06-09-08 - from yesterday...
I was a bit off my game yesterday and these are pretty much just the articles without much comment from me...
Womb surgery 'saves baby's leg' Australian surgeons saved the leg of an unborn baby by operating when her mother was just 22 weeks pregnant.
The surgery was carried out after the foetus developed a rare condition in which stray bands of tissue wrap around limbs and cut off blood flow.
Melbourne's Monash Medical Centre used lasers to cut away the tissue from the left leg, but left the right leg as the bands were too deeply embedded.
The baby was born in January and is now doing well after plastic surgery.
Doctors believe the little girl, called Leah, will eventually be able to walk on both feet.
The condition, known as Amniotic Band Syndrome, occurs in just one out of every 15,000 births.
Diagnosis is not always made before birth and therefore surgery of this type is not that common.
During the operation last year, doctors pierced the mother's abdomen with a 2mm thick telescopic needle to allow them to apply a laser to cut the band above the baby's left foot.
But the right leg was so badly affected, with the band having cut through to the bone, that surgeon Chris Kimber decided to leave the already swollen and infected foot alone.
Mr Kimber told The Age newspaper: "The right leg was so bad that I did not want to touch it."
At the time of the operation late last year, Leah measured less than 20cm.
She was born eight weeks later and had to undergo plastic surgery on her damaged right leg.
Surgeons removed muscle, tissue and some bone to promote blood flow.
Her mother, Kylie Bowlen, said: "Just hearing the doctor say she'll have full function and basically be able to walk, I know I made the right decision."
Cattle farms lure Australia women A record number of young Australian women are signing up for jobs as cattle hands on vast outback farms.
Ranch owners are facing acute recruitment problems because so many young men are being lured into the booming mining industry.
Farmers are now reporting a surge of interest from women in their late teens and early 20s.
They are willing to give up jobs in the city for life in Australia's dusty interior - many motivated by a TV show.
One of Australia's largest pastoral operators, S Kidman & Company, said that almost two-thirds of its job applicants were women.
'Jillaroos'
Many have been inspired by a popular television series called McLeod's Daughters, which tells the story of women running a remote outback farm.
Female cattle station workers are known as jillaroos, while their male counterparts are jackaroos.
Life in the outback can be tough. Prospective recruits are warned about the hot, dusty conditions and the swarms of flies and mosquitoes.
But 25-year-old Sarah Amy, who works on Anna Creek Station in South Australia - the biggest cattle property in the world - says that so far she has enjoyed every minute.
"It's just a really good environment - it's active, it's fun, you learn lots and lots of things that you're never going to forget. So why wouldn't you want to do it really?" she asked.
'World is changing'
In typically blunt Australian fashion, the manager of Anna Creek Station, Randall Crozier, says his female workers are doing a great job.
"The hormones are not playing up with them and they're more gentle and steady with cattle and look after your machinery and motorbikes and stuff and generally are much better than fellas.
"And I'm not knocking the fellas, they do a great job too. The world's changing, the women are getting tougher than blokes, mate, hey?"
Australian farming - like many other industries - is facing a severe shortage of workers.
Unemployment is at a 30-year low and the government is allowing more migrants into the country to fill the gaps in the labour market.
How dangerous is a Komodo dragon?
A group of divers stranded on a remote island had to fight off a "man-eating" Komodo dragon. How dangerous are these creatures really?
When three Britons were washed up on a remote Indonesian island, their relief must have been immense.
For 12 hours they and two other divers had been clinging to each other in shark-infested waters after being carried from their diving boat by currents.
But wracked by dehydration and exhaustion, their joy at reaching Rinca island was short-lived when a Komodo dragon appeared on the beach. They pelted it with rocks and it retreated, and the five divers were later rescued.
Komodo dragons are known to have killed and eaten humans. So how dangerous are are they?
Dr Ian Stephen is assistant curator of herpetology (reptiles and amphibians) at London Zoo, where he looks after two Komodo dragons. Raja is an adult male, 10 years old, and Raja's daughter Sayang is nearly two.
