Desmond Hatchett's - man aged 29 has fathered 21 children with 11 different women

A man aged 29 has fathered 21 children with 11 different women, it emerged yesterday.

Desmond Hatchett's brood came to light after authorities in Tennessee in the U.S. took him to court for non-payment of child support.

He has apparently set a U.S. record but said: 'It just happened.'

He added that he would not have any more children. 'I'm done. I'll say I'm done,' he said.

Hatchett, who earns a minimal wage, told TV reporters he knows the names and ages of all his offspring.

Their ages range from newborn to 11 years old.

Authorities in Knoxville said they plan to take half of his monthly salary to pay for the youngsters but officials said that would work out to just over £1 a week for each.

His lawyer Keith Pope said: 'The children can't all be supported by Desmond, so the state of Tennessee has had to step in.'

Many Knoxville residents called for him to be castrated.

He even boasted of fathering four children by different women in the same year.

Hatchett's name appeared on court documents 11 times representing 15 of his 21 children.

U.S. authorities are now braced for more women coming forward to claim Hatchett is the father of their children after he appeared on local TV.

He said the women he was involved with all knew he had other children.

One mother, who has two children with Hatchett, said she should get £44 a month but rarely receives any child support.

'It's frustrating, but usually, when I ask he gives it to me,' she said.

Authorities in Knoxville ordered Hatchett to court to explain how he intends to pay child support.

He arrived for the hearing with just over £300.

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Russian navy ship accidentally shells village near St. Petersburg

A Russian naval ship carrying out target practice off the Russian Baltic Sea coast accidentally rained shell fragments on a village near St. Petersburg, officials said Friday.

Nobody was injured when the fragments from shells fired by an anti-submarine ship in the Gulf of Finland fell on houses in the village of Zelyonaya Roshcha, close to the border with Finland, regional military prosecutor Igor Lebedev said. An investigation has begun, Lebedev said.

Russia's NTV television said that the ship fired its six-barrel anti-aircraft gun near the shore, and the exploding shells rained shards of metal on the village. It showed metal fragments several centimeters (inches) long which were spread all over the area.

"Some people thought that a war started," one villager, Yuri Mikhailov, was quoted as telling the RIA Novosti news agency. "It was like a hail of steel."

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Leech Lives in Chinese Man’s Nose for 5 Years

A Chinese man who has been suffering from a bleeding nose for years is feeling much better after a 10cm long leech was removed from his nose, which had been living there for five years, reports China Daily.

According to the daily, the 73 year old man named Fu, who is from a village in the south of the country, decided to visit a village doctor after his nose bled for ten days in a row.

Fu thinks that the leech entered his nose five years ago, when the bleeding and blocked nose started, maybe at the moment when he drank water from a spring in the mountains, whilst he was gathering herbs.

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Lujo virus, a new hemorrhagic fever virus from Southern Africa

A new member of the arenavirus family, Lujo virus, has been identified in patients who died during an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in late 2008. Sequence analysis reveals that Lujo is a new arenavirus, genetically distinct from other members of the family which includes Lassa virus.

A patient with unexplained hemorrhagic fever was identified in Zambia in September 2008. After transfer to Sandton for further care, four health care workers involved with the case also became ill. The first four patients died, and the fifth survived after treatment with ribavirin.

Sequence analysis of total liver and serum RNA from the patients revealed the presence of a new member of the arenavirus family. The virus has been provisionally named Lujo based on its origin in Lusaka, Zambia, and Johannesburg, South Africa. Phylogenetic trees were prepared from the viral genome sequences (example at left). These trees show that Lujo virus branches off the root of the Old World arenaviruses. This analysis suggests that Lujo virus is a member of a novel genetic lineage, and is distinct from previously characterized viruses in this family.

