Dog adrift on ice saved from Baltic Sea

WARSAW (AP) — A frightened, shivering dog was rescued after floating 75 miles on an ice floe down Poland's Vistula River and into the Baltic Sea, officials said Thursday.

Now his saviors just have to figure out who really owns him.

Four people have already claimed him, but so far rescuers say there's been no wagging tail of joy from the miracle dog they nicknamed "Baltic."

The dog's frozen odyssey came as Poland suffers through a winter cold snap.Temperatures have dipped to below minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

The thick-furred male dog was found adrift Monday 15 miles out in the Baltic Sea by the crew of the Baltica, a Polish ship of ocean scientists carrying out research.

Researcher Natalia Drgas said Thursday that the rescue was difficult and at one point it seemed the dog had drowned.

"It was really a tough struggle. It kept slipping into the water and crawling back on top of the ice. At one point it vanished underwater, under the ship and we thought it was the end, but it emerged again and crawled on an ice sheet," Drgas said.

At that point, the crew lowered a pontoon down to the water and a crewmember managed to grab the dog by the scruff of his neck and pull him to safety.

Too weak to shake off the frigid water, Baltic was dried and wrapped in blankets. After he warmed up, he was massaged, fed and soon got on his feet to seek company, Drgas said.

A firefighter in Grudziadz, on the Vistula river 60 miles inland from the Bay of Gdansk, told the Associated Press the dog was spotted Saturday floating on ice through the city. Firefighters tried to save him but could not approach the dog due to shifting ice sheets, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Baltica crew, now moored in the port city of Gdynia, has been searching for the dog's owners, ship captain Jerzy Wosachlo said. So far four people have claimed him, but Baltic has not claimed any of them back, Drgas said.

The dog didn't welcome the first two people to come for him, keeping his distance and showing no recognition toward a couple on Wednesday and a woman on Thursday who both said he was theirs. Two other would-be owners were still en route to Gdynia for a possible reunion.

Once in port, the brown-and-black mongrel was taken to a veterinarian, who found him in surprisingly good condition and estimated his age at around 5 or 6 years old. Veterinarian Aleksandra Lawniczak said the 44-pound dog was clearly frightened but in strikingly good shape and had suffered no frostbite.

A dog with thick fur and a layer of fat can survive such cold conditions for as long as eight days if it has water to drink, Lawniczak said.

She described Baltic as a friendly dog who was clearly well treated before getting lost.

Wosachlo said the research team is prepared to adopt Baltic if his original owner is never found.

USA Today

Rattling dog had eaten 13 golf balls

A dog had 13 golf balls removed from his stomach after his owner noticed his stomach was rattling.

Chris Morrison noticed an unusual sound from the stomach of his black labrador, Oscar, who he regularly walks on a golf course near his home in Dunfermline.

When he took the five-year-old to a vet, he was stunned to find 13 balls were lodged in the dog's stomach, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Mr Morrison, a planning administrator, said one of the balls had been in her stomach so long that it had turned black and was decomposing.

He said: "He finds golf balls like truffles. We're not sure how long exactly this happened over - but it must have been a fair period, several months at least.

"I felt his stomach and heard them rattling around. He normally brings a few home, but I had no idea he had eaten so many.

"It is normally around the ninth and twelfth fairways that we go around - and he just goes and searches for them wherever the golfers lose them."

The balls were removed two weeks ago in an hour-long operation conducted by Bob Hesketh, 40, a vet from Rosyth.

He said: "It was like a magic trick. I opened him up and felt what I thought was two or three golf balls. But they just kept coming until we had a bag full."

Oscar is now on the road to making a full recovery after a special post-operation diet of watered down food, but he now has to wear a muzzle during his walks.

Ananova

Dog washed out to sea has lucky escape

WARSAW (Reuters) – A dog had a lucky escape when a Polish boat rescued him from an ice floe that had carried him more than 100 miles up a river and out onto the icy waters of the Baltic Sea.

