Silly news roundup # 42

Man dies on day of winning lottery:

Danbury, Connecticut - On the day that Donald Peters died, he unknowingly provided financial security for his wife of 59 years and their family.

Peters bought two Connecticut Lottery tickets at a local shop on November 1 as part of a 20-year tradition he shared with his wife.

Later that day, the 79-year-old retired hat-factory worker suffered a fatal heart attack while working in his yard.

On Friday last week, his widow, Charlotte, cashed in one of the tickets - a $10-million winner which, in her grief, she had put aside and almost discarded.

What's the bet that, once she has grieved, Charlotte will be a very merry widow.

Eat kangaroo to save the planet:

Sydney - Saving the planet by eating kangaroos and wild camels may seem like pie in the sky, but the offbeat menu comes with a scientific stamp of approval in Australia.

The aim in both cases is to reduce damage to the environment, but the reasoning behind the push to put the animals on the menu is sharply different.

In the case of kangaroos, environmentalists say the national animal should become a dietary staple in place of cattle and sheep as part of the fight against global warming.

The farm animals make a major contribution to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions simply by belching and farting, while kangaroos emit negligible amounts of dangerous methane gas.

"For most of Australia's human history - around 60 000 years - kangaroo was the main source of meat," the government's top climate change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut noted in a major report on global warming recently.

"It could again become important."

In the case of camels, scientists say eating the imported animals would be one way of reducing the million-strong feral herd - one of the largest on earth - running amok in the fragile ecosystems of the outback.

"Eat a camel today, I've done it," says Professor Murray McGregor, co-author of a three-year study on the humpbacked pests presented to the government last month.

[...]

The idea of farming kangaroos - which appear on the Australian coat of arms - for human consumption is distasteful to some, but many health-conscious Australians already eat kangaroo meat.

"It's low in fat, it's got high protein levels, it's very clean in the sense that basically it's the ultimate free range animal," says Peter Ampt of the University of New South Wales's institute of environmental studies.

A similar argument was put forward last month in an attempt to whet Australian appetities for camel meat.

A three-year study found that Australia's population of more than a million feral camels is out of control and damaging fragile desert ecosystems, water sources, rare plants and animals.

The Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, which produced the report presented to the federal government, said a good way to bring down the number of camels is to eat them.

"It's beautiful meat. It's a bit like beef. It's as lean as lean, it's an excellent health food," said McGregor.

Unlike the native kangaroo, camels were introduced into Australia as pack animals for the vast outback in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were released into the wild as rail and road travel became more widespread.

With few natural predators and vast sparsely-populated areas in which to roam, the population has soared to around a million and is now doubling about every nine years, the centre's Glenn Edwards said.

While putting camels on the menu could help reduce their numbers, and is one of the proposals in the report, Edwards admits it is unlikely that Australia can eat its way out of the problem.

I'm game. In fact my mouth is watering just thinking about eating kangaroos and camels which are both total vegetarians. I much prefer to eat only vegetarians.

The future of baby making?

A British clinic has dramatically improved the success rate of fertility treatment using frozen embryos, promising improved pregnancy rates and offering hope to thousands of women who would otherwise face years of traumatic hormone therapy.

Freezing embryos has often been seen as a costly waste of time because its success rate can be about half that achieved with in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) using fresh embryos.

But the advances made at the Oxford Fertility Unit will make freezing eggs a more attractive proposition for many couples.

The procedure reduces the need for repeated cycles of hormone therapy and egg extraction, which can be unpleasant and result in serious side effects such as polycystic ovary syndrome.

So, what's the difference between these frozen embryos and the ones that they want to use for stem-cell research? They are both viable and potential human beings.

2009 - a year written in the stars:

With the backing of august bodies such as Unesco and the International Astronomical Union, it should be an auspicious year.

IYA2009's theme is The Universe, yours to discover, and the official opening ceremony will take place in Paris on January 15 and 16.

Many of the 135 participating nations will be holding their own opening ceremonies during January and February.

The IYA2009 Solar Physics Group has planned a world-wide campaign, which will see amateur stargazers set up their telescopes on pavements, while science centres will probe the universe.

South Africa was one of the countries instrumental in getting the UN to dedicate 2009 to the galaxies.

Durban's Kevin Govender, who is attached to the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town and Salt (Southern African Large Telescope) in Sutherland, made an impassioned appeal at that time, mentioning the benefits of IYA2009 for developing countries.

So it is no surprise that Sutherland, site of Africa's Giant Eye (the southern hemisphere's largest telescope), is the setting for a star-gazing bash to welcome IYA2009.

In the run-up to the event, the local community was also encouraged to participate through traditional celebrations such as reel dancing - a Khoisan cultural dance.

2009 - the year of the stargazer?

Two children elope to Africa:

Berlin - Two childhood sweethearts, aged six and seven, eloped from Hanover in northern Germany on New Year's Eve, determined to tie the knot under the African sun, police said on Monday.

The pair identified as Mika and Anna-Lena "are very much in love and decided to get married in Africa where it is warm, taking with them as a witness Anna-Lena's little sister, aged five", police spokesperson Holger Jureczko said.

[...]

As the first dawn of 2009 broke, the trio started to put these plans into action, packing all the essentials for the journey, including "sunglasses, swimming trunks, a lilo, summer clothes and provisions".

While their parents slept, they left their house in the suburbs of Hanover, walked a kilometre (two-thirds of a mile) up the road to a tram stop from where they took a tram for the central station.

Waiting for a train to the airport, they aroused the attention of a guard who contacted police.

Two officers managed to convince the young lovers that they would struggle to get to Africa without money or a plane ticket.

As a consolation, the children were given a special tour of the police headquarters at Hanover station where they were especially taken with the detention cells.

Their relieved parents picked them up from the station, the spokesperson said, adding: "They can still put their plan into action at a later date."

Aw, shucks! That's so cute.