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Something to really avoid are Comfort Inns, known as the DisComfort Inn by any patrons.

It was an unlikely fashion accessory but the arrival of a jewel-encrusted beetle at a US border post certainly bugged customs officers.

A woman crossing from Mexico at Brownsville, Texas, declared the live insect decorated with blue and gold as she drove up to enter the state but she did not have the right paperwork.

Pest control measures meant officers promptly confiscated the item worn as a brooch on the traveller's sweater and sent it for further inspection. The beetle was attached to the woman's clothing by a gold chain and safety pin.

The story of how the six-legged fashion victim was intercepted came in a press release and video from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), part of the security machine responsible for protecting the country from terrorists and a body more used to trumpeting the seizure of cocaine, marijuana, hidden cash or fugitives from justice.

"CBP officers seized the decorative clothing accessory and sent the live beetle to the Plant Inspection Station at Los Indios International Bridge for further identification. Because the traveller declared the insect no monetary civil penalty was issued," the official account declared.

"Moving live plant pests in any form, including pets, imported into or exported from the United States must be declared to CBP on PPQ form 526 declaration for importation or exportation, must be properly labelled and packaged prior to release by CBP."

Animal rights campaigners were less forgiving, reported the south Texan newspaper The Monitor.. Jaime Zalac, for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,said: "Beetles may not be as cute and cuddly as puppies and kittens, but they have the same capacity to feel pain and suffer. It's ironic. We spend hours each week helping kind people find humane ways to relocate lost insects such as ants, bees and roaches that wander into their homes. People feel so good about not hurting them, while this woman paid someone to mutilate them."

Beetle species have proved popular subjects for jewellery for centuries and attaching it to live beetles is apparently not uncommon in Mexico. Jackie Kennedy is said to have been given one with emeralds.

Experts have told of their surprise after witnessing a rare "divorce" between a pair of swans at a Gloucestershire wildfowl sanctuary.
The Bewick's swans have returned to winter at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre at Slimbridge - but both have brought new partners.
It is only the second time in more than 40 years that a "separation" has been recorded at the centre.
Staff have described the new couplings as "bizarre".
It is not unheard of for the birds, which usually mate for life, to find a new mate but it tends to be because one of the pair has died, they said.
During the past four decades 4,000 pairs of Bewick's swans have been studied at Slimbridge, with only one previous couple moving on to find new partners.
Normally loyal
First suspicions of the rare event were raised when male swan Sarindi turned up in the annual migration from Arctic Russia without his partner of two years Saruni and with a new female - newly-named Sarind - in tow.
The pair's arrival led conservationists to fear the worst for Saruni.
But shortly afterwards Saruni arrived at the wetlands site - also with a new mate, Surune.
And after observing them, the experts discovered the old relationship had ended and new ones had begun.

Julia Newth, wildlife health research officer at Slimbridge, said the situation had taken staff by surprise.
She said swans tended to have "real loyalties to one another" and long partnerships.
"As long as they are both still alive, they will try to stay together. If they have a change of mate it is perhaps because of mortality, not necessarily through choice," she said.
In this case, however, both swans and their new partners are now over-wintering in close proximity on the lake at Slimbridge.
Ms Newth said the old pair had not acknowledged each other with any signs of recognition or greeting - even though they are occupying the same part of the small lake.
As for why they may have split, she said: "Failure to breed could be a possible reason, as they had been together for a couple of years but had never brought back a cygnet, but it is difficult to say for sure."
Bewick's swans are the smallest and rarest of the three species found in the UK and each individual can be identified by their unique bill pattern.

Giant squid invade Calif. waters, entice anglers AP - Tuesday, February 2Send IM Story Print
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – Giant squid weighing up to 60 pounds have invaded the California waters off Newport Beach and are being caught by sport fishermen by the hundreds.

The squid showed up last week and anglers started booking twilight fishing trips over the weekend to catch them.

The animals weigh between 20 and 40 pounds, but a few fishermen have reeled in 60-pound creatures.

The Humboldt squid is also called the jumbo squid or jumbo flying squid and squirts ink to protect itself.

They can grow up to 100 pounds and 6 feet long and follow food sources. The squid have also recently been spotted off San Diego, Oregon and Washington.

Robert Woodbury with Newport Landing Sportfishing says anglers in Orange County have caught about 400 of the big squid since Friday night.

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Information from: The Orange County Register, http://www.ocregister.com

Police charged a 37-year-old woman with assault after she hit Fisheries and Oceans Minister Gail Shea in the face with a pie Monday at an event in Burlington, Ont.

Shea was delivering a speech at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters to open the Aquatic Life Research Facility when Emily McCoy of New York City stood up in the front row and planted the white cream pie squarely in Shea's face.

"Shame on you, Gail Shea," McKoy said before making a reference to the "bloody seal hunt."

The animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said McKoy was a PETA member and she carried out the incident to protest against what the group calls "the government's ill-advised sanction of the seal slaughter."

PETA also posted a video of the incident with commentary on its website.

Campaign manager Lindsay Rajt told Canwest News Service the group did not organize the incident, but The Canadian Press was reporting the group claimed responsibility.