"My crew saw... a shape moving on the water and we immediately decided to get closer to check if it was a dog or maybe a seal relaxing on the ice," Jan Joachim, senior officer aboard the Baltica, told Reuters Television.

"As we got closer to the ice floe we saw that it was a dog struggling not to fall into the water."

Ship engineer Adam Buczynski managed to scoop the dog off the floe onto an inflatable dinghy and wrapped him in a blanket.

"He didn't even squeal. There was just fear in his big eyes," said Buczynski.

The dog was first seen on the ice floe some 100 km (70 miles) inland to the south on the Vistula river but firemen were unable to rescue him. When the Baltica crew found him, he had already drifted some 24 km (18 miles) out to sea.

"We were in the right place at the right time," said Joachim, noting that they rescued him shortly before night fall.

The crew are now trying to locate the dog's owner.

Poland is in the grip of bitterly cold weather, with night temperatures in some areas falling as low as -34 Celsius (-31 Fahrenheit).

Reuters

Woman wants surgery to look like Alba

A Chinese woman has revealed plans to undergo plastic surgery to make her look like actress Jessica Alba.

The 21-year-old, who has only been identified as Xiaoqing, reportedly plans the cosmetic overhaul in order to win back her ex-boyfriend.

Xiaoqing told the Shanghai Daily: "I have made my decision. I'm not only doing it for my ex-boyfriend, but for myself. I am a psychologically weak person. I want to do something to challenge myself and build a strong personality through it."

The girl has claimed that her 28-year-old ex-boyfriend forced her to do her make-up in the same style as Alba and made her wear a blonde wig.

Xiaoqing added: "I love him very much.... that's why I always followed his opinions. I don't want to lose him."

DS

Criminals in Haiti 'Raping Quake Survivors'

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Bandits in Haiti are preying on vulnerable earthquake survivors, even raping women, in makeshift camps which were set up in the capital of Port-au-Prince after the disaster.

"With the blackout that's befallen the Haitian capital, bandits are taking advantage to harass and rape women and young girls under the tents," Haiti’s national police chief Mario Andresol said yesterday.

"We have more than 7,000 detainees in the streets who escaped from the National Penitentiary the evening of the earthquake... It took us five years to apprehend them. Today they are running wild."

Rachelle Dolce, who is living at a large makeshift camp on the Petionville Club Golf Course, said she thought a rape had occurred outside her tent the previous night. She said she heard men making noise and a woman struggling.

"I heard a fight outside, and I saw panties on the ground," she said. "I started to shout a lot, and they left."

Figures for the number of crimes were not available but women's organizations have already detailed a number of cases and alerted the United Nations mission in Haiti, Andresol said.

Fox News

Doctors amputate wrong foot of man

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Doctors in Peru mistakenly amputated the wrong foot of an 86-year-old man, then had no choice but to cut off the other one as well to keep an infection from spreading, relatives and officials said Monday.

"It was a terrible shock when I lifted up the sheets and saw they had amputated his left foot," the patient's daughter, Carmen Villanueva, told RPP radio.

She said doctors in the port city of Callao had been attending to an ulcer on Jorge Villanueva's right foot since Jan. 4.

When the infection worsened on Saturday, they ordered the ill-fated emergency surgery. Realizing their mistake, doctors performed a second operation the following day that left Villanueva footless.

The Sabogal Hospital said in a statement that it suspended the doctors involved while it investigates.

Health Minister Oscar Ugarte confirmed the mistaken amputation, saying: "Without a doubt this should be punishable. ... It is a sad situation, and we have asked for an investigation."

Carmen Villanueva said her family plans to sue.


USA Today

'Dead' beekeeper 'comes back to life'

A Polish beekeeper who was declared dead and put in a coffin after a suspected heart attack was later found to be alive.

Jozef Guzy, 76, collapsed as he started work in Katowice and an undertaker took away his body after a doctor pronounced him dead, the Daily Mail reports.

A spokesman for the Regional Ambulance Service in Katowice said: "The patient was not breathing, there was no heart beat, the body had cooled - all are the characteristics of death."

