I love to travel, mainly to Africa where I was born, I enjoy reading and playing bridge. I go for rambles in the countryside. I collect stamps and go to T'ai Chi classes. I love my two cats and my garden birds. I adore the African wildlife and try to help Conservation groups.
10 THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW THIS TIME LAST WEEK
10 THINGS
Snippets harvested from the week's news, chopped, sliced and diced for your weekend convenience.
1. Charles Webb, who wrote The Graduate about himself and his female partner Fred, is still with her. The pair live in Hove, East Sussex, but are flat broke and facing eviction from their flat.
2. A hen can take on the characteristics of a cockerel - comb and wattle, crowing, trying to mate with hens - if the cockerel in their brood is removed. But they do not develop male sex organs.
3. British diplomats have a call-out rate of £84.50 an hour.
4. Paint is classed as a "hazardous article" under new health and safety rules governing public transport, and can only be taken on a bus if "carried in two containers".
5. Vanessa Mae is worth more than Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2006, which estimates Ms Mae's wealth at £32m compared to Mr Martin's £25m fortune.
6. Yellow, the Coldplay hit that ranked fifth in a recent roundup of Britain's favourite lyric, was inspired, in part by a copy of the Yellow Pages.
7. The Queen has visited every country in the Commonwealth except Cameroon.
8. Homer Simpson's hair is drawn as an "M" and his ear as a "G", representing the initials of Simpson's animator Matt Groening.
9. Suri - the name of Tom Cruise's new daughter - means "pickpocket" in Japanese.
10. Camel's milk, which is widely drunk in Arab countries, has 10 times more iron than cow's milk.
(Sources: 1 - the Times, Tuesday; 2 - the Guardian, Thursday; 3 - Daily Telegraph, Thursday; 4 - the Times - Tuesday; 6 - the Daily Telegraph, Thursday; 7 - BBC News website pop-up; 8 - Radio Times 22-28 April; 9 - the Sun, Wednesday.)
Thailand hunts escaped crocodiles.
Villagers say they are fearful of going near to rivers and canals. A hunt is under way in central Thailand for up to a dozen crocodiles believed to have escaped from a breeding farm. Inspectors are searching the waterways of Lop Buri province in a hunt that began on Saturday after one of the reptiles bit a fisherman's finger. The teams are racing against time to find the crocodiles before the rains come and water levels start rising.
Local villagers have called for tougher restrictions on crocodile farms, some of which they say operate illegally. They say they dare not go near the rivers and canals to wash or swim while the reptiles remain on the loose. News of the crocodiles' escape emerged on Saturday after a 24-year-old fisherman was bitten as he waded through water near the farm where the crocodiles are believed to have escaped.
A special task force from the fisheries department was reported to have joined local staff and volunteers to help in the search. By Wednesday, around a dozen crocodiles, most about 1m (3ft) long and weighing up to 10kg (20lb), had been caught, fisheries officials said. But another dozen are unaccounted for. "We have to catch all of them while the water is low," Sompoj Jongchatklang of the local fisheries office said. "Otherwise, these crocodiles will get into the dams and rivers and pose a greater danger."
There are three registered crocodile farms - which breed the reptiles for export - in the area, but local people believe more farms operate illegally. "Agencies need to inspect these farms to ensure the owners can stop their crocodiles getting loose," said Nopadon Srisuk, a chief in the province's Pattana Nikom district.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
'Happy' owner welcomes owl home.
An eagle owl can be powerful enough to kill a dog or a cat.The owner of a 3ft eagle owl called Fergus has been reunited with the bird after it escaped. Fergus flew off from a garden in Linlithgow on Monday, sparking concerns for neighbours' pets as the bird of prey could easily kill a dog or cat. Relieved owner Chris Imlach, 34, said he was contacted on Saturday to be told the owl had been found by a local game keeper. "I'm really pleased he's back now," Mr Imlach added. The owl had not eaten for days and Mr Imlach, a recovery driver, had taken time off work to try to find the bird of prey.
He said: "I was at home, on the other side of Livingston when I received a phone call from the Independent Bird Register this morning - who birds of prey are registered with. "He had actually been found by a local game keeper in Linlithgow. "At 6.10am this morning he was sat on the side of the road feeding and they in turn contacted me and went out and enticed him back. I'm really pleased he's back now." Mr Imlach said an eagle owl's defence mechanism was to lift an animal off the ground. Fergus had lifted his four stone (25kg) pet Staffordshire bull terrier into the air, he revealed.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
10 THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW THIS TIME LAST WEEK
Snippets harvested from the week's news, chopped, sliced and diced for your weekend convenience.