It’s not clear how the index case was infected by Lujo virus. Most arenavirus infections are acquired by contact with infected rodent excreta, by inhalation of dust or aerosolized virus-containing particles, or ingestion of contaminated foods. At least one arenavirus might be transmitted from bats, and this possibility should not be ruled out for Lujo virus. The index patient likely transmitted the infection to the four health care workers via aerosols or infected body fluids.

There are several noteworthy aspects of this emerging story. First, it is clear that pyrosequencing can be used to rapidly identify new pathogens. In this case, sequences were obtained within 72 hours of receipt of clinical specimens. Lujo virus appears to be highly lethal in humans, based on the deaths of 4 out of 5 of the infected patients. However the number of infections identified so far is small, and the lethality ratio might fall as additional infections are studied. Now that the sequence of Lujo virus is known, reagents can be produced which will enable rapid identification of new cases by more conventional diagnostic approaches such as polymerase chain reaction. Lujo is a new member of the arenavirus family and is genetically distinct from both Old and New World arenaviruses. Why it has just appeared in humans is not known, but possible reasons include the more frequent contact between humans and wild animal species, and better and more aggressive detection methods. It is likely that a virus closely related to Lujo is present in either rodents or bats but has not been previously detected. As we have said many times before, the zoonotic pool is very deep.

I am struck by similarities between the events surrounding the discovery of Lujo virua and Lassa virus in 1969. In both outbreaks, Columbia University Medical center was involved, and a nurse who was infected by the index patient survived as a consequence of antiviral therapy.

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Woman found her son on Facebook after 27 Years

A woman whose three-year-old son was abducted and taken to live in Hungary has been reunited with him 27 years later after finding his name on Facebook.

Avril Grube last saw Gavin when his father took him on an outing to Blackpool Zoo. That was in 1982.

Instead of going to the zoo, however, Joseph Paros took the boy to Budapest in defiance of a court order.

Despite appeals via the Hungarian Embassy in London and the British Embassy in Budapest, and an appeal to Margaret Thatcher, then the Prime Minister, Mrs Grube heard nothing more of her son.

Then last October, her sister, Beryl Wilson, typed the name Gavin Paros into Google and found a link to someone of that name on the social networking site Facebook.

A frustrating wait followed. With more than 200 million users, there was a possibility that the Facebook member merely shared the name with Mrs Grube’s son.

It was several weeks before Mr Paros, now a 30-year-old father of three, checked his Facebook page and found the message from his aunt. Mother and son were reunited at 4am on Thursday after her husband Jeff picked him up from Gatwick and drove him to their home in Poole, Dorset. Mrs Grube, 61, who is partially disabled after a stroke, said: “I couldn’t sleep, I just sat waiting for him to arrive. Even though it has been nearly 30 years, when I first saw him I recognised him. He has my eyes.

“I was so overcome and just said ‘my beautiful son’ over and over again. He was very quiet and overwhelmed. We just hugged each other. It is the happiest day of my life, there are almost no words to describe it.”

The pair managed to communicate, although Mr Paros has forgotten all the English he knew as a boy and Mrs Grube does not speak Hungarian.

Mrs Grube, who has three other children, has yet to meet her daughter-in-law, Sylvia, and three grandchildren Anastasia, 10, Thomas, 7, and Angelina, 6. She hopes they will decide to move to Britain.

Mrs Wilson, 59, had spent the best part of three decades helping her sister trace her son. Because Hungary was a Communist state in 1982 on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain it made the task of tracing a three-year-old boy virtually impossible for a single mother in Liverpool. Appeals for help through official channels fell on deaf ears.

Mrs Wilson, who still lives in Liverpool, said: “Gavin’s father had visitation rights and said he was going to the zoo. Naturally, my sister was devastated. We didn’t have people around us to tell us where to go or who to speak to. We tried our MP and wrote to Margaret Thatcher but nobody was interested or wanted to help.

“Avril endured many sleepless nights, not knowing if Gavin was alive or dead. She didn’t cope very well and had a terrible time. She has a big heart and loves her children very much. As a result her own health has suffered.”

