A newborn red panda rejected by its mother in Amsterdam's Artis zoo has been adopted by a domestic cat, the zoo said yesterday.
The cat is nursing the red panda, currently about the size of a kitten, along with her own four kittens, the zoo said.
The red panda was born on June 30 and was rejected by its mother soon afterwards. Red pandas look like raccoons and when fully grown are slightly larger than a domestic cat - substantially smaller than the black and white giant panda.
"They are skilful climbers that, when not foraging on the ground, spend most of their time in the trees curled up with their long, bushy tails wrapped around their heads," the World Wildlife Fund conservation charity said on its website.
Milk mail causes stink in Brussels
EU workers are struggling with thousands of litres of sour milk from burst cartons clogging up a central mail registry after German farmers posted them to Brussels to protest against low dairy prices.
Since late June, about 10,000 litres of milk have been received at the European Commission's main sorting office, some arriving by private courier, addressed to EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.
Nearly all the milk is coming from Germany, with a small amount posted from Luxembourg. Despite calls from Fischer Boel for the parcels to stop, the deluge of milk keeps coming.
"Unfortunately, a lot of the milk had gone off and some of the cartons had burst. So it was all a bit smelly and messy," one Commission official said.
Fertility treatment may be a diet
The newest low-tech fertility treatment may be a diet, researchers said after learning that obese men have more abnormal sperm and make less semen.
Their findings, presented at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Barcelona, Spain, add to recent research showing that obese women are more likely to be infertile.
Their study of 2,037 men attending Aberdeen Fertility Centre showed that men with a normal body mass index, meaning they were neither overweight nor underweight, produced higher levels of normal sperm and more semen than those in the other groups.
Arrested after false bomb claim
The United Arab Emirates arrested a passenger on an airliner on Wednesday after he said there was a bomb aboard the plane that carried him from Britain to Dubai, the official WAM news agency reported.
"A passenger claimed that there was a bomb on board the aircraft after a quarrel with a woman member of the service crew upon landing," it quoted a source at Emirates, the state-owned airline of Gulf tourism and trade hub Dubai, as saying.
The passenger's nationality was not disclosed. No bomb was found on the airliner, it said.
Woman in Greek scandal faces trial
A former Greek Culture Ministry employee jailed for blackmailing a government official in a "sex, lies and DVDs" scandal that rocked the country was released on Wednesday pending trial. A court official said Evi Tsekou, detained for six months charged with blackmailing a senior Culture Ministry official with a DVD of them having sex, was not allowed to leave the country and must appear twice a month at a police station.
The Greek judicial system allows prosecutors to jail suspects ahead of trial for up to 18 months. "I am very happy ... for the air of freedom that I breath," Ms Tsekou, 35, told reporters immediately after her release.
The scandal erupted when Culture Ministry General Secretary Christos Zachopoulos resigned and attempted to commit suicide by jumping from the fourth-floor balcony of his home after the DVD was taken to the office of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.