One-year-old mother Nimra with her family
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[News.com.au, May 13, 2007]
A cat has shown that maternal instincts can overcome predatory ones by adopting seven chicken chicks to bring up with its own kittens. Nimra, a one-year-old cat in the city of Madaba which lies just south of Amman in Jordan, has been looking after the chicks since their mother hen died a month ago.
After recently giving birth to four kittens Nimra keeps them and her unlikely extra brood together in a cardboard box.
If the chicks wander too far, onlookers say Nimra will gently pick them up in her mouth and take them back to the box.
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13-YEAR-OLD WINS TEXT MESSAGING CHAMPIONSHIP
[The Australian, with AFP, April 23, 2007]
It’s a pursuit only for the fleet of thumb with a ruthless dedication to punctuation. And while competitive text-messaging may not have gained Olympic status, the hundreds of mostly teenagers who took part in the US championships in New York over the weekend could think of little but the $US25,000 ($29,900) prize money.
About 250 challengers battled it out for a chance to take on the reigning West Coast champion, 21-year-old Eli Tirosh, for the title of US Texting Champion. Contestants had to stand with their hands behind their backs until a bell sounded and a message appeared on an overhead screen. The winner was judged on whoever's message -- checked for exact punctuation -- reached the judges first.
The text tests ranged from "Faster than a speeding bullet ..." and "What we do in life echoes in eternity" to the less poetic but urgent "OMG, nd 2 talk asap," which (for those over 30) means "Oh my God, need to talk as soon as possible."
The 250 competitors were quickly whittled down to eight semi-finalists, one of whom, Anne Finn, 24, of Allegany, New York, said the pressure became too much.
"It was so nerve-racking. My hands started to shake. I couldn't get my apostrophe," she said.
In the end, 13-year-old Morgan Pozgar faced off against Michael "Cheeser" Nguyen in the east coast final, with Pozgar slipping past her challenger to face west coast champion Tirosh, a law student from Los Angeles. "I just wasn't fast enough," said Nguyen, 23, an engineer from Pennsylvania. Asked how it felt to take second place, he was clearly disappointed: "I just got beaten by a teenage girl, but you know."
Tirosh said she practised with her friend and trainer Amy, who threw out random words or symbols and even motivational Buddhist quotes. Wearing a satin boxing robe before her championship bout against Pozgar, she said success would come down to who could marry lightning speed with accuracy. "It's all about the thumb-work," she said. So dedicated is she to the art of the text message that Tirosh apparently unwittingly uses initial-phrases such as BTW (by the way), TTYL (talk to you later) and LOL (laughing out loud) in her normal speech.
Pozgar said she trained by sending on average 8,000 text messages a month to her friends -- an astonishing rate of one every 5 1/2 minutes. She pays $US10 ($12) a month for an unlimited text package on her mobile phone.
In a tense championship final, Tirosh seemed to have won after putting down her phone first, only for judges to rule she had made an $18,000-dollar typo in the lyrics to the Mary Poppins song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Pozgar, who wants to work in fashion, had no hesitation about how to spend her prize money -- $US10,000 for the east coast championship and $US15,000 for the national award. She was going to hit the stores in New York City. Phone in hand, no doubt.
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Monks Brawl In Phnom Penh
BUDDHISM NOT ALWAYS A RELIGION OF PEACE
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[Associated Press, April 20, 2007]
Two opposing groups of Buddhist monks clashed in the streets of the Cambodian capital on Friday during a protest to demand religious freedom for their colleagues living across the border in southern Vietnam.
Some 50 monks marched through Phnom Penh to voice their grievances over the alleged mistreatment by Vietnamese authorities against Cambodian Buddhist monks in the country. They marchers said they came from southern Vietnam. The protesters marched with banners demanding that Hanoi stop limiting religious freedom on ethnic Cambodians in southern Vietnam.
"The Vietnamese authorities have forced many Cambodian monks there to defrock," said Lim Yuth, who took part in the march. "As a Khmer race, we must have the right to practice our faith."
As the march made its way across the city Friday morning, another group of six monks confronted them outside a Buddhist temple. The groups clashed in a fist fight while some of the protesters also tossed water bottles at their opponents, witnesses said. One monk was injured in the brawl, witnesses said. It was not clear if the monks opposing the march were acting independently or under someone's orders.
Hanoi only permits a handful of state-sponsored religious organistions to operate in Vietnam, which has led to clashes with some religious groups, including Buddhists.
A large part of southern Vietnam, known in Cambodia as Kampuchea Krom, used to be part of Cambodia's mighty Khmer empire centuries ago and is still populated by many ethnic Cambodians.
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Toby licks Debbie After Saving Her LIfe
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[Associated Press, March 28, 2007]
Toby, a 2-year-old golden retriever, saw his owner choking on a piece of fruit and began jumping up and down on the woman's chest. The dog's owner believes the dog was trying to perform the Heimlich maneouvre and saved her life.
Debbie Parkhurst, 45, of Calvert, Maryland, told the Cecil Whig she was eating an apple at her home on Friday when a piece lodged in her throat. She attempted to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on herself, but it didn't work. After she began beating on her chest, she said Toby noticed and got involved.
"The next think I know, Toby's up on his hind feet and he's got his front paws on my shoulders," she recalled. "He pushed me to the ground, and once I was on my back, he began jumping up and down on my chest."
