Stone Age Pantry

Cavemen didn't eat Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles in Mozambique.

Nebraska

Two pugs ate their last owner. The dogs need a new home.

Gold Drinker

Via IOL: "A British medical journal has published findings saying a mistress of 16th-century French King Henry II may have died from consuming too much drinkable gold."

Taekwondo

Trained monkeys assaulted their master in China.

Limestone Leaf Warbler

Matt Walker, BBC: "A new species of warbler has been discovered in the forests of Vietnam and Laos."

Killer Whales

Orcas

Orcas attacked dolphins off the Australian coast.

(Photo credit: Robert Pittman)

Wedding Volunteers

More than 1,000 followers of a multi-religious sect in India pledged to marry female sex workers.

"They say they are doing so to stop the women from being exploited in brothels," the BBC reports.

Zimbabwe

Via IOL: "Wild pigs living around Harare's international airport were struck by a plane, a month after causing the crash of a just-airborne aircraft there, reports said on Tuesday."

Scotland

University of Glasgow: "Archaeologists from the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen have found proof that prehistoric people laid flowers at the graves of their dead."

Australian Hospital Ship

Brigid Andersen at ABC Online, Australia:

Shipwreck hunters say they may have found the World War II hospital ship the Centaur just days into their search.

A total of 268 people died when the Centaur sank off the southeast Queensland coast in 1943 after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

Chinese Nutcrackers

David Crossland at Spiegel Online: "Low-cost imports of nutcrackers pose a risk to the age-old woodcraft of eastern Germany's Erzgebirge region, famous for its Christmas ornaments."

Snoring Woman

RIA Novosti:

A man in southwest Russia's Samara Region has been jailed for seven years for murdering a woman who snored too loudly, national media said on Tuesday.

Viktor Rudakov, 46, had been drinking with friends at the woman's house on August 13 and was invited to stay the night. But he was unable to get to sleep due to her loud snoring. After failing to wake her up, he took a plank of wood and beat her around the head and body some 30 times.

Sagebrush State

Leslie Kaufman of the New York Times: "The Mustang Ranch’s presence on a parcel of land on the Truckee River kept development at bay, thus improving the chances of restoring the flora and fauna."

Coconut Octopus

Cell Press:

Scientists once thought of tool use as a defining feature of humans. That's until examples of tool use came in from other primates, along with birds and an array of other mammals. Now, a report in the December 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, adds an octopus to the growing list of tool users.

Woolly Mammoths and Ancient Horses

University of Copenhagen: "Woolly mammoths and prehistoric horses grazed on the North American plains for several thousand years longer than hitherto assumed."

Tigers

RIA Novosti: "A total of 59 tigers were killed by poachers in India in 2009, which is over twice the amount killed last year, India's environment ministry said on Monday."

Siemens

Der Spiegel: "The German government is currently investigating whether engineering giant Siemens violated export control laws by shipping high-tech equipment to companies in Iran."

Marten

RIA Novosti: "Some 20,000 houses in Upper Austria were left without electricity after a marten gnawed through an electricity cable, local radio said."

Ned Christie

Cherokee outlaw Ned Christie (1852-1892) died with a gun in each hand.

Juliet Galonska, U.S. National Park Service, Fort Smith National Historic Site, Fort Smith, Arkansas:

With Ned Christie wanted for the murder of a deputy U.S. marshal, lawmen virtually waged a war for his capture, but it would take four years before their efforts met with success. During the months that followed the murder many attempts were made by some of Parker's best marshals to capture Christie but no one was successful in routing him from his heavily guarded stronghold. After an 1889 attempt to burn Ned out, during which he was blinded in his right eye, he constructed a wooden shelter within a natural rock wall on the top of a hill. This was loaded with enough ammunition, food and water to hold out for weeks.

Ned resisted all attempts at capture until twenty-five of the most capable lawmen in frontier history arrived at Christie's shortly after dark on November 1, 1892. They had with them ammunition, several boxes of dynamite, black powder, rifles and a field cannon. At daybreak the firing began! When the deputies began using the cannon, it did little damage except for knocking a few holes in the roof. Finally, they resorted to doubling the powder charge to blast out a wall of the fort. This however split the barrel, putting the cannon out of use. After twelve hours of battle, thirty-eight rounds from the cannon, and some 2,000 rounds of rifle ammunition, the deputies were no closer to capturing Christie.