The pie aimed at Shea was apparently made of tofu, though the fisheries minister told the Hamilton Spectator that it "tasted like shaving cream."

Shea did not require medical attention and returned to the podium after wiping the pie from her face.

"We're certainly sorry for that delay, but unfortunately these types of incidents come with the type of business that I'm in," she said.

"But back to the business at hand," she said.

Pie throwing was a more popular form of political protest in Canada a decade ago, with former prime minister Jean Chrétien and then cabinet minister Stéphane Dion both getting hit in separate incidents.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-isl...l#ixzz0eOvRajNI

PETA protester hit with pie at Harper event

A seal hunt protester with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was pied in St. John's on Friday by someone dressed up in a Newfoundland dog costume.

The incident happened on a street corner in the downtown, while people were waiting for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was in the city for a speech to the construction industry association.

PETA had earlier warned that it would protest the Canadian seal hunt during the Harper event.

Someone dressed in a seal suit accompanied the protester, Emily Lavender, 21, of Vancouver Island, B.C.

However, in a twist, it turned out the person wearing the outfit was an employee of K-Rock — a private FM radio station in St. John's — who contacted PETA in the morning and offered to help with the protest.

Shortly after the protest began, Jason Mills unzipped the costume and started denouncing PETA and its protests in front of the cameras.

Lavender then put the suit on herself and started to continue the protest when a van pulled up and a person dressed in a Newfoundland dog costume jumped out, pulled off the head of Lavender's costume and pushed a cream pie into her face.

"He walks over with a pie and after a brief scuffle with this woman, who was putting on the seal suit, he pied her in the face and went away," David Cochrane of CBC News reported from the scene.

After she composed herself, Lavender told reporters: "That's OK, I'll take a pie in the face any day to save a seal."

On Monday, PETA received national attention when one of its members hit Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea with a pie during a public event in Ontario.

With files from The Canadian Press

Saudi Arabia rejects Pakistani diplomat because his name means “huge penis” in Arabic


This is the kind of story you can’t make up. Akbar Zeb is a Pakistani diplomat with a big problem. In Arabic, his Urdu name sounds more like the name of a porn star.

Fox News reports the flaccid details:

The Arabic transaltion of Akbar Zeb to “biggest dick” has overwhelmed Saudi officials who have refused to allow his post there.

Zeb has run into this problem before when Pakistan tried to appoint him as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, where he was rejected for the same reason, according to Foreign Policy.

We must admit that we are surprised to learn that Akbar Zeb means “big prick.” We thought that’s what Rahm Emanuel meant.

Russia farmer convicted of planting landmines in field

A Russian farmer has been convicted of planting landmines around his field to ward off trespassers.

Alexander Skopintsev, from the eastern region of Primorye near China's border, laid the three devices on his land after building them in his garage.

The 73-year-old had apparently been concerned about the frequent theft of potatoes from his farm.

He was arrested after an intruder set off one of the tripwire-style mines in August and was injured in the blast.

Skopintsev was convicted for the unlawful construction and storage of weapons and received a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence.

"Skopintsev testified that he had prepared the explosive devices to protect his garden against thieves," regional prosecutors said in a statement reported by RIA-Novosti news agency.

Got to love the Russians!

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An Indian man has ben told by doctors that all his internal organs are back-to-front in what is thought to be the only living case of "situs inversus".

Doctors believe that the 64-year-old could be the only man in the world whose internal organs are in the mirror opposite position of where they should be.

Ashok Shivnani was about to have surgery to remove a tumour on his kidney in Mumbai when doctors realised most of his chest and abdominal organs and many blood vessels were on the opposite side of his body.

The condition is known as "situs inversus".

In Mr Shivnani's case, they discovered the aorta and inferior vena cava, which pump clean blood in and impure blood from the heart were reversed. He also has two livers.

"While operating we were supposed to know the exact location of everything that we are going to touch. But in this case we were not sure which veins were entering where," Dr Prakash Sanzgiri told the Times of India.

Surgeons also found he had no small intestine and three vessels supplying blood to his infected kidney.

More surprising is the fact that Mr Shivnani had survived two hernia operations and been examined for chronic lung disease without learning of his unique anatomy. "Never in my life did I know that my body was different," he said.

OU professor submerses laptop in liquid nitrogen, smashes it to prove a point

Hey, students -- pay attention. Not to us, mind you, but to the syllabus provided by your professor. Kieran Mullen, a physics professor at the University of Oklahoma, has a fairly strict rule about gadgets in class: there won't be any, ever, under any circumstances. Balk all you want, but if you sign up for this guy's class, you'll be flipping your phone to "off" and leaving your laptop in the dormitory. And if you try to blaze your own path and slip that netbook into the back row, you might leave bitterly disappointed. As you'll see clearly in the video past the break, Mr. Mullen sought to make a visual point that laptops weren't allowed in class (he calls them "a distraction"), and while it seems that the whole stunt was premeditated, most students acknowledged that his point was driven home. In short, he took a defunct machine, submerged in liquid nitrogen, and proceeded to make the following statement:

"This is just liquid nitrogen, so it alone won't hurt the computer. But this will."

I find it ironic that someone filmed that |: