British TV cat's ashes sell for 1,200 dollars: auction house

Thu Jul 22, 12:00 PM

LONDON (AFP) - The cremated remains of a cat that appeared in the opening credits of Britain's longest-running television soap have sold for over 800 pounds (1,200 dollars, 1,000 euros), an auction house said Thursday.

For over a decade, viewers tuning in to "Coronation Street" were greeted with a clip of Frisky the cat crouching on a pigeon house.

The tabby beat 5,000 other cats to get the part in 1990, and he featured in more than 1,000 episodes of the show before he died ten years ago.

His ashes, sealed in a wooden box with a brass plaque, were put up for auction by the cat's owner and sold for more than four times the initial estimate.

After some frenzied bidding, the item went under the hammer for 700 pounds, and with buyer's premium the total came to 844 pounds, Dominic Winter Auctioneers said.

Frisky was a favourite with viewers and made numerous public appearances to raise money for charity, and the auction sparked significant interest.

"He seems to be really well known," Chris Albury of Dominic Winter told AFP.

The winning bidder, who was not present at the auction, also gets a collection of nine postcards showing Frisky being cuddled by Coronation Street actors and a certificate of authenticity.

"It would make a nice cabinet display if you're a Coronation Street fan," said Albury.

Strongest ever beer served up in dead squirrels

Fri Jul 23, 1:56 PM

LONDON (AFP) - The strongest and most expensive beer ever created sold out within hours Friday, a Scottish brewery said, as they courted controversy by packaging the bottles inside the bodies of stuffed animals.

BrewDog, the self-described maverick brewery, presented the beer -- which contains a record 55 percent alcohol -- inside the bodies of dead squirrels and stoats.

Animal rights activists rushed to condemn the stunt.

"It's pointless and it's very negative to use dead animals when we should be celebrating live animals," Advocates for Animals policy director Libby Anderson told BBC Scotland.

"This seems to be a perverse idea."

BrewDog said the limited edition Belgian ale -- made with juniper berries and dubbed "The End of History" -- was also the costliest beer ever sold.

The squirrel bottles cost 700 pounds (1,000 dollars, 840 euros) each and the seven stoat bottles went for 500 pounds a pop.

All sold out within four hours of going on sale, BrewDog managing director James Watt told AFP.

Watt said the controversial drink was the last in a line of experimental brews, explaining: "For the final installment in the strong beer series, we wanted to create something epic, something monumental."

He said there were no plans to come up with a beer to beat this record, insisting: "We're quite happy at 55 percent."

As for the taste, Watt described "The End of History" as a "complex" beer with a multitude of flavours including honey, mint and cinnamon.

He recommended sipping the drink "much like you would a malt whiskey", served up in a spirit glass rather than a pint glass.

Peruvian police says gang killed people for their fat, allegedly for use in cosmetics

2 hours, 7 minutes ago

By Andrew Whalen, The Associated Press

LIMA, Peru - Police say a gang in the Peruvian jungle has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics, although medical experts say they doubt a major market for fat exists.

Three suspects confessed to killing five people, but the gang may have been involved in dozens more, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police. He said one suspect claimed the gang wasn't the only one doing such killings.

Mejia said two of the suspects were arrested carrying bottles of liquid human fat and told police it was worth $60,000 a gallon ($15,000 a litre). The fat was sold to intermediaries in Peru's capital, Lima, and police suspect it was then sold to cosmetic companies in Europe, Mejia said Thursday, but he could not confirm any sales.

Medical experts expressed doubt about an international black market for human fat, though it does have cosmetic applications. A dermatology professor at Yale University, Dr. Lisa Donofrio, speculated that a small market may exist for "human fat extracts" to keep skin supple, but she said that scientifically such treatments are "pure baloney."

At a news conference, police showed reporters two bottles of fat recovered from the suspects and a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim. Suspect Elmer Segundo Castillejos, 29, led police to the head, recovered in a coca-growing valley last month, Mejia said.

Mejia said Castillejos recounted how the gang cut off its victims' heads, arms and legs, removed the organs, then suspended the torsos from hooks above candles that warmed the flesh as fat dripped into tubs below.

Six members of the gang remain at large, Mejia said. Among them was the band's alleged leader, Hilario Cudena, 56, who Castillejos told police has been killing people to extract human fat for more than three decades.

This year alone, at least 60 people are listed as missing in Huanuco province, where the gang allegedly operated, though the province is also home to drug-trafficking leftist rebels.

Mejia said police received a tip four months ago that human fat from the jungle was being sold in Lima. In August, he said, police infiltrated the band and later obtained some of the amber fluid, which a police lab confirmed as human fat.

On Nov. 3, police arrested Serapio Marcos Veramendi and Enedina Estela in a Lima bus station with a quart (a litre) of human fat in a soda bottle. Their testimony led to the arrest of Castillejos three days later at the same bus station.

The three are charged with homicide, criminal conspiracy, illegal firearms possession and drug trafficking, according to a statement from Lima Superior Court. Police said they were searching for the alleged buyer.

