TF1 reported on May 4 that a 52-year-old woman hiker plunged 980 feet to her death when she fell off a cliff in the French Pyrenees mountain range on April 14. Shortly after her death, her body was devoured by griffon vultures in just 45 minutes, before rescuers found her body.

Major Didier Pericou of the local gendarmerie who headed the rescue operations told The Times of London of what they’ve found of the woman’s body. “There were only bones, clothes, and shoes left on the ground. They took 45 to 50 minutes to eat the body. When we first went out in the helicopter looking for the body, we saw numerous vultures without realizing what they were doing.”

The incident has sparked a campaign among local farmers who want to decrease the vulture population. European Union has restrictions on hunting Griffon vultures, one of the endangered species.

Due to the ban, their population has grown threatening the livestock of the local farmers. The birds have been deprived of animal carcasses due to anti-BSE European rules which states that farmers need to burn the bodies of dead animals. In turn, this has caused the hungry birds to turn to live cows and sheep as their lunch.

“You can’t imagine what it is like to see an animal eaten alive,” famer Alain Larraide, a said. He once recalled seeing vultures carrying off live animals, including an adult cow, before eating their victims.

Like any other vultures, Griffon vultures are scavengers who feed mostly from carcasses of dead animals. They are often seen moving in flocks as they find their food by soaring over open areas. They are known to establish colonies in cliffs that remain undisturbed by humans breeding on crags in mountains in southern Europe, north Africa, and Asia.

Convenience is the key to win customers. What would be more convenient than shopping online and have the items shipped directly to your home?

Kmart has introduced its “Ship My Pants” ad leveraging from the fact that if you can’t find what you’re looking for in a store, you or a sales associate can find it for you online at Kmart.com and then have it sent to your home for free! Talk about convenience!

Kmart’s “Ship My Pants” Ad

The Kmart ad has garnered more than 2 million views in Youtube since it was uploaded by Kmart on April 10. Watch it below to know why a lot of viewers are laughing about it. Will you ship your pants too as with many others in the video?

The so-called ‘Houdini Horse’ owned by Don and Sandy Bonem is a Friesian mare who has a unique ability of unlocking stables using her teeth. She is so into escaping that not only she unlocks her own stable but also those belonging to her neighboring horses as well. Oh, what a feat!

“We most certainly did not [train her]. It makes life such a challenge for us. Especially as we have only to forget just one of the back up latches or chains and she finds the weak link! She checks constantly for a way out. Mariska has picked this up on her own over a period of time,” Sandy Bonem, one of the owners of Misty Meadow Farms in Midland, Michigan.

Mariska, the Houdini Horse with one of her owners, Sandy Bonem

“She would always play with things with her mouth as a baby, and she just kind of progressed from that. She doesn’t like to be locked in, so she would play with each new lock until she figured it out,” she added.

You might be wondering if Mariska unlocks every lock that her owners put up for her, then how do they keep her secured? Bonem answered it in Misty Meadows Farm LLC blog.

“We have added bottom latches to the outside of the half stall. And we drilled holes into the bar on the inside stall doors where we put a pin in the bar that will not allow the bar to raise up. This works except when we forget just one pin, as the horses have access to their stalls but are rarely closed in, and she can get into all 4 stalls. She checks every window constantly. The only sure way, is to close completely the bars on the window.”

Watch the viral video of Mariska below as she performs Houdini-like abilities in unlocking her stable and that of her neighboring horses!

Curious on what exactly that object is, the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland reported receiving calls from residents. An instructor at the center named Jonathan Braidman described it as likely being a small piece of an asteroid that “somehow” got a collision course with our planet Earth.

Fireball in California

“This is a very common occurrence. What is uncommon is that it’s so close to where people are living,” Braidman said noting that about 15,000 tons of debris from asteroids enter the Earth’s atmosphere every year.

“Usually these things break up into small pieces and are difficult to find,” he added.

Media outlets on Bay Area said that the fireball was reported to have been seen from an area stretching from Gilroy, about 80 miles south of San Francisco, to Sacramento, about 90 miles to the north east at around 8pm on Friday night.

Mike Hankey, Operations Manager for the American Meteor Society based in New York, said that the fireball was just a sporadic meteor and should not be considered as a major event.

“Fireballs happen every single night, all around the world. The media attention on the Russian thing got people’s attention, so they’re more likely to notice things in the sky,” he said.

Experts say smaller meteorites hit Earth five to 10 times a year but large meteors such as the one that hit Russia are rarer. Another meteor landed in the Bay Area in October and caused a loud sonic.

Below is the video of the fireball witnessed along the Bay Area in California last Friday night:

Known as the “DataTraveler HyperX Predator”, Kingston’s 1TB flash drive is the world’s largest capacity USB 30 thumb drive, which measures 2.84″ x 1.06″ x 0.82″ (72mm x 26.94mm x 21mm) with an attached key ring on one side. Including the key ring, total length is 3.49″ or 88.53mm. It also has a shock-resistant zinc alloy metal casing which serves as the protection of the device against potential corrosion from the environment.

Kingston’s DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 1TB Flash Drive

“Our new DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 allows users to store their entire digital world on a portable USB 3.0 Flash drive. The large capacity and fast USB 3.0 transfer speeds allow users to save time as they can access, edit and transfer applications or files such as HD movies directly from the drive without any performance lag,” said Andrew Ewing, Kingston’s flash memory business manager.

The new 1TB flash drive has read/write speeds of up to 240MB/s and 160MB/s, boasting SuperSpeed USB 3.0 certification. While it is not announced yet how much it will cost when it hit stores in the first quarter of this year, it is expected to be more expensive than its 512 GB version which currently sells at a whooping $1,750.

