a visitor at the agriculture fair who refused to shake his hand

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been caught on camera swearing at a member of the crowd at the annual farming fair in Paris.

The video clip, which has been posted on the internet, shows a man at the Salon International de l'Agriculture refusing to shake the president's hand.

When offered Mr Sarkozy's hand, the man draws back and says: "Oh no, don't touch me, you'll dirty me."

People

Man in girl's uniform invades Japanese school

A Japanese man who turned up at a school dressed in a girl's uniform and a long wig was arrested for trespassing, police said.

Tetsunori Nanpei, 39, put on the uniform he had bought over the internet and took a walk near the high school in Saitama, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday.

Question

Calling it quits. Is the world running out of new names?

On top of fears that the world will run out of ice caps and oil this century is the added worry that it will run out of nice names for new things. The theory is that quickening global communication and commerce, conducted in such a way as to avoid nomenclatic repetition, trademark clashes or offensive meaning in any language, will eventually result in every possible private and brand name being used up.

There are assorted indications of this coming 'name drought'. Registrations of new web domain names are now falling, due to 'someone almost always having got there first', while the time it takes to find a unique name for a new MySpace account increases by 10 per cent each month. And, despairingly, creative minds at Nokia recently found themselves picking the same name - 'Prism' - for both their new 7500 and 7900 phones.

People

Argentine teenager gives birth to triplets for second time

A 16-year-old girl has become a mother of seven children after giving birth to her second set of triplets, local media said.

Doctors said the three newborn girls and their mother are "feeling well." The babies, each weighing 1.7 kilograms (3.7 lbs), are currently in an incubator.

The mother, named Pamela, from the remote town of Leones, in central Argentina, had her first set of female triplets aged 15. She gave birth to her first child when she was only 14.

Heart - Black

Doctors Shock Monkey's Heart

Procedure to fix heartbeat called high-risk practice

Doctors administered an electrical shock to Vice Presichimp Dick Cheney's heart and restored it to a normal rhythm during a 2 1/2-hour hospital visit yesterday.

The procedure was described as a high-risk, non-standard practice given that if he recovers a vast number of people will become further tormented, tortured, or murdered due to his decision making.

Smiley

Bush BBC interview: A Lesson in Transparencerity

US President George W Bush has given his first interview to the BBC in almost seven years. The transcript of his conversation with BBC World News America with presenter Matt Frei has been published in the BBC News website.

However, spymaster Luka the Ferret has heroically infiltrated the BBC and informs us that in reality the interview was heavily edited! Astutely disguising as a human, and on top of that astutely disguising as a reporter, our intrepid ferret has been able to provide us with a COMPLETE and UNAUTHORIZED transcript of the conversation in which we realize how full of transparencerity Mr Bush really is! If only the media would let the man speak his heart and mind more often...

Matt Frei: Mr President, thanks for joining us. You're famous for saying that you don't believe in opinion polls. You are also famous for being the most hated man on the planet - but maybe I shouldn't mention this so the audience will forget for a while.

President George W Bush: Yeah!... [pause] I like to open up with assertive responses in presidential style, you know.