The men next fashioned a rolling oak-plank shield to allow one deputy to approach the cabin and when close enough, to run forward with six sticks of dynamite. Shortly after midnight, the blast from this dynamite blew out an entire wall of Ned Christie's fort and ignited a fire that by dawn had completely engulfed the cabin. Christie suddenly leaped through the burning cabin and ran toward the posse men firing his two .44s. He was shot down and died shortly thereafter.

Two brief pieces about Christie:

"The Case of Ned Christie"

"The Death of Ned Christie"

Orient Express

NPR:

Van Helsing rode it to his battle with Dracula. James Bond romanced a beautiful Russian aboard it. And Agatha Christie set one of the best-known murders in literary history aboard that train. Now the original Orient Express is itself about to become part of history.

Homeless in America

Recently I had lunch with an Egyptian Air Force officer during his first visit to the United States.

"What suprises you about America?" I asked.

"I didn't expect to see so much poverty," he answered.

* * *

Harry (not is real name) is a homeless American in his early 60s. He is a soft-spoken U.S. Army veteran. This is his story:

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

By Homeless Harry as told to Jungle Trader

Florida didn't work out. I made a lot of friends in Little Havana. But I couldn't see the sharks in the ocean because of my bad eyesight.

And so, I decided to live the life of a hobo, riding with truckers, jumping onto freight trains, and meeting charming and interesting characters. I now know half the ex-cons and homeless folks on the Eastern Seaboard. They call me "Pop."

Eventually I ended up in the one of the cities in the Northeast. My mother's family settled in the area before the Revolutionary War. Some of the dead people in the graveyards knew me. In fact, my parents occupy two of the graves.

I checked into a homeless shelter. The city hasn't changed much since the Great Depression. The food at the soup kitchen is still great.

Daily life at the shelter was a mix of Wood Guthrie in the movie Bound for Glory and Mack and the Boys in John Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row.

I had my new Dell laptop in my waterproof briefcase. My other things were in an Eddie Bauer backpack.

"Look, guys," I told my homeless buddies. "There is an expensive computer in my briefcase. Keep an eye on it for me."

"Will do," they promised.

Nobody ever touched my laptop or other things.

On a Wednesday, social workers from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs showed up at the shelter. "We can't have a Vietnam-era veteran in a homeless shelter," one of them told me. "We're getting you out of here."

"I don't want to leave," I said. "I'm having a good time."

The social workers probably thought I was crazy. They took me to see several doctors at a VA hospital. One of the doctors was a psychiatrist.

For 90 minutes the psychiatrist grilled me. Finally he said, "You're fine. You've come up with a unique way to cope with life."

I gave the psychiatrist's report to the social workers. "See, I told you," I said. "I'm sane. Please take me back to the shelter."

"You're too old to stay at a homeless shelter," one social worker said. "You like trains. We can put you in a transitional apartment in a nice area near railroad tracks. We can address all of your health problems. In addition, we can help you find solutions to your other problems."

I decided to accept the offer. Then Social Security, the state welfare department, and several social service organizations jumped on the bandwagon.

So now I receive food stamps and a government check every month. I have a home, free eyeglasses, free medical care, and a free cell phone. I need a secretary to keep track of all the offers. A charity wants to match my savings to help me buy equipment for a new business.

A few days ago, one of the my homeless pals from the shelter stopped by my apartment. He opened a box and showed me a new lambskin jacket. "Do you like it?" he asked.

"It's beautiful," I said.

He handed the jacket to me. "It gets cold here in the winter, Pop," he said. "The homeless guys at the shelter bought it for you. Enjoy your early Christmas present."

Malayan Emergency

John Gorvett of the New York Times:

On the anniversary of the 1948 killing of 24 unarmed workers by British troops on a rubber plantation north of Kuala Lumpur, the victims’ families are once again calling for a full inquiry and compensation.

Green Dogs

RIA Novosti:

A pack of some 20 stray dogs has turned green after scavenging for food at an illegal dump on the outskirts of Russia's Urals city of Yekaterinburg, police said on Friday.

"Either local residents or a factory have been dumping some kind of chemical waste there," a police spokesman told RIA Novosti, adding that police had asked the local council to take steps to clear up the site.

One of the first people to see the green hounds, believed to be former guard dogs, was Alexei Bukharovsky, from the village of Shuvakish.

"I go past those dogs every day," he said. "They are usually reddish...but then I saw, running along the white snow, an almost completely emerald dog."

"At first I thought someone had been playing a joke," he went on.

Grave Loss

BBC News: "Thieves have stolen the remains of Tassos Papadopoulos, the former president of the Republic of Cyprus, police say."