Seeing double: Indian baby born with four eyes, two mouths and two faces

To some she may seem an oddity, but to one Indian couple their newborn daughter is simply a God reincarnated.
Their as yet un-named four-day-old baby girl was born with two faces, two mouths and four eyes in the rural Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, 50km north east of New Delhi.
Her parents, Vinod and Susham Singh from a village called Sani, said their little girl was "a gift from God".

Excited villagers claim she is the reincarnation of the Indian God Ganesha and celebrated her arrival with clapping, cheering and offerings of gifts and money.
Doctors who delivered the baby said she appeared to be in good health, but said further tests will need to be carried out to determine any long-term health problems she may have.

They are also unable to say if she will be able to eat and function normally.
The excitement surrounding her arrival comes two years after the birth of another little girl, from the poverty stricken region of Bihar, who was born attached to her headless twin.
In a 40 hour operation, doctors successfully removed the lifeless body from Lakshmi Tatma, who was hailed as a reincarnation of Vishnu.
The extraordinary eight-limbed baby was born on the day devoted to the celebration of the four-armed Hindu deity Vishnu.
Since the operation Lakshmi has successfully taken her first steps.
Her mother Poonam Tatma said she believed her daughter was "a miracle".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=534929&in_page_id=1811

Revealed: what the world will look like when we've gone

Welcome to Planet Earth: Population 0.
This is what our world would look like without people.
The images were created to illustrate what would happen if human life ceased tomorrow, if, for whatever reason, mankind was obliterated.
The question it raises is: how long would the remnants of our civilisation remain?

How much would we leave behind? What would an alien visitor learn about us upon landing on our planet a century or more after we had disappeared from it?
The answer, astonishingly, is: almost nothing.
Within a hundred years most traces of our modern-day lives would be so destroyed by weather, corrosion, earth tremors, surviving animals, insects and bacteria that the monuments and hieroglyphics of ancient civilisations would be better preserved than our buildings and our billions of books and electronic records.

An alien visiting Earth might well believe that the last civilisation on the planet were ancient Egyptians.
The prophetic forecast for the longevity of our 21st-century civilisation is contained in research for a TV documentary, Life After People.
And it's not guesswork. The two-hour special uses scientific expertise and understanding of history in order to predict the future.
Principal advisor on the TV programme is a 53-year-old Scot, Gordon Masterton, former president of the Royal Institution of Civil Engineers.
He says: "The lights will start going out around the world almost immediately. The last power will be produced by wind turbines but, after a few weeks, the planet will be plunged into a deep darkness it has not experienced since primitive Man huddled around camp fires."

After only six months, urban areas will begin to be repopulated - by animals, including former domestic pets.

Within 20 years wolves and bears will be the master species, roaming the streets. Any buildings made of wood will start to crumble, especially where termites flourish. But concrete and steel structures will also begin to be affected.
Looking 40 and 50 years into the future, the corrosion of steel, incursion of vegetation roots and effects of the weather mean that modern buildings will start collapsing.
Within a century nearly all automobiles will have rusted away.
Eventually glass buildings will topple, stone buildings crumble; successive freezing and thawing would turn streets to rubble, ground water will rise, underground railways flood, sewers crack and lightning will ignite overgrown grasses, engulfing cities in flames.
Central London, of course, will be largely under water. Without power, the Thames Barrier will leave the city defenceless.
Some myths are exposed. For instance, with no heating in buildings, the "invincible" cockroach would succumb to the cold; and rats would starve or become lunch for hawks and falcons.

Ultimately, the larger animals would take over again: within 100 years, the half-a-million surviving African elephants would have multiplied to their pre-colonial population of ten million or so.
Livestock such as cows and sheep will be killed off by more aggressive predators.
Meanwhile, the most precious records of our history and culture which are stored in archives that are temperature and humidity controlled, will also vanish.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, remained intact for 2,000 years in desert caves.
"Rescued" and placed in a modern environment - but without the power to protect them - they wouldn't last 100.

Almost all of the records of our human experience - books, photographs, electronic data - will fade away, leaving little evidence that we ever existed.
This apocalyptic forecast is justified in Life After People by astrophysicist and author David Brin, who says: "Every civilisation has its tales of Armageddon or apocalypse, but we are the first generation that could, by deliberate action, cause its own doom."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=534190&in_page_id=1770

Woman rescued after sitting on boyfriend's toilet for TWO YEARS

{see i'm blogging}

A woman had to be rescued by emergency services after being stuck on her boyfriend's toilet for two years.
The 35-year-old's skin had grown around the seat and her legs had wasted away.
Her boyfriend, 36, would bring her food and water and ask her whether she was ready to come out of the bathroom.
She would reply, "maybe tomorrow", according to police in Kansas, U.S.
He finally called in police and medics who found her on the toilet with her jogging bottoms pulled down to mid-thigh.
She was "somewhat disoriented" and her legs looked like they had wasted away, Sheriff Bryan Whipple said.
"She said that she didn't need any help, that she was okay and did not want to leave," he said.
"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital.
"The hospital removed it."
Mr Whipple said investigators were deciding whether any charges should be filed against the man.
He added: "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom.
"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body.
"It is hard to imagine - I still have a hard time imagining it myself."
The boyfriend called police on 27 February to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend" but never explained why it took him two years to call.
Police have not identified the couple, of Ness City, Kansas.
Neighbour James Ellis said the woman had a difficult childhood after her mother died, adding: "I don't think anybody can make any sense out of it."
"It really doesn't surprise me," Ellis said.
"What surprises me is somebody wasn't called in a bit earlier."


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=532968&in_page_id=1811