1. The average British woman worries about the size and shape of her body every 15 minutes.
2. This Easter weekend will see 2.3 million people travelling through the UK's airports.
3. Six seats in the Italian Senate depend on the votes of Italians living abroad.
4. A flag expert is a vexillologist.
5. Coins which are called "coppers", such as the penny, have been made from steel since 1992.
6. Compensation payments to teachers following personal injuries, such as assaults by pupils, amounted to £7.6m last year.
7. Berlin's tallest building, a television tower, will have a giant 32 metre football placed on top for the World Cup.
8. Iceland has the highest concentration of broadband users in the world.
9. The suicide rate in the UK is at its lowest rate since records began in 1910.
10. Tony Blair is the first prime minister in recent times not to use RAF aircraft for family holidays.
BBC MAGAZINE
Rescue mounts for trapped NY cat.
Not even three-week old Cleo could bring back Molly.
A team of animal rescuers is continuing a full-scale effort to free a cat trapped within the walls of a New York delicatessen for nearly two weeks. A crew including a feline therapist rallied to save Molly after she disappeared inside the Manhattan site. But the black cat has so far failed to emerge - despite moves to lure her out by drilling holes and bringing kittens to try to spark her maternal instincts. The operation supervisor said the rescue was his toughest to date.
Molly's cries could be heard so clearly on the pavement it was thought she might be a foot (30 cm) or less inside the wall. "She's right there," Mike Pastore said. "I'd like to be able to reach in and grab a piece of fur. That's what's so frustrating." 'We love you Molly'
The 11-month-old cat had been the mouser of the popular Greenwich Village deli before wandering into a narrow space between two walls. The edifice is part of a historic district where alterations are banned without permission - but officials told rescuers they should "do whatever is necessary to recover the cat". But diverse efforts centred on the basement wall and ceiling have yet to free the fugitive feline.
Cat therapist Carole Wilbourn used the sounds of whales on tape and soothing words to try to "give inspiration" to Molly. "Oh come on Molly you can do it. We love you Molly," she said. Bricks have been removed at various spots to try to create an escape route. And a cage baited with food and the feline aphrodisiac catnip have also failed. But passers-by remained hopeful. "I think she's really scared, but I think she will come out," 10-year-old Katherine Mehta said.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
10 THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW THIS TIME LAST WEEK
Snippets harvested from the week's news, chopped, sliced and diced for your weekend convenience.
1. There are 2.5m rodent-owning households in Britain, according to the Pet Food Manufacturers' Association.
2. The name Dixons was chosen from the telephone directory because Charles Kalms needed a six-letter name to fit neatly above his studio door.
3. About 95% of broiler chickens never see daylight and are slaughtered after 40 days.
4. The personal mobile phone numbers of senior police officers in Tanzania have been published - with an invitation for the public to ring them with information in a crackdown against crime.
5. Rainfall on the roof and gutters of a three-bed detached house can amount to 120,000 litres each year.
6. The average age in urban areas is six years' younger than in rural areas - 36 and 42 respectively.
7.The greetings card industry in the UK, which produces 2.6 billion cards a year, has its own version of the Oscars, called the Henries - named after Sir Henry Cole, who produced the first commercial Christmas cards in 1846.
8. There were 30,000 applications per hour from the UK to register .eu internet addresses, on the first day that the new domain was launched.
9. Dental drills were being used by stone-age people 9,000 years ago. The drills were made from flint.
10. England has more people in prison, per head of population, than anywhere else in western Europe. But the United States' imprisonment rate is five times higher.
China builds rare dolphin reserve.
Qi Qi, the only white dolphin in captivity, died in 2002 China is to set up a sanctuary for the highly endangered white dolphin, a species unique to the country. The reserve, on the southern coast of China, will include a rescue centre near the city of Zhuhai.
Pollution from factories, paper mills and chemical plants has destroyed much of the dolphins' habitat, the director of the project said. Only around 2,000 white dolphins are thought to exist, with most living in the Pearl River estuary. The reserve, in the eastern province of Fujian, will be about 178 square miles (460 square kilometres) with building to begin by the end of the year, the Xinhua News Agency said.
Some 19 white dolphins, also called "pandas in the ocean" because of their rarity, have died over the past three years as a result of pollutants, Chen Jialin, director of the Chinese White Dolphin Natural Reserve, said.