Potentially they are very dangerous animals, he says, but it helped that the divers stayed on the beach.
"They will eat anything that washes up on the beach. That's why these people would have been in danger. When you have animals on the brink of starvation they will be very aggressive and humans are not very powerful.
"If you have a couple of people throwing stones or sticks, that can work as long as you are only dealing with one or two [dragons]. They were in danger but they did the right thing.
"They can move incredibly quickly over short distances. The danger would have been when people started looking for food and headed inland, into long grass."
A Komodo dragon's favoured method of attack is to lie in the bushes and long grass and then pounce on their prey, usually deer, feral pigs, water buffalo and carrion.
Pound for pound they are incredibly powerful, says Dr Stephen, the largest lizard in the world measuring up to three metres long (9ft 10ins) and 120kg (265 lbs). And they are strong swimmers so could follow a fleeing human into the sea.
"Generally they attack their prey but don't kill it there and then. They have a poisonous saliva full of different bacteria, about 80 species of bacteria. So in a couple of days septicaemia sets in and the prey dies."
Contrary to some reports they do not spit venom, he says, but their teeth are shark-like and leave a very nasty and poisonous bite. If the wounded prey gets away the dragon can follow a blood trail a couple of miles away.
A kill usually attracts many dragons who feed according to their own hierarchy.
Humans living on the islands within the national park habitat of the dragons have learnt how to adapt to the dangers. Their houses are on stilts.
Although attacks on humans are rare, an eight-year-old German boy was mauled to death there in 2007.
Dr Stephen says a Komodo dragon in the wild would not hesitate to kill and eat a human if they wanted to, but Raja has been trained and is quite tame.
He is fed deer, rabbits or wild boar every four to eight weeks. He eats the whole prey - skin, bone and hair. Sometimes he regurgitates some of the bones.
Human meal
He seems to enjoy human interaction, especially being stroked, but there are occasional, sharp reminders of his strength.
"When Raja has a blood test, it takes two men to restrain his tail. You can't imagine the power in this animal and he's only 54kg. Imagine one that was 120kg."
In the wild, the tail is used as defence or to compete with other dragons for the meat of a big kill.
Fortunately, the dragons on Rinca island were denied a human meal at the weekend.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7443648.stm Sweet size comparison if you follow the link..
Japan police probe stab 'warning'
Police in Japan are examining whether a man who went on a stabbing spree in Tokyo warned of his actions on an internet site, media reports say.
Seven people died and 10 others were injured in the attack in central Tokyo's Akihabara shopping district on Sunday.
Twenty-five year-old Tomohiro Kato was arrested by police at the scene.
Mourners have begun to leave tributes at the site of the attack, which has shocked Japan.
'Crash my vehicle'
The incident happened on Sunday afternoon when the district, known for its electronics outlets, was crowded with shoppers.
A man drove a rented truck into a crowd and then began stabbing people at random.
Six men, ranging in age from 19 to 74, and a 21-year-old woman were killed, Kyodo News agency said.
Paramedics erected makeshift tents to treat the injured on site before rushing them to hospital.
Mr Kato, a factory employee from Shizuoka prefecture, was overpowered and arrested by police at the scene.
They said he told them he came to Akihabara to kill people because he was "tired of life".
On Monday, investigators said that they were looking at a series of messages sent by mobile phone to a website that appeared to foretell the attack.
"I'll crash my vehicle into people and if the vehicle becomes useless, I'll get out a knife. Goodbye everyone!", Japanese media reports quoted one posting early on Sunday morning as saying.
Subsequent messages appeared to chart the suspect's journey from Shizuoka to Tokyo.
"No postponement because of rainy weather," said a later message, Kyodo news agency reported.
Another posting, some 20 minutes before the attack, simply said: "It's time," Kyodo added.
Japanese police said that they were investigating what may have motivated the attack.
At a news conference on Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said the government was considering tightening restrictions on large-bladed knifes in response to the attack.
"We need to think of the possibility of discussing tightening the control of guns and knives," he said.
Once rare in Japan, there has been an increase in knife crime in recent years.
