Two-faced kitten born in Florida

 

“Harvey Dent,” named after the two-faced character in the Batman series, has four eyes, two tiny mouths and two noses that all appear to work, owner Nash Hand and Amanda Forsythe told Sarasota TV station WWSB.

 

“They simultaneously work together, the two faces,” Forsyth said. “When he eats on one side it looks like he is eating on the other. When he meows it comes out of both sides.”

 

The couple was shocked by the birth, and had even recently watched a show on two-faced cats. They talked about how weird it would be if their pregnant cat, Nene, gave birth to such an animal, Hand told WWSB.

 

“She said  What are you talking about? What do you mean two faces? ” Hand said his wife exclaimed after he told her of the birth. “I said it has two faces This cat has two faces”

 

Two-faced cats, called Janus cats after the Roman god with two faces, are rare and often face health problems, although the world s oldest two-faced cat is currently 12 years old, according to Guinness World Records.
 

Shane Warne facing legal action from cyclist

MELBOURNE: Shane Warne was facing legal action Tuesday after a cyclist involved in a road rage incident with the Australian cricket great said he plans to sue for damages to his bike.

Web designer Mathew Hollingsworth, 28, is launching a civil claim in the Melbourne Magistrates Court seeking Aus$1,575 (US$1,668) for repairs to his hi-tech bicycle plus damages, interest and costs.

His lawyer George Defteros told Melbourne local radio that Warne’s very public outburst on Twitter about the incident was partly why his client decided to take action.

“I think in a way it was brought on by Twitter more than anything else,” he said.

“There’s an incident and then all of a sudden it’s out there in the public domain very, very quickly.

“I’m not saying that anyone’s at fault for this coming out the way it has but, be that as it may, it has come out so we want to put our version of events across really.”

Hollingsworth alleges Warne drove his sports car into him after a robust exchange of words in peak-hour traffic in Melbourne on January 17.

The Herald Sun newspaper said that in a statutory declaration, Hollingsworth claimed Warne lurched his car forward striking him on the leg.

“Once I was on the footpath, a young brunette woman in business clothing approached me offering assistance and asked, ‘Are you okay? Are you going to follow it up? I have the rego (registration),” he said in the declaration.

“I said, ‘No, it should be okay. It was Shane Warne.’ She seemed as surprised as me.”

Warne has denied any wrongdoing, using a series of Tweets on the evening of the incident to detail his version of events and lash out at “antagonistic” cyclists.

The spin king claimed a cyclist grabbed on to the back of his car as he headed home from a training session at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Then at a change of traffic lights, he alleged the man rode past and hit the bonnet with his hand. He said the bike rider then pulled up in front of his car, halting traffic, and abused him.

Warne, 42, is one of Australia’s greatest cricketers and has come out of retirement to play with the Melbourne Stars in Australia’s Twenty20 Big Bash League.

Australian wicketkeeper Haddin dropped from 1-day squad

SYDNEY: Australian wicketkeeper Brad Haddin said Tuesday he has been dropped, not rested, from the one-day squad to face India and Sri Lanka and conceded it will be tough for him to win back his place.

Selectors said they had left Haddin out of the 14-man squad for the first three games of the tri-nation series to give him a rest after the 4-0 Test whitewash of India, but the 34-year-old had a different take.

“I think any time you’re out of the Australian cricket team I think you’re dropped,” he told Sky Sports Radio.

“You give another guy an opportunity to take your spot and you’ve got to look if they do well, you could find it hard to get back in the team.

“But that’s the way it is and I’ve just got to deal with that and make sure I’m ready to play.”

Haddin’s place has been taken by Matthew Wade, who is 10 years younger and says he plans to make the most of it.

“I’m looking to take my chance and see what happens from there,” Wade told reporters.

“I’m just hoping to do my best, I’m not sure what the selectors have got in mind after these three games but I’ll be doing my best to make it a hard decision to remove me.”

Haddin has been under pressure all summer over his performances at Test level and Wade has been touted as his likely replacement should selectors decide to make a change.