While Mrs Wilson was trying to trace Mr Paros through the internet, he had been trying to find his English family after the death of his father in 2006. Mrs Wilson said: “I tried online electoral rolls to check if Gavin had moved back to Britain, and I tried Friends Reunited, but didn’t get anywhere.

“Then one day last October I put his name into Facebook and found him. I e-mailed him but it took a while for him to respond and when he did he gave me his phone numbers.

“I called my sister when I heard back from Gavin and told her to sit down as I had some news. All I heard after that was screaming.”

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3-Year-old girl shot and kill her 2-Year-old brother

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- A 2-year-old boy is dead and it appears that his 3-year-old sister accidentally shot him in the chest, according to the Bakersfield Police Department.

The accidental shooting happened around 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, in the 4200 block of Parkwood Court.

Ruben Soto III, 2, had a gunshot wound to his chest when BPD officers arrived, Soto was taken to Kern Medical Center, but later died.

According to the BPD, the children's mother was in another area of the apartment when the 3-year-old girl apparently grabbed a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun from under her parents bed and accidentally shot her brother.

The neighborhood was in shock.

"It's pretty shocking, you know, parents having a gun when kids can get to it and it's loaded," said Bobby Ortiz.

"I don't know if there's another word to describe it, it's just a tragedy," said Sgt. Greg Terry of the BPD. "It's so important that if you're going to have firearms in your possession, make sure they're stored safely, so that incidents like this don't occur."

According to Terry, if a firearm is in a home where children can reasonably access the weapon and cause great bodily injury or death, it is a crime.

The BPD is still investigating just how the young girl may have gotten the weapon.

The children's father was at work at the time of the shooting.

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Quake killed four in Honduras

Tegucigalpa - A strong quake measuring at least 7.1 points struck offshore from the Central American country of Honduras on Thursday, killing at least four people and injuring dozens, local authorities said. Marcos Burgos, head of the Permanent Contingency Commission (Copeco), the Honduran civil defence agency, told the television channel Televicentro that the number of injured is rising, beyond the four deaths, as is the number of homes destroyed by the quake.

Moreover, he noted that the country's communications infrastructure suffered damages, so that the real magnitude of the quake's effects remained unknown.

The first confirmed quake death was that of a 15-year-old boy, who was killed when his house collapsed in Pineda de La Lima, 265 kilometres north of the capital Tegucigalpa, rescuers said.

Burgos noted that several fires had also been reported.

Dozens of people were injured in several locations, while hundreds of houses were reportedly in ruins.

The quake also damaged churches, a major bridge and caused power cuts.

US seismology officials put the strength of the quake at 7.1 points, but the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said it measured 7.3 points.

Dozens of people were injured in San Pedro Sula in the north, several of them seriously.

A bridge known as La Democracia collapsed in El Progreso, cutting traffic.

Several churches were destroyed in the department of Santa Barbara near the Guatemalan border and in Comayagua in the centre of the country, Carlos Gonzalez of Copeco said.

Several regions were without electricity, drinking water and mobile phone services.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a warning to Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and other Caribbean areas except for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

However, only government agencies had the authority to take decisions on official alerts, the centre said.

The 30-second quake was caused by a collision between the Caribbean and North American plates, said seismology expert Gonzalo Cruz from the Honduras National Autonomous University.

US seismology officials said the quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometres and some 320 kilometres north-east of Tegucigalpa.

The quake was followed by up to five aftershocks. The extent of the damage in neighbouring countries was not yet known.

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Bible stops bullet and saves pastor's life

Buenos Aires - A Bible stopped a bullet and saved a pastor's life in an attempted mugging in Argentina's Mendoza province, the news agency DyN reported Thursday, citing police sources. When the protestant minister was unable to produce any money - he only had a few pesos on him in addition to his Bible - one of the two muggers lost his cool and shot him from point-blank range.

The pastor held up his Bible to protect himself and the hard cover stopped the bullet.

The victim suffered only minor injuries. The two muggers fled the scene.