Police dubbed the gang the "Pishtacos" after a Peruvian myth dating to pre-Columbian times of men who killed to extract human fat, quartering their victims with machetes.

Medical authorities contacted by The Associated Press said human fat is used in anti-wrinkle treatments - but is always extracted from the patient who is being treated, usually from the stomach or buttocks.

"There would be a risk of immunological reaction that could lead to life-threatening consequences" if fat from someone else were used, said Dr. Neil Sadick, a professor of dermatology at Cornell Weill Medical College in New York.

Dr. Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia medical school, was incredulous when told about the Peruvian ring.

"I can't see why there would be a black market for fat," he said. "It doesn't make any sense at all, because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing and ready to donate that I don't see why there would ever be a black market for fat, of all tissues."

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Associated Press writers Franklin Briceno in Lima and Frank Bajak in Bogota contributed to this report.

Doomed planet: Astronomers find planet so big and close to star it may be killing itself

Wed Aug 26, 2:31 PM

By Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Astronomers have found what appears to be a gigantic suicidal planet.

The odd, fiery planet is so close to its star and so large that it is triggering tremendous plasma tides on the star. Those powerful tides are in turn warping the planet's zippy less-than-a-day orbit around its star.

The result: an ever-closer tango of death, with the planet eventually spiraling into the star.

It is a slow death. The planet WASP-18b has maybe a million years to live, said planet discoverer Coel Hellier, a professor of astrophysics at Keele University in England. Hellier's report on the suicidal planet is in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"It's causing its own destruction by creating these tides," Hellier said.

The star is called WASP-18 and the planet is WASP-18b because of the Wide Angle Search for Planets team that found them.

The planet circles a star that is in the constellation Phoenix and is about 325 light-years away from Earth, which means it is in Earth's galactic neighbourhood. A light-year is about 5.8 trillion miles.

The planet is 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometres) from its star, 1/50th of the distance between Earth and its star, the sun. And because of that the temperature is about 3,800 degrees (2,100 Celsius).

Its size - 10 times bigger than Jupiter - and its proximity to its star make it likely to die, Hellier said.

Think of how the distant moon pulls Earth's oceans to form twice-daily tides. The effect the odd planet has on its star is thousands of times stronger, Hellier said. The star's tidal bulge of plasma may extend hundreds of miles, he said.

Like most planets outside Earth's solar system, this planet was not seen directly by a telescope. Astronomers found it by seeing dips in light from the star every time the planet came between the star and Earth.

So far astronomers have found more than 370 planets outside the solar system. This one is "yet another weird one in the exoplanet menagerie," said planet specialist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

It is so unusual to find a suicidal planet that University of Maryland astronomer Douglas Hamilton questioned whether there was another explanation. While it is likely that this is a suicidal planet, Hamilton said it also is possible that some basic physics calculations that all astronomers rely on could be dead wrong.

The answer will become apparent in less than a decade if the planet seems to be further in a death spiral, he said.

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On the Net

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

WASP group: http://www.superwasp.org

Men-only train cars sought in groping fears

Wed Jun 17, 12:53 PM

TOKYO (Reuters) - Many women taking the crowded train in Tokyo opt for women-only carriages during the rush hour to avoid gropers.

Now, for fear of being accused of groping, some are asking for carriages reserved for men as well.

Ten shareholders of Seibu Holdings, which runs trains in the Tokyo area, have petitioned for carriages reserved for men.

"There have been many cases of groping, as well as false charges of groping, on Seibu Railway," the shareholders said in a notice seeking a vote at the company's annual meeting next Wednesday.

"While measures against groping, such as setting women-only carriages, have been effective to a certain extent, no measures have been taken against false charges of groping... In the spirit of gender-equality, a male-only carriage must be introduced."

False accusations of groping were highlighted when Japan's Supreme Court overturned in April the conviction of a professor for groping a girl on a Tokyo train.

Judges pointed out a need to be careful in such cases when the accuser was the only source of evidence, media said.

But the shareholder request for men's carriages may not be implemented, as Seibu's board of directors opposes the idea.

"The reality is that we have few requests from Seibu Railway users for setting up male-only carriages," the board said in its reply to the shareholder request.

In Tokyo, around 2,000 people were arrested for groping in 2007, data from the police showed. Many crowded train lines, including Seibu lines, designate a carriage just for women during the rush hour.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Rodney Joyce)

German zoo says gay penguin pair raising chick

Thu Jun 4, 3:23 PM

By The Associated Press

BERLIN - A German zoo says a pair of gay male penguins are raising a chick from an egg abandoned by its parents.

Bremerhaven zoo veterinarian Joachim Schoene says the egg was placed in the male penguins' nest after its parents rejected it in late April.

The males incubated it for some 30 days before it hatched and have continued to care for it.

The chick's gender is not yet known.

Schoene said the male birds, named Z and Vielpunkt, are one of three same-sex pairs among the zoo's 20 Humboldt penguins that have attempted to mate.

Homosexual behavior has been documented in many animal species.

The zoo said in a statement on its website that "sex and coupling in our world don't always have something to do with reproduction."