Australia and India start the one-day series on February 5 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. AGENCIES

Ajmal Kasab death penalty appeal adjourned

NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court adjourned an appeal hearing on Tuesday into the death sentence handed down to Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Kasab, one of 10 gunmen who laid siege to Mumbai in attacks which lasted nearly three days and killed 166 people, has appealed for his sentence to be overturned after he was convicted in May 2010.

The 24-year-old was found guilty of a series of crimes, including waging war against India, murder and terror acts.

The November 2008 attacks saw 10 heavily-armed gunmen storm targets including luxury hotels, a Jewish centre and a train station.

One of the two Supreme Court judges due to hear the appeal was unavailable on Tuesday, forcing the adjournment, officials said. No date was immediately set for the next hearing.

Kasab’s court-appointed lawyer Raju Ramachandran told AFP that his job was “a call of duty”, but declined to talk further about the case.

Kasab’s death sentence was confirmed by a state high court in Mumbai last year. If he loses his Supreme Court appeal, he will be able to appeal for clemency from the president.

Ujjwal Nikam, who prosecuted the case in Mumbai on behalf of the Maharashtra state, is seeking to push through the death sentence. “This is the rarest of rare cases,” Nikam told AFP. “He should not be entitled to any mercy.”

At the trial, the prosecution produced fingerprint, DNA, eyewitness and television evidence showing him opening fire and throwing grenades at Mumbai’s main railway station in the bloodiest episode of the attacks.

Kasab — who is in jail in Mumbai — initially pleaded not guilty but later made a confession, admitting to being one of the gunmen allegedly sent by the banned militant group.

He then reverted back to his initial denial and said he was framed by the police.

Pakistan has indicted seven alleged perpetrators over the attacks but they have not been brought to trial, triggering Indian accusations that the process is a sham.

Pakistani investigators and lawyers will visit India next month to gather more evidence ahead of any trial in Islamabad.

Most death sentences in India are commuted to life imprisonment, and convicts can sit on death row for years awaiting a final decision. AGENCIES

Salala attack was accidental, says US envoy Munter

TrendPK.com
ISLAMABAD: U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter Tuesday said the US want people to people contacts with its ally Pakistan.

Commenting on November 26 attack on two Pak security check posts located in Mohmand Agency launched by the US forces stationed in Afghanistan which killed 24 Pakistani troops, the US ambassador said the Salalah attack was not pre-meditated one and not launched intentionally.

He said his country is making efforts for the rehabilitation of the flood-displaced people. TrendPK

Iran’s actress banned for posing topless gathers support

LOS ANGELES: A fleshy rebellion is spreading hot and fast across the cybersphere, as a growing number of activists are stripping down in support of Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, who was reportedly banned from her homeland after posing topless for French magazine Madame Le Figaro.

Farahani — who had earlier been banned from leaving her country for appearing in the 2008 Leonardo DiCaprio/Russell Crowe film “Body of Lies” — appeared (see above) without a shirt, but with her hands covering her breasts, to protest Iran’s restrictive policies toward women. The actress, who’s now based in Paris, told the press that she was subsequently advised by the Iranian government that she is no longer welcome within her former country’s borders.

But there might be a happy — or at least sexy — ending to the sad tale of gender oppression. Since world of Farahani’s predicament broke, a movement has sprung up,

with supporters encouraging others to post Farahani’s topless photo as a “PicBadge” of the actress’ photo-shoot to their Facebook profiles.

Other, more daring, supporters have gone so far as to post their own skin-baring portraits as a show of solidarity for the banished thespian. A Facebook page in support of Farahani has so far amassed 3,422 “likes,” and boasts numerous photos of pro-Farahani-partisans posing in the buff.

“This page has been formed, in order to support Golshifteh’s move, in order to say NO to relegion sic, tradition, culture and anti women’s law,” a statement on the Facebook page reads. “Viva freedom !!!”

A similar protest occurred in November, when supporters of controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei tweeted naked images of themselves in response to authorities detaining the artist and his assistant for distributing a photo of four naked women.

It’s unclear what, if any, effect the movement will have on the infamously rigid Iranian government’s decision.