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UFO crashed into Tunguska meteor to save Earth

Did a UFO deliberately crash into a meteor to save Earth 100 years ago? That's what one Russian scientist is claiming.

Dr. Yuri Labvin, president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists that an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into the planet above Siberia on June 30, 1908.

The result was was the Tunguska event, a massive blast estimated at 15 megatons that downed 80 million trees over nearly 100 square miles. Eyewitnesses reported a bright light and a huge shock wave, but the area was so sparsely populated no one was killed.

Most scientists think the blast was caused by a meteorite exploding several miles above the surface. But Labvin thinks quartz slabs with strange markings found at the site are remnants of an alien control panel, which fell to the ground after the UFO slammed into the giant rock.

"We don't have any technologies that can print such kind of drawings on crystals," Labvin told the Macedonian International News Agency. "We also found ferrum silicate that can not be produced anywhere, except in space."

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Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate

President Obama is expected to announce late this week that he will create a "cyber czar," a senior White House official who will have broad authority to develop strategy to protect the nation's government-run and private computer networks, according to people who have been briefed on the plan.

The adviser will have the most comprehensive mandate granted to such an official to date and will probably be a member of the National Security Council but will report to the national security adviser as well as the senior White House economic adviser, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are not final.

The announcement will coincide with the long-anticipated release of a 40-page report that evaluates the government's cybersecurity initiatives and policies. The report is intended to outline a "strategic vision" and the range of issues the new adviser must handle, but it will not delve into details, administration officials told reporters last month.

Cybersecurity "is vitally important, and the government needs to be coordinated on this," a White House official said Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The report give conclusions and next steps. It's trying to steer us in the right direction."

The document will not resolve the politically charged issue of what role the National Security Agency, the premier electronic surveillance agency, will have in protecting private-sector networks. The issue is a key concern in policy circles, and experts say it requires a full and open debate over legal authorities and the protection of citizens' e-mails and phone calls. The Bush administration's secrecy in handling its Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, most of which was classified, hindered such a debate, privacy advocates have said.

The White House's role will be to oversee the process, formulate policy and coordinate agencies' roles, and will not be operational, administration officials have said.

Obama was briefed a week ago and signed off on the creation of the position, the sources said. But as of Friday, discussions were continuing as to what rank and title the adviser would have. The idea is to name someone who can "pick up the phone and contact the president directly, if need be," an administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Obama pledged during his presidential campaign to elevate the issue of cybersecurity to a "top priority" and to appoint a national cybersecurity adviser "who will report directly to me."

Having the adviser report to both the national security and economic advisers suggests that the White House is seeking to ensure a balance between homeland security and economic concerns, the sources said. It also indicates an effort to quell an internal political battle in which Lawrence H. Summers, the senior White House economic adviser, is pushing for the National Economic Council to have a key role in cybersecurity to ensure that efforts to protect private networks do not unduly threaten economic growth, the sources said.

The report suggests that although it is a key government responsibility to help secure private-sector networks, regulation should be the last resort, the sources said. The report touts the concept of public-private partnerships to protect nongovernmental systems. It discusses the need to provide incentives for greater data sharing and risk management, and to use the procurement process to drive greater security, they said.

The report recommends that members be appointed to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent executive branch agency created by Congress in 2007 to ensure that privacy concerns are considered in the implementation of counterterrorism policies and laws. The report suggests that the board's mandate expressly include cybersecurity, the sources said.

The document is based on a 60-day review of cyber policies, led by Melissa Hathaway, the interim White House cybersecurity adviser and former intelligence official who is a contender for the new position. During that review, Hathaway's team had dozens of meetings with representatives from industry, academia and civil liberties groups, and received more than 100 papers.

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Australian student accidentally discovered wins of $10 million on lottery

PERTH, Australia—An Australian student worried about her parents' money problems rifled through a pile of her lottery tickets Thursday and discovered that she had won 13 million Australian dollars ($10 million) 10 months ago, a state lottery agency said.

The student, living in the west coast city of Perth, received the winning ticket for a draw on July 22 last year as a gift from her father, Western Australia state agency Lotterywest said.

She had been unaware that it would have expired after 12 months, it said in a statement.

"I woke up this morning worried about our finances. Something made me think to check the tickets and I thought that if I win something, then I could help mom and dad out," Lotterywest quoted her as saying. She declined to be identified by name.

"The people close to me will be looked after and I might give some to research or a charity of some kind. It's nice to have this much to fulfill my dreams and the dreams of the people around me," she told the agency.

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British spies plan to party like 007 when MI6 turns 100

HUNDREDS of British spies will step out of the shadows later this year when they hold a ball to celebrate MI6’s centenary.


The gala event will take place in October – at a secret location of course.

In theory the celebration is being kept hush-hush by the Secret Intelligence Service. But details are beginning to leak out from its fortress-like headquarters in London.

The event will be a strictly Black Tie affair and wives and girlfriends will be invited to ensure that MI6’s predominantly male staff have someone to dance with.

Whether there will be martinis, roulette tables and a car park full of Aston Martin DB5s remains to be seen.

However, with the British economy straining under the weight of the recession, the organisation is keen to make clear that its agents are paying for tickets to the event from their own pockets.

MI6 has taken various steps in recent years aimed at demystifying the profession and becoming more approachable.

In 2007, two secret agents gave the first “on the record interview” with the media, telling the BBC that they were not like James Bond and dismissing claims that their lives were like the TV drama series Spooks.

MI6’s head of recruitment said: “This is the biggest myth at the service. We do not have a licence to kill, we do not carry Berettas. That’s simply not true.”

A female operational officer also provided an insight into aspects of her work with foreign agents: “We absolutely never threaten or blackmail or coerce people to work with us. That is the most counter-productive tactic you can ever use,” she said.

Last year MI6 broke with tradition by recruiting the next generation of spies through the social networking site Facebook, having already issued a series of newspaper and radio adverts.

The three pop-up adverts appealed to university graduates, young professionals who were bored with their jobs and even those who sought a place in global history.

One read: “A career in world events? Help influence world events, protect the UK. Operational officer roles collecting and analysing global intelligence.”

MI6 was founded in October 1909 in a joint initiative by the Admiralty and the War Office to control secret intelligence operations amid deep concern about Germany’s military expansion.

Today the organisation says it fights “regional instability, terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and illegal narcotics”.

