Panther-Like Cat Photographed in Wolverhampton, UK
telegraph - Police are investigating the sighting in Wednesfield, Wolverhampton after eyewitnesses reported it.
Local dog walkers have even been warned to take extra care.
Retired union officer Andrew Hall alerted police to the potential danger. The 55-year-old was on the phone in his kitchen when he saw what he thought was a black bin liner stuck in a tree beyond his back garden.
He said: "But as I talked I saw the shape move and realised that it was a living creature, about as big as a German Shepherd.
"People will probably think Im a nutter but it was definitely a cat by the way it very tenderly came down the tree and arched its back."
Mr Hall dropped the phone and ran into the garden, before dashing to get his camera to capture the creature on film.
"I realised dogs don't climb trees but by the time I returned I was too excited to press the right buttons on my camera so the pictures aren't that clear," he added.
"It was such a shock. I went from excitement to fright the first thing I thought of was all the children and old age pensioners that live round here."
Mr Hall contacted the RSPCA who advised him to call the police. Two officers later patrolled the area.
Mr Hall, who saw the cat last Friday, said a police helicopter then hovered over the area.
The grandfather-of-two described the animal as pure black with a tail about two-feet long in a tree behind shops in Blackhalve Lane.
When he told a neighbour, she said a dog walker stopped her about three or four months warning her to be careful on nearby fields.
She said she'd seen a cat about the size of a large dog and was worried, said Mr Hall.
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Scientists turn human skin into blood!
bioscholar - Scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin.
The breakthrough could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions.
Mick Bhatia, scientific director of McMaster’s Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and his team of researchers have also shown that the conversion is direct.
Making blood from skin does not require the middle step of changing a skin stem cell into a pluripotent stem cell that could make many other types of human cells, then turning it into a blood stem cell.
“We have shown this works using human skin. We know how it works and believe we can even improve on the process,” Nature quoted Bhatia as saying.
“We”ll now go on to work on developing other types of human cell types from skin, as we already have encouraging evidence,” Bhatia added.
The discovery was replicated several times over two years using human skin from both young and old people to prove it works for any age of person.
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Indian Politician Accuses Opposition of Using Witchcraft to Kill Him
daijiworld - Chief Minister, B S Yeddyurappa, accused the opposition of sacrificing donkeys and conducting witchcraft rituals, with the aim of causing his death.
He was speaking at a programme of health check up-cum-distribution of the saris to women under ‘Bhagyalakshmi’ scheme of the state government here on Sunday November 7. “Due to various hurdles created by the opposition, I have not been able to lead the state on the fast track to progress with the speed I had hoped to,” he lamented. He said that those who are angry at the steps taken by him to ban ore exports were behind the efforts being made to unseat him.
“I fully trust in God. The people of the state are my God. If I have done anything wrong, the God will punish me, and I am prepared for that,” he said. Pointing out that countries like China have taken lot of measures to preserve their mineral wealth, he said that those who have been selling off mineral wealth for monetary gains are idiots. “These people know that as long as I am in power, they will not be allowed to loot the state’s mineral wealth. Frustrated over this fact, they have been doing everything within their command to harm me,” he claimed.
Yeddyurappa said that several legislators had been pressurizing him to do everything they wanted, to close eyes to the wrongs committed by them, and to make them or their close ones ministers. He claimed these things were against his conscience, and that he had offered to resign, rather than defrauding the people. “The people will not excuse those who commit treachery. Even if they do, the God will not pardon them,” he said in a voice choked with emotion.
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A campaign to raise awareness of WTC Building 7
BuildingWhat? - Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper that was part of the World Trade Center complex. It would have been the tallest high-rise in 33 states. It collapsed at 5:20 pm on September 11, 2001. It was not hit by an airplane and suffered minimal damage compared to other buildings much closer to the Twin Towers.
More than eight years after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, New York Supreme Court Justice Edward H. Lehner was hearing arguments in a courtroom less than a mile from Ground Zero about a ballot initiative to launch a new investigation of the 9/11 attacks. When the lawyer for the plaintiffs sponsoring the initiative explained that the 9/11 Commission report left many unanswered questions, including “Why did Building 7 come down,” the Judge replied quizzically, “Building what?”
