GIRL (9) CARRIED TWIN'S FOETUS IN HER STOMACH

A nine-year-old girl who was taken to hospital suffering stomach pains was found to be carrying the foetus of her undeveloped twin, doctors said.

Surgeons in the Greek city of Larissa discovered the six-centimetre (two inch) foetus when the young girl was brought to hospital, complaining of a stomach ache.

"They could see on the right side that her belly was swollen, but they couldn't suspect that this tumour would hide an embryo," said Iakovos Brouskelis, the hospital's director.

Surgeons removed the "tumour", which was a foetus with a head, hair and eyes, but no brain or umbilical cord, and the girl has made a full recovery.

Foetus in foetu, a rare disorder of embryonic development in which one twin is absorbed by the other in the womb, living off it as a parasite, occurs in one of 500,000 live births.

In 2003, doctors in Kazakhstan treated seven-year-old Alamjan Nematilaev, who complained that he felt something moving inside of him. When surgeons operated, they found his "twin", which had a head, hair, genitals and a partially-formed face.

In 2006, a Chilean boy was born in the southern city of Temuco with a four-in-long-foetus inside his abdomen.

Doctors remain unsure as to what causes the condition.

(Telegraph)

Tracking antenna box

WHICH SHOPS DID YOU USE - AND HOW LONG DID YOU STAY IN THE TOILET?

New technology can tell when people enter a shopping centre, what stores they visit, how long they remain there, and what route they take as they walked around.

Signals given off by mobile phones allow shopping centres to monitor how long people stay and which stores they visit.

Even when the owner is not using it, a mobile phone makes contact with the network every couple of minutes, which is enough for the receivers to get a reading on its position.

Phone networks have long been capable of gauging the rough location of a handset using three phone masts, but the margin of error can be as great as 2km. The process is also less efficient when the phone is indoors.

The new tecnology by Path Intelligence can tell where a phone is to "within a couple of metres."

Before you panic - the device cannot access personal details about a person’s identity or contacts. However, privacy campaigners have expressed concern about potential intrusion should the data fall into the wrong hands.

The surveillance mechanism works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation – measuring the phone’s distance from three receivers.

It has already been installed in two shopping centres, including Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, and three more centres will begin using it next month.

The company that makes the dishes, which measure 30cm (12 inches) square and are placed on walls around the centre, said that they were useful to centres that wanted to learn more about the way their customers used the store.

A shopping mall could, for example, find out that 10,000 people were still in the store at 6pm, helping to make a case for longer opening hours, or that a majority of customers who visited Gap also went to Next, which could useful for marketing purposes.

In the case of Gunwharf Quays, managers were surprised to discover that an unusually high percentage of visitors were German - the receivers can tell in which country each phone is registered - which led to the management translating the instructions in the car park.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) expressed cautious approval of the technology, which does not identify the owner of the phone but rather the handset's IMEI code - a unique number given to every device so that the network can recognise it.

But an ICO spokesman said, "we would be very worried if this technology was used in connection with other systems that contain personal information, if the intention was to provide more detailed profiles about identifiable individuals and their shopping habits.”

Only the phone network can match a handset's IMEI number to the personal details of a customer.

Path Intelligence, the Portsmouth-based company which developed the technology, said its equipment was just a tool for market research. "There's absolutely no way we can link the information we gather back to the individual,” a spokeswoman said. “There's nothing personal in the data."

Sharon Biggar, the company's chief operating officer, said that one of the stores which had already deployed the receivers did not want its name revealed for fear of alarming its customers.

Liberty, the campaign group, said that although the data do not meet the legal definition of ‘personal information’, it "had the potential" to identify particular individuals' shopping habits by referencing information held by the phone networks.

(Abridged from an article in the Times)

An obese couple with a combined weight of 42 stone are to undergo 'his and hers' gastric bypass operations on the NHS - at a cost of £24,000.

Roy and Kate Glencross have seen their weight balloon after spending years eating fried food, cakes and biscuits.

Roy, 60, now tips the scales at 24 stone and is virtually housebound because his knees need replacing due to the constant strain of his weight.
Kate, 59, carries 18st 6lbs on her 5ft 3ins frame and her blood pressure is so high she needs 13 pills a day to keep it under control.