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Zone of Silence in Mexico

There is much about our world that we still do not understand. Scientists tell us that natural mysteries abound in every corner of the Earth, from the lifeless desert of Chile to the bottomless depths of the Pacific, there are things we simply do not comprehend.
Perhaps this is the best way to describe a place in northern Mexico in the middle of the hot, searing, punishing Chihuahuan desert, a place commonly called the "Zone of Silence" by the few locals, scientists, students and visitors that wander there from time to time in search of answers. It is a strange place to experience, one of those mysterious natural wonders that beg our attention and muddle our senses. It is sometimes difficult to tell what is truth and what is not; to recognize what you see as real or not.
Drive 400 hundred miles west of El Paso and you enter into an unforgiving section of foreboding semiarid desert landscape that begs for mercy but offers none. The nearest settlement is Ceballos, a ragtag community that holds on precariously to its existence some 25 miles across the barren plain from the heart of "The Zone". Here life is challenging, and there is a constant, delicate balance between death and survival.
The region has remained all but undiscovered by the outside world. There are no fancy hotels in the Zone, no beaches or pools, no life except for the most hardy of insects, reptiles and small mammals that suffer its tormenting weather.
But in 1970 a faulty American Athena missile fired from the White Sands Missile Base in nearby New Mexico went off course inexplicably and crashed into the mysterious desert region and made the world aware of the unique and apparently unusual properties of the area. Subsequently a team of U.S. Air Force investigators, with Mexican government approval, journeyed to the crash site and made an unexpected discovery. Within an unspecified and sometimes shifting area within the Zone, radio signals fail to travel through the air, creating a type of dark zone. No television, radio, short wave, microwave, or satellite signals seem to penetrate this zone. The name, Zone of Silence, was quickly adopted, and researchers began flocking to the remote location shortly thereafter.
The Mexican government has since constructed a research complex in "the Zone", a place the scientists assigned there call the biosphere. The primary purpose of the research facility is to study the plant and animal life of the unusual region. But rumors have it that a lot more research is going on there than meets the eye - if there were any eyes in this remote part of the world to see it.
It turns out there may be some natural anomaly associated with the region. High levels of magnetite have been discovered there, and scientist have also found that the area is a hot bed for meteorite activity, raising speculation that there may be some unusual magnetic properties associated with the minerals in the chalky soil. Researchers have been trying to determine whether magnetic ore is naturally occurring or is the product of contamination from thousands or millions of years of meteorite bombardment. And if the high-magnetic properties are a result of natural causes, could this be the reason that so many iron-rich objects from space find their way to this remote spot on Earth?
Theorists are quick to point out that the Zone is geographically located just north of the Tropic of Cancer and shares the same latitude south of the 30th parallel as the Bermuda Triangle, a fact scientist point out is probably a simple coincidence. In fact, scientists at the Mexican research center have dubbed the region, the Mar de Tetys, or The Sea of Thetys, because at one time, millions of years ago, the area lay at the bottom of an ocean.
In defense of the theorists, there have been a number of unusual tales that have come out of the Zone. Strange lights, floating orbs, burning bushes, flying saucers, and alien encounters have all been reported with a degree of abundance considering the sparse population of the region. Ranchers of the area report the night sky is often filled with mysterious lights, and they have reported "floating aircraft" that allegedly landed vertically in the desert, often causing brush to ignite and catch fire.
And there have been reports of encounters with strange humanoid creatures. One ranch family claims they are regularly visited by a trio of blonde, long haired humanoids, two males and a female, that speak perfect Spanish. As the story goes, the visitors only ask for water, never for food or other provision. And when asked once by the rancher where they came from, they reportedly answered "from above".
Then there's the story of the visiting researcher at the "Biosphere" who became lost in the desert. He reports he was directed back to the research center by a similar trio of blonde "strange looking people." Another story has it that a TV news investigation crew was aided by strange beings in the desert after being stuck in the road after an unusual cloud burst. These "beings" reportedly wore long raincoats and ball caps, something, admittedly, you don't often see in the desert wilderness.
How much about the unusual region in northern Mexico is true and how much is the product of human imagination, how much fact and how much fiction, no one can say for sure. But there is little question that there does exist some natural phenomena that appears to evade logical explanation. What the cause and effect may be (science, miracle or magic) remains to be seen. But isolationists and serious researchers of the unusual will find the region of great interest if you're in the mood for a dirty day in the desert.
Just don't plan on watching any TV in Ceballos. There isn't any.

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The Colossus of Rhodes

From its building to its destruction lies a time span of merely 56 years. Yet the colossus earned a place in the famous list of Wonders. "But even lying on the ground, it is a marvel", said Pliny the Elder. The Colossus of Rhodes was not only a gigantic statue. It was rather a symbol of unity of the people who inhabited that beautiful Mediterranean island -- Rhodes.

Location
At the entrance of the harbor of the Mediterranean island of Rhodes in Greece.

History
Throughout most of its history, ancient Greece was comprised of city-states which had limited power beyond their boundary. On the small island of Rhodes were three of these: Ialysos, Kamiros, and Lindos. In 408 BC, the cities united to form one territory, with a unified capital, Rhodes. The city thrived commercially and had strong economic ties with their main ally, Ptolemy I Soter of Egypt. In 305 BC, the Antigonids of Macedonia who were also rivals of the Ptolemies, besieged Rhodes in an attempt to break the Rhodo-Egyptian alliance. They could never penetrate the city. When a peace agreement was reached in 304 BC, the Antagonids lifted the siege, leaving a wealth of military equipment behind. To celebrate their unity, the Rhodians sold the equipment and used the money to erect an enormous statue of their sun god, Helios.

