Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Snowman

Beijing's pandas work overtime for holiday crowds

BEIJING - The pandas in Beijing's zoo have been working overtime to allow a flood of holiday visitors a glimpse of the country's favourite animal, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

©Reuters
A file photo of a panda munching on bamboo shoots at the Beijing zoo June...

HAL9000

Jail term cut for "neighbor from hell" granny

LONDON - An 81-year-old British grandmother branded by a judge as "the original neighbor from hell" had her jail term cut Wednesday but lost a bid for freedom because she wouldn't apologize for her actions.

Dorothy Evans, a widow from Wales, was jailed two weeks ago for harassment and breaching an Anti-Social Behavior Order after repeatedly shouting at her neighbors and hitting them with her walking stick.

Calculator

Record bid for Dukes of Hazzard car

A version of the General Lee - a 1969 Dodge Charger made famous in the television show The Dukes of Hazzard - fetched a winning bid of nearly 10 million dollars (GBP 5 million) in an online auction.

Calculator

Mom's 2007 salary: $138K

The work of a stay-at-home mother has an annual monetary value of $138,095, up 3 percent from last year, according to a survey out today.

Those are some findings from the seventh annual Mom Salary Survey issued by Salary.com, a Waltham compensation software and consulting firm.

If paid the salary of the equivalent work that a stay-at-home mother performs, a woman would earn $138,095, the company said.

And if a working mother regarded parenting as a second job, that second job would command an annual salary of $85,939; that's on top of the money she earns in the work place, Salary.com said.

Black Cat

3,500 lbs. of bat guano found in attic

An upstate New York couple didn't think a few bats in the attic were much of a problem when they were buying a house last summer.

Months later, they found out how wrong they were when they discovered more than a ton and a half of bat droppings up there.

Nick LaBoda and Jenna Caputo say a home inspector informed them about the bats. They called an exterminator, who told them to wait a while before removing the bats because the babies were too young to fly.

Then they forgot about the bats until they smelled a foul odor in January. When they checked the attic, they found dead bats and piles of guano.

Evil Rays

Blame Stockholm syndrome for our love affair with old Blighty

A friend recently explained her lexical issues with "British" Columbia. "I was born in New Westminster," she told me. "I went to school in Surrey and attended Queen Elizabeth Senior Secondary which was located on King George Highway. I played field hockey and Princess Margaret was our arch rival. The final tournament was at Prince Charles. I once went on vacation to Victoria, and on the way to Prince Rupert, the ferry passed the Queen Charlottes. I drove through Prince George, on my way back to Surrey."

Wine

Bigfoot risks extinction, says Canadian MP

Bigfoot, the legendary hairy man-like beast said to roam the wildernesses of North America, is not shy, merely so rare it risks extinction and should be protected as an endangered species.

Question

Abandoned Boeing 737 'disappears'

A disused Indian Boeing 737 that was abandoned in a busy road in Mumbai (Bombay) last weekend has been moved.

The plane was taken overnight from the Chembur district where it had been left by a driver who was taking it by trailer to Delhi.

It is not clear who has moved it or where it has been taken.

The decommissioned Boeing had become the centre of attraction in the city. But some people complained that it was disrupting business.

Clock

Delhi airport hosts "Terminal men" for 48 days

Two Bangladeshi men lived in New Delhi airport for 48 days as they did not have passports to return home in a reprise of a role played by Tom Hanks in the Hollywood film "The Terminal", a newspaper said on Thursday.

The men were sent back to the Indian capital by Saudi Arabian authorities in March for arriving without proper papers on a Dhaka-Delhi-Riyadh Air India flight, the Times of India newspaper reported.

Saudi Arabia keeps passports of such visitors and sends them back with emergency travel certificates, the daily quoted an airline spokesman as saying.

But with Dhaka not allowing people without passports to enter the country, the men who had left their homes hoping for lucrative jobs in Saudi Arabia were stuck in the transit lounge of Delhi's Indira Gandhi airport.

Sheeple

Rose the goat 'wife' chokes to death on a plastic bag

Rose, the goat that found international celebrity last year after being forced into marriage with a Sudanese man, has died after accidentally swallowing a plastic bag.

The town of Juba in southern Sudan, if not exactly in mourning, at least has the satisfaction of having had the world in stitches, having been the source of one of the internet's best-read news items.

It is a story that began in February last year when the BBC Monitoring Service reported that a Mr Alifi had been startled by a noise in the middle of the night. Leaving the safety of his wattle hut, Mr Alifi went outside to find a stranger engaged in indecorous behaviour with his goat.