Dog-gone it! Canine gets head stuck in wall

California animal rescue officers were called in after an eight-month old German Shepherd dog mysteriously got his head stuck in a wall this week.

Stricken pooch Rebel was found whimpering with his head sticking out one side of the 18-inch thick wall in Desert Hot Springs, east of Los Angeles, while his body remained firmly on the other.

'My initial reaction was, 'Wow, how?d he get in there?' said Riverside County Animal Services Sergeant James Huffman. "And why is there a hole that big in the wall?"

"It was a very odd situation .. It was uncertain if he was chasing another animal, or just curious," he added.

After checking that Rebel could breathe comfortably, Huffman and fellow officer Hector Palafox took up position on either side of the block wall.

"One officer worked the dog?s head from one side of the wall, while the other officer worked the dog?s body on the other side," said a statement by the Department of Animal Services in Riverside County.

Palafox "pushed the dog?s ears back to ensure the dog would not suffer during the rescue attempt," it added, saying that it took 30 minutes and some "minor nudging" to free the trapped canine.

Huffman said Rebel helped a lot. "He let us know if we were pushing too hard - but he kept working right along with us ... You could see his hind legs stiffen to assist in the direction we were going.

"He knew we were there to save him."

After the dazed dog's release, the officers suggested he be kept away from the wall behind a gate, while also advising the owner to put some chicken wire over the unfortunately-sized hole.

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Gran, 103, is 'world's oldest Facebook user'

A 103-year-old grandmother is believed to be the world's oldest Facebook user.

Lillian Lowe, from Tenby in Pembrokeshire, regularly keeps her online friends updated about her life using her iPad.

And being signed up to the social network also enables her to keep track of what her seven grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren are up to.

Mrs Lowe, who is just two months away from her 104th birthday, took the oldest Facebook user title following the death of 104-year-old Ivy Bean in July.

Despite some of the Facebook goings on that would shock many her age, Lillian says she isn't fazed by any of her grandchildren's "antics".

She said: "I have seen a few things over the years, so nothing really shocks me these days anyway."

Mrs Lowe, who logs on several times a week, uses her 47-year-old grandson Steve's iPad but is very keen to get her own.

The retired hotelier and businesswoman says it's "just lovely" to be able to see all the latest photographs and messages from her large family.

She said: "I can recommend it for any grandparents to keep in touch with their family without ringing all the time."

While saying her online habit is "exciting" the cyber centenarian also admitted that it can be a "dreadful waste of time".

She said: "I'm sure there are lots of other things I should be doing rather than playing on a computer."

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Student Finds Time-travelling Coin with Next Year's Date On It

Student Sarah Legg is hoping to make a mint by cashing in on a very unusual 50p coin she has found - with next year's date on it.

17-year-old Sarah of Fareham, Hants, was shocked when she saw the coin marked with the 2011 date stamped on it - which she got in change as she was buying lunch.

Sarah, who is training to be a forensic scientist, was buying lunch at at Fareham College when she spotted the temporal anomaly.

She said: 'I was just getting some food at college and thought the coin looked very shiny, so I took a closer look. I thought I had gone into the future with the markings it had. Where the date it is made was, it said 2011.

'I was a bit shocked to be honest and showed all my friends. It looks like the Royal Mint have made a blunder.'

Sarah hopes to cash in on the find so she can help pay off her University fees.

Coin experts are perplexed by the find, one of 29 designs made by the public for the Royal Mint ahead of the London Olympic Games in 2012.

Coin specialist Rob Davies, of Portsmouth, Hants, said: 'It is very unusual and special and the young girl should keep it. I could not put a price on how much they cost but it is very special.

Royal Mint spokesman Nick Scargill said: 'It is unusual but they are perfectly legal tender. It is very special.

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Emirates Palace Erects $11m Christmas Tree

It holds a total of 181 diamonds, pearls, emeralds, sapphires and other precious stones.