That's when the apple dislodged and Toby started licking her face to keep her from passing out, she said.
"I literally have paw print-shaped bruises on my chest. I'm still a little hoarse, but otherwise, I'm OK," Parkhurst said. "The doctor said I probably wouldn’t be here without Toby," said Parkhurst, a jewellery artist. "I keep looking at him and saying ‘you’re amazing.’"
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ASIA'S WEALTHIEST WOMAN LEAVES ESTATE TO FENG SHUI MASTER
[Reuters, April 20, 2007]
The sole beneficiary of Hong Kong tycoon Nina Wang's multi-billion dollar fortune is her feng shui master, a legal notice published on Friday showed, paving the way for a likely legal battle with her family. "In her will dated 16 Oct 2006, the late Nina Wang bequeathed all her estate to Mr. Chan Chun-chuen," her lawyer said in a notice published in several local newspapers on Friday.
Little is known about Chan, whom the local media has reported as Wang's feng shui master or fortune teller and who once studied medicine in Canada.
Nicknamed "little sweetie" for her braided pigtails, mini-skirts and giggly persona, Wang, 69, died this month from cancer. She was Asia's richest woman. Her life was touched by tragedy in 1990 when her husband Teddy Wang was abducted and never seen alive again. Later she stirred controversy by waging a legal war against her father-in-law, Wang Din-shin to secure her husband's billions even though he had not yet been confirmed dead.
Wang won the eight-year legal battle in 2005, securing full control of the estate and of Hong Kong's largest private property developer, Chinachem group, in a probate saga that captivated the city of 7 million with tales of illicit affairs. A source earlier told Reuters that Chan was the sole beneficiary and that all of Wang's estate, including that of her husband "gets paid on in sequence" to him.
The decision by Wang to leave her vast wealth in the hands of a single outsider, while shunning her family, is a potential bombshell and is now almost certain to spark a protracted legal battle with her family. Wang's family has already lodged an application in court to claim its right to the inheritance, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.
Media reports had suggested Wang, who had no children, had drafted a will in 2002 pledging much of her wealth to charity. A press conference will be held by Wang's lawyer on Friday that could clarify Wang's relationship to Chan, and give clues as to why she left her entire fortune to him.
Wang, who was ranked the 154th richest person in the world by Forbes magazine last year, was known for her eccentricities, including her self-professed stinginess -- saying she only spent a modest HK$3,000 (US$380) a month on shopping and necessities, sometimes flashing her bargain buys to the media.
A lavish funeral was held for Wang on Wednesday that was attended by a string of tycoons and Hong Kong's political elite.
Picture Caption: Nina Wang (L) and Chan Chun-chuen are seen in this undated handout provided by Jonathan Midgley of Haldanes, the representative lawyer of Chan.
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[Reuters, April 16, 2007]
Three Central American governments have banned a man claiming to be the Antichrist from entering their countries, outraged by his inflammatory preaching against the Catholic Church and organized religion.
El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have banned Jose de Jesus Miranda, who heads a cult-like movement with sermons televised from Miami to dozens of mostly Latin American nations and wants to join followers at a rally next week in Guatemala.
A former heroin addict who was briefly imprisoned as a youth in his native Puerto Rico, Miranda, 60, talks openly in a video on his Web site about how he loved cocaine and dreamed of working in a Colombian drug lab. He has the number 666 identifying the Antichrist tattooed on his arm but says he is Jesus Christ reborn on Earth, arguing Saint Paul's teachings show this is what Antichrist means.
He says other priests are "faggots," and makes fun of Holy Week customs in Latin America, calling heavy statues of Jesus that Catholics parade though streets ‘little dolls.’ "The pope should be ashamed," shouts Miranda in Spanish into a microphone. "He should wear pants like a man. He should tell the truth and stop teaching shit."
Tony Saca, the president of strongly Catholic El Salvador, barred Miranda from entering the country in March, describing him as "a danger to mental health." Miranda said the country would suffer an earthquake because of the decision.
"It's the new Inquisition," said Carlos Cestero, Miranda's right-hand man, known as the 'Bishop as Bishops.' "These small nations are clearly puppets of the Catholic Church," he said.
Central America, especially Guatemala, has seen a surge in converts to a variety of Christian churches in recent decades. In Guatemala, for instance, about 40 percent of the population now belong to non-Catholic Christian churches.
Miranda's ministry began in 1986 in a Miami warehouse. He says it has congregations in over 20 countries, mostly in Latin America. It counts with its own 24-hour radio and TV station. In one video, the leader of the "Growing in Grace" church, sporting slicked hair, tailored suits and gold chains, rolls up his sleeves to reveal the number 666 tattooed on his forearm. Hundreds of followers have now tattooed themselves with the number saying it is a symbol of love and not the sign of Satan. They say there is no devil, no hell and no such thing as sin.
The ministry has no formal membership system, but church representatives say his television audience numbers in the millions, bringing multi-million dollar donations. Some of his more generous followers have given him businesses, luxury cars, jewels and opulent houses in Houston and Miami Beach.
Detractors say Miranda is not God resurrected but a dangerous cult leader. One evangelical preacher in El Salvador called him a "megalomaniac" and likened him to Jim Jones, who led 900 followers into a mass suicide-murder in 1978.
Miranda's devotees plan to attend the rally in Guatemala on April 21 and 22, coinciding with his 61st birthday.
Visit the website: GROWING IN GRACE
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