BBC NES REPORT.
Crocodile fear in Australia flood.
Heavy monsoon rain has swollen the Katherine River. Heavy flooding in the north Australian town of Katherine has led to a state of emergency and sparked fears of crocodile attacks. Water has reached the rooftops of about a quarter of the town, home to about 2,000 people. About 600 had to take refuge in two schools. Rangers fear crocodiles may have moved into the town. One of three boys rescued after clinging to a tree was treated for lacerations from a crocodile bite.
Northern Territory police minister Paul Henderson said the state of emergency would be in place for at least two days to aid evacuations. The height of the Katherine River has reached 19 metres (62 feet) following days of monsoon rain. "We don't know what we are going to face when the river does back down," Mr Henderson said. In addition to the 600 evacuated in the town, another 200 had to be rescued by boat from the nearby community of Jilkminggan. Katherine is about 300km (185 miles) south of Darwin. Local rangers said the floodwaters could have allowed crocodiles to reach the town.
Parks and Wildlife ranger Patrick Carmody told the Associated Press news agency: "[They] are always a concern. We know that they are here in the normal time, so it's quite a distinct possibility." He said he would harpoon or shoot crocodiles found in the town. Both freshwater and the more dangerous saltwater varieties could be present. A freshwater crocodile was thought to be behind the attack on the boy. He was bitten as townspeople rescued the boys using boats with shovels as oars. Emergency official Kate Vanderlaan said: "We've been very lucky that there have been no injuries or deaths." Weather officials forecast fine weather for Katherine but say rains further east could add to river levels.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Virus' route to UK still unclear.
By Rebecca Morelle - BBC News science reporter.
Birds have started to migrate back to their breeding grounds. Bird migration experts say it is still unclear how the H5N1 virus arrived in the UK. Tests have confirmed that a swan found in the harbour of the village of Cellardyke in Fife, Scotland, carried the deadly strain of the virus and contingency plans to halt future outbreaks are underway. But experts are looking into how the bird caught the disease, and to see whether it came in recently from another country or if the virus has already been in the UK for some time. The Scottish Executive said it believes the bird to be a mute swan, and have taken the precaution of a implementing a 2,500 sq km (960 sq mile) "wild bird risk area" around Cellardyke in case other birds are infected.
It might not have been a British-born bird at all - Grahame Madge, RSPB According to bird migration experts, the bird may not be native, and is a mute swan from the Baltic region or Black Sea that journeyed to the UK to escape a cold snap. "This swan could have been part of a hard weather movement," Grahame Madge, from the RSPB, told the BBC News website. "This is where you get hard weather in the Balkans or the Black Sea and water freezes over, meaning birds that need access to fresh water need to move - sometimes a few miles, sometimes 100 miles."
Scotland has implemented a "wild bird risk area" Mr Madge believed that a hard weather movement could have been responsible for the spread of H5N1 to France and Germany confirmed in February. "The possibility is that this swan could have been part of the tail end of this movement, and might not have been a British-born bird at all." Martin Fowlie from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) also suggested that this might be the case, and also raised the possibility that the swan may not have even died in the UK. "It might have been a mute swan from Eastern Europe that had flown west and might have died in the North Sea and had been washed in," he said.
However, there is the possibility that the mute swan is from the UK. We know more about wild bird movement than we do about domestic bird movement - Professor Graham Martin. Mute swans that are native to the UK do not migrate, and in the part of Scotland where this swan was found they tend to remain in roughly the same spot. "Mute swans in Fife occur at very low densities and all the information we have on mute swans is that they do not move more than 2-3km in that area," said Mr Fowlie. If the swan is a native one, then it must have caught the virus from another bird, he said. One explanation, according to Mr Madge, is that a bird migrating out from an infected country in central Europe may have passed though the area before continuing its journey further north to its breeding ground.
There is also a lot of movement of birds out of the UK at the moment as they back to their breeding grounds. Experts are unsure whether the bird was native to the area. "We are getting birds that have spent the winter here now pouring out of Britain to their more Arctic winter grounds, heading north to Greenland, across to Iceland, Scandinavia, Arctic Russia and eastern and central Europe. These movements include millions of birds," said Mr Madge. Some of these birds travel over Scotland, and if any carried the virus they may have passed it on to the swan in Fife. However this would mean the virus is already in the UK, and regular tests of birds have been carried out throughout the country and no other cases of H5N1 have been seen.