In January, a 16-year-old school boy armed with two kitchen knives injured several people on a crowded shopping street in Tokyo's Shinagawa district.
The Akihabara attack occurred on the same date that a man with a history of mental illness stabbed children to death at an Osaka primary school in 2001.
Toddler shot with airgun pellet
An 18-month-old girl was shot with a pellet fired from an airgun while out walking with her mother.
The girl was shot in the leg while walking in a field off Derbyshire Hill Road and Fleet Lane in St Helens.
Merseyside Police said the injury to the girl, which happened at about 1100 BST on Sunday, could have been much more serious.
Detectives said an intensive investigation was under way to find the culprit, and appealed for witnesses.
The girl was out with her mother walking the family's dog when the incident happened on the recreation ground.
Police say the toddler had followed the dog into some bushes before emerging "visibly upset" with the injury.
Det Insp Chris Sephton said: "The girl received an injury to her leg and was taken to hospital where it was confirmed the wound was consistent with a pellet."
The toddler was sent home for the night but was returning to hospital on Monday to have the pellet removed from her leg.
"Thankfully the child received only a minor injury, however this could have been more serious," Mr Sephton added.
"We've launched an intensive investigation and are treating this matter very seriously."
The field is a well-known shortcut for people who live in the houses which surround it, and police are appealing for anyone who was in the area between 1030 BST and 1200 BST to come forward.
Officers have conducted house to house inquiries in the area and will be conducting more throughout the day, as well as launching high visibility patrols.
* FROM OTHER NEWS SITES
Liverpool Echo Park toddler is shot in leg - 57 mins ago
Leigh Today Girl, 18 months, shot with pellet - 1 hr ago
Blyth and Wansbeck Today Girl, 18 months, shot with pellet - 5 hrs ago
Teletext Toddler shot with pellet - 13 hrs ago
How frightening is it that there's this many links to other incidents like this in such a short time frame?
Kitten rescued by vacuum cleaner
Firefighters have used a vacuum cleaner with a sock on the end of the nozzle to rescue a six-hour-old kitten which had become trapped down a drain.
The fire crew was called to a house in Dunbar, East Lothian, in the early hours of Monday morning.
It is thought the kitten's mother had climbed behind the kitchen sink to give birth.
Rescuers used a vibrascope camera to locate the kitten, before using the vacuum cleaner to pull it to safety.
Abandoned owls blamed on Potter
An increase in the number of owls abandoned at a rescue centre in Flintshire has been blamed on the Harry Potter books.
Children keen to have their own owl like Harry's Hedwig, a snowy owl, are getting the birds as pets.
But staff at the Flintshire Wildlife and Pet Rescue Centre in Holywell said the children find they cannot cope once they have them.
Staff said they had also received calls from people wanting to buy owls.
In JK Rowling's book series and also in the hit films, owls of all kinds feature prominently.
The centre's co-owner Joy Pierce Jones said they were currently caring for 36 owls including tawny and barn owls, and she estimated that at least half of these were due to Harry Potter.
She said owls were not suitable as pets for young children, particularly not the large owls like Hedwig, and required a great deal of care.
"You need to go into the bird's aviary at least once every day and preferably two or three times a day to keep them quiet when you go near them," she said.
"This is the breeding time for owls and a lot of them either have eggs or chicks, and they become dangerous at this time of year because they are protecting their young.
"It is a very nice pet but you have to have the commitment.
"Children have not got that commitment to go and do what is necessary to make sure there is food defrosted the night before to feed them the next day.
"If you want to fly him you have to starve him the night before and just give him titbits when he flies back to you."
Ms Jones said one man had offered her £1,000 for a snowy owl, which is an endangered species.
"People want these owls for small children but they are not suitable for small children, especially the large owls like Hedwig in the Harry Potter film," she said.
Ms Jones added they suspected that some owls in their centre had been sold to people in pub car parks.
"The people who are selling owls to people as pets don't care that you have knowledge of how to look after them."
Nigeria's removal of Shell hailed
Shell's removal from the controversial oil fields in Nigeria's Ogoniland has been welcomed by the son of executed anti-pollution activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Ken Saro-Wiwa Junior, a spokesman for Nigeria's president, told the BBC it was a sign that the government was listening to the Ogoni people.