Funeral director Dariusz Wysłuchato was about to seal the lid of the coffin when Jozef's wife Ludmilla asked him to remove her 'late' husband's wristwatch.

Wysłuchato said: "I touched around the neck artery and suddenly realised he wasn't dead after all. I checked again and shouted, 'It's a pulse!'.

"I had a friend check and he noticed the man was breathing. God, it was a miracle! Thank God I did not close the coffin - if I had done that it would have been a tragedy. Something touched me to touch his neck - I'm so pleased he's alive."

The same doctor who pronounced Jozef dead returned with the ambulance and confirmed that he had "come back from the dead".

Jozef said: "The undertaker saved my life. The first thing I did when I got out of hospital was take him a pot of honey."

DS

Teens hospitalised after chilli sauce dare

BERLIN (AFP) – Eight teenagers were rushed to hospital Wednesday after drinking concentrated chilli sauce in a spicy game of "dare", German police said.

The youths, aged 13 and 14, complained of severe stomach pains after the game and were treated by the German Red Cross before being taken to a nearby hospital.

Police said their lives were not in danger.

AFP

Sat on boyfriend; killed him

CLEVELAND (Ohio) - AN American woman had pleaded guilty to killing her boyfriend by sitting on him, reported MyFox National on Friday.

Mia Landingham, who weighs 136kg, sat on her much smaller boyfriend, Mikal Middleston-Bey, after they got into an argument in August last year, reported police in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr Middleston-Bey only weighed 54.4kg, said the police.

According to a Fox8 report, Landingham was sentenced to three years probation and 100 hours community service on Wednesday after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter. She was immediately released from jail.

The report said that Landingham's attorney said there was a long history of domestic abuse in the couple's relationship and asked Judge Carolyn Friedland for leniency, saying Landingham had no prior criminal record.

Landingham apologised for squashing the father of her children. The couple have three children together. 'I just want to say that I am sincerely sorry about this situation. I wish I could take it back,' she said.

However Middleton-Bey's family were unhappy with the result, with one of his sisters saying: 'So basically you can say that I can go sit on somebody and get probation? I feel there wasn't no justice.'

Source : The Straits Times

Site names dirtiest U.S. hotels

NEWTON, Mass., Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Travel Web site TripAdvisor said San Francisco's Heritage Marina Hotel topped this year's list of the 10 dirtiest U.S. hotels.

"This hotel is like in a horrible horror movie! The bed was a nightmare. It smelled like urine and had strange spots," TripAdvisor quoted a user review of the Heritage Marina Hotel as saying.

TripAdvisor, which ranked the hotels based on customer reviews, said the San Francisco hotel was ranked as dirty the most often, followed by the Days Inn Eureka/Six Flags in Missouri, Super 8 Virginia Beach/At the Ocean in Virginia, and the Quality Inn of Stroudsburg, Pa.

Rounding out the top 10 were New York City's New York Inn, the Parisian Hotel & Suites of Miami Beach, Fla., the Capistrano Seaside Inn of Capistrano Beach, Calif., the Desert Lodge of Palm Springs, Calif., and the Continental Oceanfront Hotel South Beach of Miami Beach, Fla.

UPI News

Crocodiles 'taught to recognise their names'

Two British crocodiles have been taught to recognise when a keeper calls their names, The Blue Planet Aquarium.

The reptiles, Paleo and Suchus, have been taught to listen for their names being called, it was claimed.

Keepers at the centre in Ellesmere Port, Merseyside, they are even learning when to open their mouths for food.

They ssaid the type of training had worked with mammals before but hardly ever with reptiles.

"They are very intelligent and started responding to their names in just a few days," said Tom Cornwall, the aquarium's manager.

In a bid to train them, the crocodiles, which are called Cuvier's dwarf caiman, are given food as a prize if they react in the right way.

The training takes its idea from a similar scheme run at the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust in India.

Once fully trained, the aquarium's zoological team will set up "enrichment activities" for the pair.

