Rat meat in demand as inflation bites
PHNOM PENH - The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday.
With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel ($1.28) from 1,200 riel last year.
Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.
Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.
"Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family," Ly Marong, an agriculture official, said by telephone from the Koh Thom district on the border with Vietnam.
"Not only are our poor eating it, but there is also demand from Vietnamese living on the border with us."
He estimated that Cambodia supplied more than a tonne of live rats a day to Vietnam.
Rats are also eaten widely in Thailand, while a state government in eastern India this month encouraged its people to eat rats in an effort to battle soaring food prices and save grain stocks.
($1 = 3,900 riel)
Cambodian rat butcher Louch Savoun holds up a handful of the skinned rodents to a customer in the provincial town of Battambang, some 290 km northwest of Phnom Penh.
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Woman goes down baggage chute at Swedish airport
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - An elderly woman misunderstood instructions while checking in at Sweden's main airport and was whisked down a baggage shoot after she placed herself instead of her luggage on the belt, media reported Wednesday.
The 78-year-old woman, who was not named, was preparing to fly from Stockholm's Arlanda airport to Germany on Tuesday when she lay down on an unmanned baggage belt in the belief she was following check-in instructions, the Upsala Nya Tidning local daily reported on its website.
She was quickly swept off to the baggage handling centre, where staff members helped get her back on her feet.
The woman suffered no serious injury and caught her flight as planned.
A view of the departure hall at Arlanda Airport in Stocholm. An elderly woman misunderstood instructions while checking in at Sweden's main airport and was whisked down a baggage shoot after she placed herself instead of her luggage on the belt, media has reported.
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Don't take "holy" water onto pope plane
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican has warned journalists who will travel with Pope Benedict to Lourdes next month not to put the revered water from the shrine in their hand luggage on the papal plane or it may be confiscated.
The pope will travel Sept 12-15 to Paris and the site in southern France where the Madonna is said to have appeared to a peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, 150 years ago.
The millions of pilgrims who visit the shrine each year drink from its fonts, many believing its water to be potentially miraculous and healing. Most take bottles of it away with them.
"In order to avoid their confiscation during security controls at the airport, Air France recommends putting any bottles of Lourdes water in baggage what will go into the hold of the plane," a Vatican advisory to reporters said.
While the water from Lourdes is not strictly considered "holy" -- holy water is found in churches and must be blessed by a priest -- many websites about Lourdes describe it as "holy."
Security measures limiting liquids allowed in carry-on baggage have been in effect since 2006 when a plot to bring down planes with liquid explosives was discovered.
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Nebraska city council votes to evict aging horse
HICKMAN, Neb. - This one-horse town is looking like becoming a no-horse town.
The owner of a 32-year-old horse named Peter Rabbit wasn't able Tuesday to buck a local ban on livestock within city limits.
After widespread publicity of the ban that threatened to kick Peter Rabbit off the pasture where he was born, the Hickman City Council considered an ordinance Tuesday night that would allow horses inside city limits. But council members ultimately voted 4-2 against adopting it, leaving the ban intact.
Councilwoman Kim Hoesing has long supported allowing horses. After Tuesday's vote, she said she hoped the issue would die down because "I can't get anyone to agree with me."
For a bedroom community where people live to get away from the hustle and bustle of nearby Lincoln, Hickman and its population of 1,085 have had a lot of racket lately. After publicity of Peter Rabbit's fight with City Hall, people around the country did some of the lobbying the horse couldn't.
Hickman City Administrator Bret Baker hasn't been amused by all the publicity. Given some of the phone calls he's received, it's tough to blame him.
He said staff had to turn off the voicemail because of all the phone calls, and the flood of e-mails "actually bombed our e-mail server three times."
The horse's owner, 76-year-old Harley Scott, said he has raised Peter Rabbit since the brown Morgan-quarter horse crossbreed was born in his pasture in the spring of 1976. Scott said there have been horses on the land since his father bought 40 acres in 1935.
Only about 4 acres remain in the family. The rest has been sold to developers. His land was annexed in 2006, but Scott said no one said anything to him at the time about having to give up the horse.
Scott has said he has no intention of complying with the Sept. 15 deadline. He faces the prospect of being fined up to $100 a day if he's convicted of violating the ordinance.
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Disposable diaper breaks fall, saves child's life
SAO PAULO, Brazil - A disposable diaper has saved the life of an 18-month-old boy, breaking his fall from a third-floor apartment window, officials said Thursday.
Caua Felipe Massaneiro survived a 30-foot (10-meter) fall because his diaper snagged on a security spike embedded in the concrete wall around his apartment building in the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife.
The boy dangled from the spike for a moment, then "the diaper opened and the baby fell to the ground, but at a much slower speed," a police officer said. "The diaper obviously lessened the impact of the fall and saved the baby's life."
"It was a miracle," said the officer who declined to be identified because she was not authorized to speak to the press. "He could also have been killed by one of the spikes."
The child was treated for minor fractures at the Hospital Memorial Sao Jose, where spokesman Gilberto Tenorio said he was in stable condition.
Police have opened an investigation to determine how the toddler fell out the window and "if parental negligence was one of the causes," the police officer said.
The Folha de S. Paulo newspaper quoted Caua's father, 23-year-old Alexandre Cesar Massaneiro as saying that his son climbed onto a sofa underneath the window he fell from - "something he had never done before."
"It wasn't the diaper that saved him," Massaneiro told the newspaper. "It was God."
This is TheOldGuy reporting from
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