Christmas came in extravagant fashion to the emirate of Abu Dhabi as a glitzy hotel unveiled a bejewelled Christmas tree valued at more than $11 million.

It is the "most expensive Christmas tree ever," with a "value of over $11 million," said Hans Olbertz, general manager of Emirates Palace hotel, at its inauguration.

The 13-metre (40-foot) faux evergreen, located in the gold leaf-bedecked rotunda of the hotel, is decorated with silver and gold bows, ball-shaped ornaments and small white lights.

But the necklaces, earrings and other jewellery draped around the tree's branches are what give it a record value.

It holds a total of 181 diamonds, pearls, emeralds, sapphires and other precious stones, said Khalifa Khouri, owner of Style Gallery, which provided the jewellery.

"The tree itself is about 10,000 dollars," Olbertz said. "The jewellery has a value of over 11 million dollars - I think 11.4, 11.5."

This will probably be an entry into the Guinness book of world records, Olbertz said, adding that Emirates Palace planned to contact the organisation about the tree which is to stay until the end of the year.

The hotel has had a Christmas tree up in previous years, but this year "we said we have to do something different," and the hotel's marketing team hatched the plan, said Olbertz.

The tree is not the first extravagant offering from Emirates Palace - a massive, dome-topped hotel sitting amid fountains and carefully manicured lawns.

The hotel, which bills itself as seven-star, in February introduced a package for a seven-day stay priced at one million dollars.

Takers of the package have a private butler and a chauffeur driven Maybach luxury car at their disposal during their stay, as well as a private jet available for trips to other countries in the region.

And in May, the hotel opened a gold vending machine, becoming the first place outside Germany to install "gold to go, the world's first gold vending machine," said Ex Oriente Lux AG, the German company behind the machine.

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Michael Jackson’s Clothes Sell For Millions At Auction

A glove and hat worn by Michael Jackson sold for over $400,000 at auction on Saturday, December 4.

The items, a fedora which sold for $72,000 and a glove which reached $330,000, were part of the star’s wardrobe for his ‘Bad’ tour in 1980s and were sold through Julien’s Auctions as part of their ‘Icons and Idols’ sale.

A jacket signed by the ‘Thriller’ hitmaker, who died from acute Propofol intoxication aged 50 in June 2009, was bought for $96,000.

While the Michael Jackson collection, featuring over 100 items from the star’s life and career including a custom-made costume for his friend and companion Bubbles the chimp – took centre stage at the auction in Beverly Hills, a number of other items generated huge interest at the sale.

Late Beatles legend John Lennon’s gold-braided military jacket – made famous in an iconic 1966 Life magazine photo shoot – reached $240,000, exceeding its estimated word of $150,000 and $200,000.

An X-ray of Albert Einstein’s brain went for $38,750, while a pair of Marilyn Monroe’s empty prescription bottles, sold for $18,750.

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Ancient Egyptian Lake Discovered from Space

American researchers have said they discovered the remnants of a massive lake in Egypt as large as one of the Great Lakes. The discovery of the over 100,000 years old lake was confirmed from space shuttle imagery.

ScienceNews.org reported that the images revealed a lake wider than Lake Erie that once existed a few miles west of the current Nile River.

From the time it first appeared about 250,000 years ago, the lake in Egypt’s Tushka region would have grown and shrunk periodically until finally drying up about 80,000 years ago, researchers say.

Knowing where such ancient bodies of water were located helps archaeologists understand the kind of environment encountered by Homo Sapiens migrating out of Africa, study leader Ted Maxwell, a geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, said in statements to reporters.

“You realize that hey, this place was full of really large lakes when people were wandering into the rest of the world,” he says.

Desert winds have eroded and sands have buried much of the region’s landscape, says Maxine Kleindienst, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto, but planned field studies will search for ancient shorelines suggested by the radar images.

Today Egyptians rely almost exclusively on the Nile and its annual floods for their water.

The ancient lakes, Maxwell says, suggest that such flooding was already a fixture a quarter million years ago.

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