But as swans, geese and ducks leave the UK, other birds are also coming in from sub-Saharan Africa, northern Africa and southern Spain. "There are not many wildfowl associated with these birds - they are mainly small songbirds," explained Professor Graham Martin, from the Centre for Ornithology in Birmingham. "There is just one species that comes in to breed, the gargeney, but that is very rare, you only get a few each year. They tend to be fresh water rather than coastal, so it seems very unlikely that a gargeney has been near this swan." Martin Fowlie also said it was important not to put all of the emphasis on migratory birds. "The initial spread for South East Asia up to China and Russia can probably be assigned to poultry. It's a long trade route, and at the time it went against the direction the birds migrated," he explained. He also said that Nigerian and Turkish outbreaks were probably because of domestic poultry not migratory birds, although this was probably not the case for the spread across Europe.
Professor Martin agreed: "There are huge movements all the time right across Europe of poultry that we know very little about. People bring poultry backwards and forwards all the time, and its not logged." "We know more about wild bird movement than we do about domestic bird movement."
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Little piggy cam becomes web hit.
Delores's pigcam had 8,000 hits in a day. A webcam in Cornwall which has been showing the lives of a farrow of newborn piglets is proving to be an international success. Thousands of people across the world have been watching Dolores and her 12 piglets via the camera hosted by Saltash Community College.
The Duroc cross-bred sow gave birth to seven males and five females last week. The pigcam has been getting hits from Australia, Florida, San Francisco, Arizona, Thailand, and across the UK.
Saltash College science teacher Timothy Venner said: "Some 6,000 to 8,000 people came onto the website in a day to watch her. "Messages have come in, as well as donations to help with the feed and looking after them." One comment to the school from the Far East said: "What a wonderful show - better than most of the rubbish you get on the internet." The pigcam was first set up so pupils at the college and other nearby schools could watch how Delores was progressing with her pregnancy.
Teachers behind the project hoped it would help pupils to understand animals better.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
'Victory' over Japanese whalers.
Chris Hogg - BBC News, Tokyo.
Environmentalists in Japan are claiming a rare victory after five key private companies quit the whaling business following a pressure campaign. The firms said they will transfer their shares in the country's largest whaling fleet to public interest corporations. Greenpeace claims it is global pressure from consumers that has forced the financial backers to pull out.
But the companies deny this and Japan's government says the transfer of shares will not affect its policies. The companies own shares in a firm which operates seven of the eight ships in Japan's whaling fleet. The new shareholders will include the Japanese government agency that promotes whaling. On the face of it this will not change much. The Japanese fleet will continue to hunt for whales. But environmentalists insist this is a victory.
One of the private firms that is dumping its shares is a huge Japanese fishing company called Nissui. Three months ago campaigners in Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and the United States began to put pressure on its subsidiaries, protesting against the parent company's connection with whaling. Although Nissui like the other four firms says the campaign has nothing to do with its decision to pull out of the business, a statement from one of its subsidiaries expressed hope that it would shift the demonstrators' focus from the company.
Greenpeace activists, who harassed the Japanese whaling fleet earlier this year, said they had taken the fight from the high seas to the supermarket shelves.
Japan insists that efforts to hunt whales will be redoubled. From now on, whaling will be seen as something backed by the whole of Japan, not just private firms, an official said.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
10 THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW THIS TIME LAST WEEK
Snippets harvested from the week's news, chopped, sliced and diced for your weekend convenience.
1. Thinking about your muscles can make you stronger.
2. Figures this week showed that black people are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to be stopped by police officers in the street under anti-terror laws than white people. Asian people are twice as likely as white people to be stopped.
3. Getting up too early could be one reason that people start smoking. Research suggests that people whose body clocks give them "social jet lag" are much more likely to smoke than other people.
4. Until this week, the age limit for marriage in France was 15 for girls, but 18 for boys. The age for girls has now been raised to 18.
5. The footwear used in 85% of footprints can be identified by a pilot scheme which police hope could make the marks as useful as fingerprints in crime detection.
6. Cleaning up the UK's nuclear waste, and decommissioning of nuclear power stations, could cost £70bn.
7. Six million people use TV subtitles, despite having no hearing impairment.
8. Blue Peter awards 1,000 badges to viewers each week.
9. Three-year-olds can drive - just not very well.
10. TV licences have been sold at Post Offices for more then 60 years - but will not be sold there after July.
[Sources where no story linked: 2: New Scientist, 8: BBC News 24, Wednesday. 9: Ananova]
BBC NEWS MAGAZINE.
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