| "Dot-Com" News - 17 June, 2010. | ||||
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The kitten born with two faces in Charleston was given a 50 percent chance of survival by an area veterinarian. The kitten known as Two Face brought the animal to the vet shortly after it was born on Wednesday because its mother refused to nurse the kitten. Dr. Erica Drake said the kitten was born with a rare condition called diprosopus, which means the kitten literally has two faces. Two Face has four eyes, two noses and two mouths. Drake said the kitten's two mouths act independently and she believes each mouth has a separate esophagus leading to one stomach. It'll take a closer look at the kitten's internal anatomy before known about how the kitten will be able to function. Farmer fires home-made cannon to defend land Reuters – Chinese farmer Yang Youde fires his homemade cannon near his farmland on the outskirts of Wuhan, Hubei … BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese farmer has declared war on property developers who want his land, building a cannon out of a wheelbarrow and pipes and firing rockets at would-be eviction teams, state media said on Tuesday. Yang Youde, who lives on the outskirts of bustling Wuhan city, in central Hubei province, says he has fended off two eviction attempts with his improvised weapon, which uses ammunition made from locally sold fireworks. "I shot only over their heads to frighten them," the China Daily quoted him saying of his attacks on demolition workers sent to move him off his land. "I didn't want to cause any injuries." The rockets can travel over 100 meters, and exploded with a deafening bang, the official paper added. It did not say if anyone had been injured. His approach is more aggressive than most, but Yang's problem is a common one. Anger over property confiscation is one of the leading causes of unrest in China, with many people forced to give up homes and land to make way for anything from roads to luxury villas. Yang says the local government has offered him 130,000 yuan ($19,030) for his fields, on which they want to erect "department buildings." He is asking for five times that amount. Construction ditches have already been dug across the land of less obstinate neighbors. A first eviction team attacked him in February after his rockets ran out, but local police came to his rescue. In May he held off 100 people by firing from a makeshift watchtower. The government is planning to reform property confiscation rules, but rights groups say the changes do not go far enough to address the potentially destabilizing issue. Bangladesh asks factories to shut for World Cup DHAKA (Reuters) – Authorities in soccer crazy Bangladesh on Monday asked all manufacturing factories in and around the capital Dhaka to suspend operations each evening until the end of the World Cup in South Africa. "We have issued the order to the factories to switch off for five hours every evening in a desperate move to save electricity so people can watch the play on televisions," said Saleh Ahmed, managing director of the Dhaka Electric Supply Company. "This is an undesirable decision from an economic point of view but we were rather compelled," he told reporters. The month-long World Cup finishes on July 11. Although Bangladesh, ranked 157th in the world, lost 6-1 to Tajikistan in a two-legged first round Asian zone qualifier for this year's finals, the country's young and old, in urban and rural areas, just go crazy whenever the finals are held. At least 30 people were injured when disgruntled soccer fans attacked several power distribution centers and vandalized at least 20 vehicles in the capital on Saturday. Hundreds of police brought the situation under control after fans in Dhaka were unable to watch the Argentina-Nigeria match. Two state-run agencies supplying power in the capital of 12 million people have since decided to cut the routine evening one-hour power outage to 30 minutes during the World Cup. The power supply officials said about 5,000 industries and factories would be affected by the decision. Only 30 percent of Bangladesh's 150 million population have access to electricity but officials admit demand is growing relative to supply, fuelling the anger of consumers. |
| Last Updated ( Thursday, 17 June 2010 14:13 ) |
