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Happy cows produce more milk, according to researchers at Newcastle University.

Cattle that are named and treated with a “more personal touch” can increase milk yields by up to 500 pints a year.

The study, by the university’s School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, involved 516 farmers across the UK.

Published in the journal Anthrozoos, the study found farmers who named their cows gained a higher yield than the 54% that did not give their cattle names.

Dairy farmer Dennis Gibb, who co-owns Eachwick Red House Farm outside Newcastle with his brother Richard, said he believed treating every cow as an individual was “vitally important”.

~ BBC News

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A German motorist missed a bend in the road, broke through a barrier and hurtled up a bank, crash-landing on a church roof in eastern Germany, police said on Monday.

The bank acted like a springboard, propelling the black Skoda about 35 meters (115 ft) forward and straight into the church’s roof frame, where it remained wedged 7 meters off the ground, police said in a statement.

“We’ve never ever had a case of a car landing in a church before,” said Frank Fischer, a spokesman for Chemnitz police in the state of Saxony.

The 23-year-old driver suffered serious injuries. The damage to the car, which was extracted from the roof by a crane, amounts to about 10,000 euros ($13,000), police said. The cost of damage to the church has not yet been estimated.

~ Reuters

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Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

“The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,” Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

“We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,” he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

~ Reuters

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More British passengers died on the Titanic because they queued politely for lifeboats, researchers believe.

A behavioural economist says data suggests Britons in that era were more inclined to be “gentlemanly” while Americans were more “individualist”.

Women with children had a 70% better chance of survival than men in such an environment, he told the BBC.

The Titanic sank during its maiden voyage in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, with the loss of 1,500 lives.

David Savage, from Queenland University of Technology, studied the disaster to look at how people react in life and death situations.

He said that in testimonies from inquiries in America and Britain just after the event, there were a lot of statements from women saying their husbands put them on lifeboats.

They then “went to the back of the boat to have a cigar, to stand around and be chummy, while basically the boat went down.”

Mr Savage said: “There was one gentleman who was rather wealthy… who went back downstairs after he put his wife on the [life] boat… put on his tuxedo…went back upstairs and smoked… with the idea that if I am going die, I may as well die as a gentleman and well-dressed.”

‘Peak of society’

The “unsinkable” ocean liner went down in freezing Atlantic waters during its voyage from Southampton to New York. As it sank, the captain, Edward John Smith, shouted: “Be British, boys, be British,” according to witnesses.

“The American culture was set up to be a more individualist culture and the British culture was more about the gentlemanly behaviour,” Mr Savage says.”You’ve got to remember that this is the Edwardian period when to be a gentleman was the peak of society.”

Mr Savage also concludes that social norms such as “women and children first” were very strong in British culture and survived in such an environment.

~ BBC News

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A hungry supermarket shopper claimed his lobster was bad, but deputies said it was all a shell game.

Walter U. Tessier of Division Street walked into the Price Chopper on Saturday with a lobster in hand saying he wanted to return it because ”it was bad,” Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies said.

Store workers were about to allow Tessier to trade the $10.99 lobster for a bag of king crab legs when they discovered the lobster was all shell. Tessier had eaten it and put the shell parts back together, deputies said.

When confronted, the man with a passion for seafood ran from the store with the bag of crab legs in hand, they said.

Deputies said they caught up with him at his home only to discover that he had already eaten the crab legs.

~ Times Union

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Tourism officials in Australia are describing it as “the best job in the world”.

They want someone to work on a tropical island off the Queensland coast.

No formal qualifications are needed but candidates must be willing to swim, snorkel, dive and sail.

In return, the successful applicant will receive a salary of A$150,000 ($103,000, £70,000) for six months and get to live rent-free in a three-bedroom villa, complete with pool.

~ BBC News

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A Japanese doctor said, ‘Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks.’

 A German doctor said, ‘That’s nothing, we can take a lung out of on person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.’

A British doctor said, ‘In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half of a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks.’

A Texas doctor, not to be outdone said, ‘You guys are way behind.  We took a man with no brains out of Texas, put him in the White House, and now half the country is looking for work.

~ bash.org

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In this clip a random person is mistaken for an interviewee and is left rather startled to find himself on the news…

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There’s no way to know if hell has frozen over, but it’s official — pigs can fly.

An embarrassed US Airways is promising it will never again allow barnyard animals onto its flights after a hog accompanied 200 human passengers on a six-hour flight from Philadelphia to Seattle on Oct. 17.

“We can confirm that the pig traveled, and we can confirm that it will never happen again,” US Airways spokesman David Castelveter said. “Let me stress that. It will never happen again.”

Sources familiar with the incident told the Philadelphia Daily News for yesterday’s editions that two women, the pig’s owners, convinced the airline the animal was a “therapeutic companion pet,” like a guide dog for the blind.

An internal US Airways incident report said the owners claimed they had a doctor’s note that allowed them to fly with the animal.

US Airways and Federal Aviation Administration rules allow passengers to fly with service animals.

“According to (the) Philadelphia agent who talked to passenger over phone . . . passenger described pig as being 13 pounds, so based on this info, authorization was given,” the report stated.

Passengers on the flight told the Daily News that the pig actually weighed several hundred pounds.

“All I know is, it was ugly and it pooped,” one eyewitness told the Philadelphia paper.

The pig, which spent the flight in the first row of first class, went ape when the aircraft taxied into Seattle, according to the report.

It reportedly ran loose through the aircraft, squealing loudly, and even tried to enter the cockpit.

“Many people on board the aircraft were quite upset that there was a large uncontrollable pig on board, especially those in the first-class cabin,” the incident report stated.

The pig made it off the plane but continued to squeal in the Seattle airport.

“Once the pig was off aircraft, another passenger had to push while the two women pulled to get it in the elevator. The whole time, the pig was squealing so loudly everyone in the terminal heard it,” according to the report.

Sea-Tac spokesman Bob Parker said he was aware that a pig had arrived at the airport, but as far as he knew, it did not cause any uproar.

“As outlandish as the Philadelphia Daily News story sounds, there was an incident,” Parker said, adding that most of the action appears to have taken place aboard the plane. “To my knowledge, it (the pig) did not create an incident at our airport.”

~ SattlePI

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Deciding to turn over a new leaf in the new year could do more harm than good, a mental health charity has warned.

Mind has urged people not to feel they must start 2009 armed with resolutions for self-improvement.

The charity said resolutions which focus on issues such as the need to lose weight or job worries create a negative self-image.

And if the plans fail to materialise, that could trigger feelings of failure and inadequacy, the charity said.

Mind chief executive Paul Farmer said focussing on problems or insecurities can lead to feelings of hopelessness, low self-esteem and even mild depression.

~ BBC News

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