Like Judge Lehner, millions of people do not know or remember only vaguely that a third tower called World Trade Center Building 7 also collapsed on September 11, 2001. In any other situation, the complete, free fall collapse of a 47-story skyscraper would be played over and over on the news. It would be discussed for years to come and building design codes would be completely rewritten. So, why does no one know about Building 7? And why did Building 7 come down?
The answers to these questions have far-reaching implications for our society. The goal of the “BuildingWhat?” campaign is to raise awareness of Building 7 so that together we can begin to address these questions.
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Snakes in the Walls!
thestar - When Janet Wilkinson opened her washing machine, she expected to find some laundry. Instead, she found a python.
She shrieked, “Another snake!”
Finding a python living in your home, without your consent, is a lot to handle. But finding more than one? Well, that’s terrifying.
The Royal Python Wilkinson found coiled in her washing machine on Friday night was the second snake she and her husband, Chris Forde, have found in their home in two weeks.
“Lightning only strikes in the same place once,” Wilkinson told the Toronto Star at the couple’s home near Coxwell and Danforth Aves. on Saturday. “But last night it struck again — and it is probably going to strike three or four more times.”
One snake is an anomaly. Two snakes are a family. And a local pet store informed the couple that they’ll likely meet some reptilian siblings in the near future.
The snake saga began about a month ago, when Forde ripped the toilet out the main-floor washroom for some renovations.
“This head just popped out,” he said, of the python peaking through a gap in the floorboards.
Forde, a documentary filmmaker, took a quick video of the trespasser, before it slipped back under the floor. He has documented much of the snake situation on YouTube.
Despite ripping up his basement ceiling and setting traps with dead mice and hot water bottles, the snake didn’t return.
They had lived in the home for two decades, but were planning to sell. But of course, their new tenant hindered their plans.
“It would be unethical,” Forde said, of selling a house with a python living in the walls.
They asked neighbours if they had lost a snake.
No one had.
They even put a sign on their lawn: “Lost your snake? Call us.”
No one did.
Finally, after a month with Wilkinson suffering from snake-filled nightmares, the snake reappeared. The 75-centimetre-long python sat in front of a fridge in the basement. Wilkinson saw it, and screamed. Forde came running.
“This is my time,” he thought to himself, snapping on work gloves.
Docile and resigned, the snake willingly slipped into a pillow case and then into a plastic storage bin.
Naturally, they named him Monty.
Monty went to a local pet store, where an employee promised to take care of him.
The Royal Python hails from West Africa, and is one of the most popular snakes in the pet trade. Tom Mason, a snake expert at the Toronto Zoo, says they are harmless to humans, as long as they are less than four metres long.
They can get into the same cracks and crevices a mouse can. And they can survive for more than a year on a single meal.
Mason says a python can travel “quite a ways” when it escapes from an owner, which apparently happens more than you’d like to know.
“Snakes are escape artists,” Mason said. Asked how many might be slithering, undetected, through Toronto homes, Mason refused to answer.
“I’m not even going to go there.”
Last week a metre-long California king snake slithered out of a sink overflow drain in bathroom of an apartment at 100 Wellesley St. E. The snake, named Marilyn, had escaped from its owner on a different floor. As the time of this article, it has yet to be found.
In 2007, a venomous Egyptian Cobra that was kept illegally by a man in his Church St. home got loose. The incident forced the evacuation of five tenants from an adjoining house. After an intensive five-month search, the snake was believed to be dead, but its remains were never found.
While Wilkinson barely slept Friday night, she was in a much better mood the following afternoon. She actually held the newest python intruder in her hands.
It had been through a lot, after all — apparently surviving a spin-cycle. They named it Montegue, and it will join Monty at Tails pet store in the Beaches.
No one is quite sure how the snakes got in. Regardless, there are pythons in the walls. And more are likely to come.
“There’s three or four in the family,” Wilkinson said. “I’m sure of it.”