If you happen to be surfing Facebook and come across a photo of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the buff with the words “Support Golshifteh” scrawled across his form, however, you can be pretty sure that the war has been won. AGENCIES

SC moved to put Memo creator Ijaz on ECL

TrendPK.com
ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court (SC) has been moved to put American-Pakistani Businessman Mansoor Ijaz on exit control list (ECL), TrendPK reports Tuesday.

Petitioner Shahid Orakzai, challenging the ruling of Islamabad High Court (IHC) in the apex court, said ban on going abroad is not contingent upon the entry into the country.

The petitioner said Ijaz has been involved in subverting Pakistan’s nuclear program making it in control of the USA, adding Ijaz also endorsed his role in the above-mention plot in his affidavit submitted to the court.

It should be mentioned here the IHC asserting that it cannot put on ECL the name of a man who is not present in the country, dismissed Orakzai’s petition on January 25. TrendPK

Julian Assange takes rape case to UK top court

LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s two-day hearing at England’s Supreme Court gets underway Wednesday, in the latest stage of his lengthy battle against extradition to Sweden to face rape allegations.

If the court rejects his case, the 40-year-old Australian will have exhausted all his options in Britain but he could still make a last-ditch appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, prosecutors have said.

The Supreme Court, England’s highest, granted Assange permission to appeal in December.

It said his case raised an issue of “great public importance”, namely whether Sweden’s state prosecutor had the right to sign the European arrest warrant under which he was held.

The case will be considered by seven judges, rather than the usual five.

The Supreme Court usually takes about 10 weeks to deliver a judgement but the parties have requested that this case be speeded up.

Wednesday marks 421 days since the arrest of the former computer hacker, who has been living under tight bail conditions at the country mansion of a wealthy supporter in Norfolk, eastern England.

Assange was arrested in Britain in December 2010 after two women made allegations of sexual molestation and an accusation of rape in Sweden, which he strongly denies.

He says the sex was consensual and claims the allegations are politically motivated, linked to WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of thousands of classified US files about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as diplomatic cables.

Assange’s extradition to Sweden was initially approved by a lower court in February. An appeal to the High Court was rejected in November, but it subsequently granted him permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

If this appeal fails, the WikiLeaks founder will have only one other option to stop his extradition — an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

“If the ECHR takes the case then his current bail conditions would remain in force and he would remain in the UK until the proceedings at the ECHR have concluded,” the Crown Prosecution Service said in a commentary on the case.

“If the ECHR declines to take the case then he will be extradited to Sweden as soon as arrangements can be made,” England’s state prosecutor said. AGENCIES

Missile strikes against Pak sovereignty: FO

TrendPK.com
ISLAMABAD: Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit Tuesday said the missile strikes on Pakistani soil stands in contradiction with the country’s sovereignty.

Talking to TrendPK TV, the FO spokesman said the Parliament is re-visiting the terms of engagement with the US and NATO after the US attack on Salalah’s security check posts in Mohmand Agency on November 26, which left 24 Pak troops dead. TrendPK

Come back for more details.

Glacier theft: Chile police recover stolen ice

SANTIAGO: Police on Monday were investigating a criminal gang that allegedly stole blocks of ice from the Jorge Montt Glacier in southern Chile.

Agents with Chile’s National Forest Service filed a legal complaint claiming that ice was being stolen from the glacier, located in the Chilean Patagonia region some 1,700 kilometers south of the capital Santiago.

Police in the southern city of Cochrane then swooped in on a truck loaded with five tons of ice and arrested the driver, the daily El Mercurio reported on its online edition.

The driver was arrested on charges of theft, but could also face charges of crimes against cultural heritage, Cochrane prosecutor Jose Moris said.

Police, who put the value of the stolen ice at $6,200, are on the lookout for the driver’s accomplices.

The 454-square-kilometer Jorge Montt glacier is melting at a rate of a kilometer per year, making it one of the world’s most visible milestones of global warming, researchers said in December.

The withering glacier is part of the 13,000-square-kilometer Southern Ice Field, the third largest frozen landmass after Antarctica and Greenland, shared by Chile and Argentina. AGENCIES

Next Page »