After years of failed dieting the pair have persuaded their local NHS trust to pay £12,000 each so they can both undergo drastic surgery to shrink their stomachs.

Mr Glencross, a former fireman, said: "I want my life back. I want to play with my grandchildren and walk on the beach.

"What's more, I want to see my grandchildren grow up and get married.

"But to do it without my wife at my side would not be the same. Doing it together will give us the strength to get through it."

The couple, who have both been divorced, got married in 1979 when housewife Kate weighed 8st 6lb and Roy 14st.

Their weight has slowly increased over the years and the surgery has been offered as a last resort as their health deteriorates and other techniques fail.

Mr Glencross said: "We were comfortable with each other. We were happy. So, we gave up caring about weight.

"In hindsight it was madness. We used to eat truckloads of all the wrong stuff."

In an average day Roy would have a full English fry-up for breakfast, followed by a coke and a Mars bar mid-morning.

Lunch would be fish and chips washed down with more coke. He would tuck into a couple of packets of crisps to stave-off the hunger before home time.

Once home, Roy would eat cake or crisps, followed by a full meal - usually fried food.

Late evening, in front of the television, Roy would snack on cakes or biscuits.

The surgery involves reducing the size of the stomach by creating a pouch in the upper stomach using surgical staples then removing part of the small intestine.

This way the person can only eat small meals and the food eaten will not be absorbed so well, reducing calorie intake.

To qualify for the surgery patients must have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 40 or more - unless there are additional health reasons such as diabetes or a heart condition in which case the cut-off point is a BMI of 35.

The couple easily qualify because Mr Glencross has a BMI of 46 and his wife has one of 47.

(Abridged from the Daily Mail)

As well as the cost of NHS surgery, think of all the money this couple could have saved by eating less.

(Click on the image to make her bigger - if you dare!)

LUCIAN FREUD PAINTING SELLS FOR RECORD £17m

A life-size Lucian Freud painting of a naked Jobcentre supervisor sleeping broke the world auction record for a work by a living artist when it sold for more than £17m at Christie's.

The masterpiece, which was sold by a private European collector, fetched $33.6 million (£17.2 million) in the sale at New York's Rockefeller Centre.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping beat the previous world auction record for a work by a living artist, held by Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold), which fetched 23.5 million dollars (£11.3 million) last year.

The 1995 Freud painting depicts rotund London benefits supervisor Sue Tilley, now 51, sleeping on a dilapidated sofa.

Ms Tilley, now a Jobcentre manager, said: "I'm thrilled. I still can't believe such a bizarre thing has happened to me. It hasn't sunk in properly."

Asked how she felt about posing nude, she said: "At first, I was a little bit embarrassed but after a while I just got used to it and it became a completely normal thing to do, like going to the doctor."

She also said reports claiming that she had weighed 20st when she posed for the painting were inaccurate and said she did not know how much she weighed today.

"I never weigh myself because I can't be bothered," she said.

Asked if she would ever sit for another artist, Ms Tilley said it was "hard to know where to go" as she had "started with the very best".

(Extract from a Daily Telegraph article)

This pictures shows what happened when a speedboat went out of control, flew through the air and landed in the bunker of a golf course.

'The Final Fling' speedboat in the bunker

Golfers on the course at Loch Lomond, Dunbartonshire were lucky not to be hit when the boat hit the ground.

The skipper of the boat, which was called The Final Fling, was forced to abandon ship and jump into the water after it was sent off course by waves from another vessel.

It hit rocks and flew into the air, landing on the golf course.

Golfers who saw the boat coming towards the course ran for cover.

Among others enjoying a round of golf in the fine weather were Claude Bieth and Catherine Guillet from France.

"The boat seemed to go in slow motion and came to a halt in the bunker. The motor kept going but it was stuck fast," Mr Bieth told the Daily Record newspaper.

Following his jump from his vessel, the skipper of The Final Fling was found a short time later after Clyde Coastguard launched an extensive search operation.

A military helicopter and a lifeboat were both involved in the search and all ships in the area received a request for help

The incident was a first for Clyde Coastguard.

Their watch manager, Calum Murray, said: "We do deal with a number of beached vessels, but I don't think that we have ever had one which landed in a golf course bunker."

Loch Lomond is one of Scotland’s most exclusive golf clubs and is to host the Scottish open in July this year.

(Telegraph)