Mr Cornwall, Blue Planet Aquarium's ranger and exhibits manager, added: "As well as enabling us to approach them and inspect and treat any potential health issues it will also allow us to set up tasks and foraging exercises for them to mimic the types of behaviour they would have to use in the wild."

Found throughout South America, the Cuvier's dwarf caiman usually live in freshwater habitats like rivers, including the Amazon, flooded forests and larger lakes.

Telegraph

Chihuahua only four inches

A micro-Chihuahua has measured up as one of the world's smallest dogs, measuring only four inches.

Jean Tindall noticed her puppy Lulu was not growing like her sister and two brothers.

The 76-year-old, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who has bred Chihuahuas for five years, said: "I didn't think anything of it when her mum gave birth to the litter, she looked the same size as all the others.

"But puppies grow quickly and I soon realised that her brothers and sisters were all over taking her.

"I don't want to sell her because she will need so much extra care and attention being so small.

"She is so tiny shes only 4 inches. She can fit in my hand shes so tiny. You can't believe she's out of the same litter because the rest are twice as big as her.

Ms Tindall, who named Lulu after the Scottish singer, said the dog, part of the smallest breed in the world, makes up for her lack of size with her big personality.

The mother-of-two added: "She sleeps all day long on a hot water bottle I give her to keep her warm then when I'm ready for bed she wakes up and runs rings around me. I can barely keep up.

"Even though she's small she's got so much love to give and is a little bundle of joy. She hasn't developed a bark yet but when she does I'm sure it'll be as loud as a normal sized dog."

Ms Tindall said she even thought Lulu could be the smallest in the world as in more than 50 years of breeding she has never seen a smaller one.

"I've seen a lot of chihuahuas but I've never seen one as small as Lulu. Even among other tiny dogs she really stands out because she is so tiny.

"I've been breeding and selling chihuahuas for most of my life and I've had a few inquiries about Lulu because she's such a wonderful, cute little thing. But to me she is priceless, I would never sell her. She is a little star and loves all the attentions she gets."

Telegraph

Dog leads owner to elderly, unconscious man

PINE CITY, Minn. – Police credit a 15-year-old German Shorthaired dog with saving the life of an elderly, unconscious man in Pine City. Brett Grinde said he took Effie out for their usual walk on Monday evening, but within a couple minutes she started pulling on the leash, wanting to go in a different direction.

Effie then took off running, leading Grinde to a neighbor's house where a 94-year-old man was on face down on the driveway. The dog started licking the man's face. Grinde called 911, then started CPR.

KARE-TV reported the eldery man, William Lepsch, regained consciousness and is in serious condition at North Memorial Medical Center.

AP

Robber hides in see-through plastic bag

A ROBBER wearing a transparent plastic bag over his head has held up a service station on the Gold Coast.

Police said the man entered the BP service station at Labrador about 3.53pm yesterday wearing the plastic bag, and wielding a large carving knife, according to the Courier-Mail.

He approached the male attendant and demanded cash.

In response, the worker placed the money tray from the register on the counter and the robber helped himself.

He was spotted running through the Sharks Football Club carpark in Olsen Ave, heading east.

The worker was able to give police a good description of the bandit. He was described as about 170cm tall in his mid-20s and wearing three-quarter length denim shorts, a white T-shirt and a sky blue baseball cap.

The man handed himself in to police today. Police expect to charge the man over the robbery.

News.com.au

Mom Tries to Trade Daughter for Gun

PHOENIX — Authorities say they have arrested an Arizona woman who traded her 2-year-old daughter for a gun.

Maricopa County sheriff's deputies arrested 33-year-old Tanya Nareau of Mesa on Tuesday after receiving a tip.

Deputies say they spoke with a family friend who had the child and confirmed Nareau gave the girl to him for gun.

Deputies say Nareau felt the friend would do a better job raising the child than she would.

Authorities say Nareau has been charged with the unlawful sale of a child and solicitation to possess a weapon by a prohibited person.

It was unclear if Nareau had legal representation.


Fox News