A dog was hailed as a hero yesterday after it risked its life to save a litter of newborn kittens from a house fire, rescuers said.
In a case which gives the lie to the saying about "fighting like cats and dogs", the terrier cross named Leo had to be revived with oxygen and heart massage after his ordeal. Fire broke out overnight at the house in Australia's southern city of Melbourne, where he was guarding the kittens.
Firefighters who revived Leo said he refused to leave the building and was found by them alongside the litter of kittens, despite thick smoke.
"Leo wouldn't leave the kittens and it nearly cost him his life," fire service Commander Ken Brown told reporters.
The four kittens also survived the fire and yesterday Leo, whom fire-fighters nicknamed Smoky, was again back at the house.
Scientists say bees can count to four
Researchers have discovered that honey bees can count to four, a report said yesterday.
A researcher from the University of Queensland put five markers inside a tunnel and placed nectar in one of them, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio reported. Honey bees placed in the tunnel flew to the marker with the food, and would still fly to the same marker stripe when the food was removed.
"We find that if you train them to the third stripe, they will look subsequently in the third stripe," researcher Mandyam Srinivasan said. "If you train them to the fourth stripe, they will look for the fourth stripe and so on. But their ability to count seems to go only up to four. They can't count beyond four.
"The more we look at these creatures that have a brain the size of a sesame seed, the more astonished we are. They really have a lot of the capacities that we so-called higher human beings possess."
Indians pray for economic recovery
Hundreds of people gathered for a Hindu religious rite in a town in eastern India over the weekend, seeking divine intervention into the global economic crisis as stocks plummeted worldwide, organisers said.
The rite was performed on the same day as the Indian rupee hit a record low of 50.15 per dollar, and the Indian share market dropped 11 per cent to three-year lows.
More than 300 people watched the rite being performed by 131 priests in a temple in the beach city of Puri in Orissa state. The priests poured water into pots from a nearby pond and carried them out in a procession to the temple, shouting praises of Laxmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth.
The priests burned sandalwood and clarified butter, and offered flowers to the goddess while chanting hymns.
"The entire world is witnessing a financial crisis and Goddess Laxmi can only help us in this crucial situation," Kumuda Ranjan Samantray, one of the organisers, said.
Palin is a confused 'beauty queen'
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, renowned for colourful insults of world leaders, called US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a confused "beauty queen" over the weekend after she said he was a dictator.
Mr Chavez, a leftist who often mocks US President George W. Bush, invoked the advice of Jesus Christ on how to handle the slights by Mrs Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska and a former beauty pageant winner.
"I saw the vice presidential candidate, there she was talking about 'the dictator Hugo Chavez'. The poor thing, you just feel sorry for her," he said during a televised broadcast. "She's a beauty queen that they've pulled out to be a figurehead. We need to say as Christ did: Forgive her, she knows not what she's saying."
Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked Mrs Palin, who calls herself a moose-hunting "hockey mom" as his running mate for the November 4 election in a surprise move meant to fire up the party's conservative Christian base.
Full-body airport scanner unwelcome
Germany will not participate in EU proposals for airports to use full-body scanner security checks, which have raised privacy issues, its Interior Ministry said over the weekend.
"I can tell you in all clarity that we will not take part in this nonsense," a spokesman for the Interior Ministry told a regular news conference.
The executive European Commission proposed last month to add body scanners to a list of security measures that can be used at airports in the 27-country bloc.
EU lawmakers criticised the scanners in a resolution on Thursday, saying they were equivalent to "a virtual strip search" and raised serious human rights concerns. The lawmakers called for a detailed study of the technology before it is used. The Commission says a number of EU states, including The Netherlands, already use body scanners and the EU executive wanted to harmonise conditions in which they can be operated.
Teen conman targeted ex-President
A 16-year-old boy who duped Taiwan's former President Chen Shui-bian by posing as a fortune-teller has been arrested on forgery charges, a prosecutor said on Saturday. The teenager, identified only by his family name Huang, was arrested on forgery charges late on Friday after appearing on television to boast about his scam targeting Mr Chen, the United Daily News said.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau confirmed the arrest without giving details. The case has caused a media sensation in Taiwan and brought comparisons with Leonardo DiCaprio's character in 2002's Catch Me If You Can, with newspapers saying the teenager assumed nine different identities in a series of cons.
Mr Huang reportedly posed as a radio station director, a hotel executive and a British passport holder with two Masters degrees, as well as a fortune-teller.