Nigerian President Umaru Yar'adua said earlier that another company would replace Shell by the end of 2008.
Shell pulled out of Ogoniland in 1993 following community protests.
The campaign against environmental degradation and poverty led to Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995 after a hasty trial under Nigeria's military rulers.
In protest, the European Union imposed sanctions until 1998 and the Commonwealth suspended Nigeria's membership for three years.
The protests later spread to the rest of the oil-producing Niger Delta, with oil installations attacked, pipelines blown up and oil workers kidnapped.
'Win-win solution'
Mr Saro-Wiwa Junior said Shell's removal from Ogoniland would send a signal to the rest of the volatile region that dialogue was the way forward.
"The federal government is willing to listen," he said.
He said that environmental concerns were now being addressed through talks, pointing out that his his father had campaigned on a non-violent platform.
But Mr Saro-Wiwa stressed that it was not the end of the struggle.
"Victory will be when we have sustainable development not just in Ogoniland," but in the whole of Nigeria, he said.
He added that a "win-win solution" should now be found for all the parties involved.
No notification
On Wednesday, President Yar'adua said Shell would be replaced by another company by the end of the year.
Shell suspended its operations in Ogoniland in 1993, leaving large quantities of oil and gas still in the ground.
The government in Abuja says that nobody was benefiting from the current stalemate and it will choose a company acceptable to the Ogoni people.
With oil prices this high, the government is clearly tired of the stand-off, the BBC's Alex Last in Nigeria says.
Shell says it has received no formal notification of any government decision concerning its interest in the area.
Negotiations may continue behind closed doors, our correspondent adds.
Giant panda sex secrets revealed
The giant panda's courtship and mating sequence - from boisterous beginning to noisy ending - has been filmed in the wild for what may be a TV first.
A BBC Natural History team recorded the magic moments deep in the bamboo forest that lines China's Qinling mountains.
The pictures show a male panda having to fight off the competition as he tries to woo and finally win a female.
The sequence, shot for BBC Two's Wild China series, illustrates behaviour that is rarely displayed in zoos.
These include the loud calls which will make viewers think instantly of the Wookie character from the hit Star Wars movies.
"I liken it to Chewbaccas in a pub brawl," explained Gavin Maxwell, the producer of Wild China.
"Most of the time, pandas live by themselves. It's only in the mating season that they come together; and that's when they start these extraordinary vocalisations.
"The sounds are so unlikely and just the last thing you would expect a panda to make.
"When you get two or three males together with a female there's an awful lot of barking and shouting going on."
Just getting in position to film the pandas took months of research, location reconnaissance and negotiations with the Chinese authorities. Obtaining the filmed sequence itself required an awful lot of patience and skill, and quite a bit of luck.
'Mini-quad bikes'
The Qinling mountains are carved with steep ravines and gullies. The growth of bamboo is so thick it can be extremely hard to get near the pandas, let alone get a clear shot of their behaviour.
If you make too much noise, the creatures will be long gone by the time you find their location.
"They're like mini-quad bikes and once they go, they're off and they're very hard to keep up with," recalled Mr Maxwell.
Eventually, the team found an excellent spot looking across a ravine at a female high up in the branches. She was swaying back and forth as her would-be suitors patrolled below.
The biggest male is seen chasing the opposition off into the thicket. Finally, he gets his girl when she decides to descend from her tree.
This is not the first time panda sex has been filmed in the wild, but it is thought to be one of the most complete courtship sequences ever caught on camera.
Mr Maxwell described the venture as an eye-opener - to see pandas in a context that is far removed from the shy, placid reputation we traditionally associate with the animals.
"Occasionally, you will be sitting there quietly trying to keep in the background and the males will suddenly come charging out of the bamboo towards you," he explained.
"They're really fired up, they're breathing hard and panting, and you can see the steam coming out of their mouths. They seem like different creatures altogether."
Wild China is the BBC's first ever co-production with Chinese state television.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7438975.stm