Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S

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Paragliding girl savaged by eagles

Floating 2,000ft above the ground, you have to be prepared for any eventuality.

But when a flock of angry eagles attacked, British paragliding champion Nicky Moss didn't know what had hit her.

Heart

Two-faced calf loses struggle to live



©AP Photo/Earl Neikirk
Kirk Heldreth, of Heldreth Dairy Farm, watches as Star, his two-faced calf takes a break from feeding on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2007, in Rural Retreat, Va. The calf lost her battle to survive on Friday, Heldreth said.

Magic Wand

The Most Pessimistic People Are the Happiest Study Shows

What makes people happy?

For most individuals, that's a long conversation. But for large groups, researchers have been able to tease out some interesting general findings. By surveying some 80,000 people across the globe, social psychologists were recently able to chart collective levels of satisfaction with life (officially, "subjective well-being"). Thus was born the first ever World Map of Happiness, published last year by the University of Leicester, in England.

Cut

Love is ... a pair of really good jeans

For most women, the choice between sex and a new wardrobe is simple -- they go for the clothes.

Women on average say they would be willing to give up sex for 15 months for a closet full of new apparel, with 2 percent ready to abstain from sex for three years in exchange for new duds, according to a new survey of about 1,000 women in 10 U.S. cities.

Sixty-one percent of women polled said it would be worse to lose their favorite article of clothing than give up sex for a month.

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Bizarro Earth

Chinese police fish for arsenic and old carp

Police in central China have launched a massive hunt for a poisonous carp that went missing from a line where it was hanging out to dry, the China Daily reported on Tuesday.

The carp's owner, who runs a private clinic in the Hubei city of Xiangfan, said he soaked the 3-kg (6.6-lb) fish in an arsenic solution to be used in a traditional medical treatment.

He hung it outside the clinic but later discovered that the headless fish had disappeared and notified police.

Arrow Down

Britain tops world in toilet paper use

LONDON -- A report from the tissue industry has revealed compared to other major nations, Britain far surpasses the average amount of toilet paper used annually.

Magic Wand

Mysterious Wis. Wonder Spot soon to go

LAKE DELTON, Wis. - In a wooded ravine tucked away from the water parks, restaurants and mega-resorts that dominate this tourist town, a piece of history is quietly dying.

After more than half a century of wowing tourists (and causing probably more than a few cases of nausea), the Wonder Spot, a mysterious cabin where people can't stand up straight, water runs uphill and chairs balance on two legs, is no more.

Heart

Mia Farrow: "I don't know what stability is"

And then there were 15. Mia Farrow is standing in the middle of the dining room of Frog Hollow, her cottage in Connecticut, describing how she recently acquired a new member of her family. About 30 of her brood - many of her 14 children, several in-laws and a burgeoning generation of grandchildren - were crammed in around the dining table at one of their regular get-togethers.

They had had a "family talk", as Farrow puts it, about a woman in her late 20s who had recently become a friend and who had no real home of her own. "You know, we are the kind of family that is not united by anything as paltry as blood lines," Farrow says with an intense expression. "We are united by something so much more important: our mutual commitment and love. So we can decide who's in our family, and we all said we wanted her included, and we asked her, would you like to join us? And she said yes and every person in the family welcomed her."

Heart

Shipwrecked and abandoned: the story of the slave Crusoes

In 1776, 57 years after Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe, eight people were rescued from a tiny, treeless island in the Indian Ocean. Seven of them, all women, had survived on the island for 15 years. The eighth, a baby boy, was born there.

The women were the remnants of a group of 60 people who were shipwrecked and then marooned on the scrap of coral and sand in 1761. They were abandoned, and then forgotten, 300 miles from the nearest land, for a simple, brutal reason. They were slaves.

Magic Wand

Norman Mailer: 'I believe in reincarnation'

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Norman Mailer, whose brilliant book The Naked and the Dead (1948) made him world-famous, has revealed his belief in life after death, karma and reincarnation.

He gives his reasons in an interview with Los Angeles Times staff writer Josh Getlin (4 February 2007) which coincides with publication of his latest novel, The Castle in the Forest, about Hitler's childhood.