The construction of the Colossus took 12 years and was finished in 282 BC. For years, the statue stood at the harbor entrance, until a strong earthquake hit Rhodes about 226 BC. The city was badly damaged, and the Colossus was broken at its weakest point -- the knee. The Rhodians received an immediate offer from Ptolemy III Eurgetes of Egypt to cover all restoration costs for the toppled monument. However, an oracle was consulted and forbade the re-erection. Ptolemy's offer was declined.

For almost a millennium, the statue laid broken in ruins. In AD 654, the Arabs invaded Rhodes. They disassembled the remains of the broken Colossus and sold them to a Jew from Syria. It is said that the fragments had to be transported to Syria on the backs of 900 camels.

Description
Let us first clear a misconception about the appearance of the Colossus. It has long been believed that the Colossus stood in front of the Mandraki harbor, one of many in the city of Rhodes, straddling its entrance. Given the height of the statue and the width of the harbor mouth, this picture is rather impossible than improbable. Moreover, the fallen Colossus would have blocked the harbor entrance. Recent studies suggest that it was erected either on the eastern promontory of the Mandraki harbor, or even further inland. Anyway, it did never straddle the harbor entrance.

The project was commissioned by the Rhodian sculptor Chares of Lindos. To build the statue, his workers cast the outer bronze skin parts. The base was made of white marble, and the feet and ankle of the statue were first fixed. The structure was gradually erected as the bronze form was fortified with an iron and stone framework. To reach the higher parts, an earth ramp was built around the statue and was later removed. When the colossus was finished, it stood about 33 m (110 ft) high. And when it fell, "few people can make their arms meet round the thumb", wrote Pliny.

Although we do not know the true shape and appearance of the Colossus, modern reconstructions with the statue standing upright are more accurate than older drawings. Although it disappeared from existence, the ancient World Wonder inspired modern artists such as French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi best known by his famous work: The Statue of Liberty.

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Russian girl 'raised by dogs'

Russian child protection officers have taken into care a five-year-old girl who barks and laps up food like a dog, having had more contact with canines than humans.

The girl had been found in a filthy apartment living with her father and grandparents but also cats and several dogs, with whom she appeared more comfortable, police in the Eastern Siberian city of Chita said in a statement.

Never allowed outdoors, the girl had not learnt to speak but instead tried to communicate by barking.

When discovered by child protection officers, "the unwashed girl was dressed in filthy clothes" and "threw herself at people like a little dog."

In a stab at humour, the police statement dubbed the girl "Mowgli" after a fictional character who grew up among wolves in a children's book by the Anglo-Indian writer Rudyard Kipling.

The flat's owners "practically never let anyone into the apartment and themselves only went out to walk their pets, trying to avoid meeting their neighbours.

"In all these years, the girl managed to master the animal language only," the statement said, adding that the girl could understand Russian, while not speaking it.

"For about five years the girl was 'brought up' by several dogs and cats and not once went outside," the statement added.

Currently living in a care facility and receiving medical and psychiatric help, the girl continues "to jump against the door and bark" if her carers leave the room she is occupying, it said.

In a report by the Vesti television channel, the head of the care centre where the girl is now living said she was still exhibiting dog-like behaviour and preferred to lap up her food rather than using cutlery.

The television channel found that the girl's family had practically bariccaded themselves into their apartment in the wake of the attention.

"These neighbours are really unsociable," one neighbour, Nina Novikova, said of the family. "They only go out at night so as to avoid meeting anyone."

Police said they plan to open a criminal investigation for abuse.

In March, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev urged action on child abuse, saying 760,000 children were living in "socially hazardous conditions".

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