For flash drive users who don’t require too much space, Kingston said that it is also available 32GB and 64GB capacities with read/write speeds of 70MB/s and 150MB/s, respectively.

Considering the price of this 1TB flash drive predicted to be in the $2,500 range, do you think it is worth buying? Or would you rather stick to bulkier yet cheaper portable external hard disk drives?

This was what happened to Ibrahim Langoo, a 19-year-old musical theater student at Colchester Institute in UK, while eating a chicken in a KFC fastfood restaurant.

Langoo was eating a Gladiator box meal in a KFC store located in Colchester, Essex in the U.K. when suddenly he found in what he described to be a ‘wrinkled brain’ when pulling his chicken meal from the bone.

Photo: Ibrahim found a “Wrinked Brain” in his KFC chicken meal

He immediately went to the serving counter and complained about it. However, he was not given assistance by any of the staffs as they are all busy during that day.

“I threw it down onto my tray immediately. It looked like a brain. I suddenly felt grim and really sick. I couldn’t bring myself to pick the lump up so I went to the serving counter to complain. It was about 1pm and pretty hectic in the restaurant and as it was so busy none of the staff helped me,” he said.

“I just wanted to get out of KFC as quickly as I could. I still feel really sick and disgusted by it all now,” he added.

Without initial help from the staffs of the restaurant, Langoo took a picture of his KFC chicken meal using his mobile phone and brought the matter online at Facebook. The photo was shared by many and soon after, it reached the attention of KFC.

KFC asked for apology and gave Langoo a free meal voucher in response. They also determined that the foreign object so-called as ‘wrinkled brain’ was not actually a brain but a kidney.

Despite being given free meals, Langoo vehemently said that he will never eat at any KFC ever again.

“I never want to eat KFC again – in Colchester or anywhere else. I’ll eat chicken at home, where I can see how it’s been prepared,” he said.

The man who refused to give his name to CNN said he paid a dowry equivalent of USD 20,000 to the parents of the girl. While there is no law in Saudi Arabia setting a minimum age for marriage, human rights advocates claim that there is a high possibility that the girl was sold if there was a huge difference in age between the husband and wife.

Initially, the marriage was kept secret from the authorities. It then came out when the man complained to a local official that his wife left him and returned to her parents, claiming that he was ripped off for the dowry he paid to her wife’s parents. During the CNN interview, he also claimed that the girl was already 25 years old and that she was at the right age to make decisions on her own.

“She is not 15 as everybody claims. She’s 25 years old and she’s mature enough to make her own decisions… I was fooled by the girl’s family,” the 70-year-old man said.

Following the return of her wife to her parents, the man demanded to either return his money or give his wife back. However, the girl’s parents said they cannot return their daughter and that all the money paid for dowry was already spent. This prompted the man to bring the case to court.

“I did not want the dowry money back, and I still want my wife to come home. I am going to take the case to a court this week to rule on the conspiracy by the family to take my money. My wife’s family have now taken her out to Riyadh so that I cannot reach her,” the old man said.

After several hearings, the court ruled to end their marriage and demanded the parents to give the dowry back. Despite the court’s decision for divorce, the man reiterated that the marriage was still intact since the decision came from the leader of the tribe and not from an official judge.

The 15-year-old girl is from Al-Hurath village in Jizan province, in southwestern Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen. She is believed to have a Yemeni father and Saudian mother.

Forced marriages are rampant in the Middle East, parts of South Asia, East Asia and Africa. Most women who marry younger in age are more likely to be dominated by their husbands. They usually lack education and become illiterate as they tend to drop out of school shortly before they get married.

This was the case that happened to a 7-months old baby named Mya Whittington from Kansas. Initially, baby Mya had a swollen pimple. The pimple grew up to the size of one and half golf balls in the area right below her left jaw and this prompted her parents Aaron and Emma Whittington to bring her to a hospital.

Feather in Baby Mya’s Neck
Image Credit: Aaron Whittington

“I was at work and my wife noticed that the left side of her neck had started to swell, and she called me at work and asked if we should take her to the emergency room. Sunday morning, when we woke up, it had doubled in size and there was a pimple-looking thing on the end of it.” Aaron Whittington, Mya’s father, narrated to ABC News.

Initially, baby Mya was checked by the doctors but did not find anything unusual. They thought that she only had a normal staph infection of her lymph nodes. In fact, they tried to drain baby Mya’s neck as they though it is only due to a swollen gland.

Things were normal until they noticed something unusual after hours later. They noticed a half-inch ‘sting-like’ object that is coming out of baby Mya’s neck. Upon noticing, they immediately called the attention of the doctors to have it checked. The doctors then were very surprised when they have pulled a 2-inch feather out of the swollen pimple!

“As far as how the feather got into the side of the neck, our doctor says we’ll probably never really know. But her best guess is that she either inhaled it or tried swallowing it and it got lodged in the throat somewhere, and the body, just being crazy, just started to reject it and force it out the side of her neck.” Aaron Whittington said explaining what happened.

Few days after, Baby Mya’s pediatrician said that she is now 100% recovered.

Since last year, scientists keep their eyes on Asteroid known as 2011 AG5 fearing that it might possibly hit Earth in 2040. That’s 28 years from now. Good thing that the recent studies of NASA says that the asteroid is no longer a threat to us here at Earth.

NASA scientists first spotted the asteroid described to be 460-foot wide last year when doing a project called Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona. The project aims to find new comets and asteroids in the solar space especially those that could potentially harm our planet Earth. Their initial monitor revealed that the asteroid’s orbital path had an estimated 1-in-500 chance of hitting Earth.

Projection of Asteroid 2011 AG5 in 2040
Image Credit: Space.com

However, a second study done by astronomers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa using a Gemini 8-meter telescope in Mauna Kea revealed that the asteroid will not get any closer than 550,000 miles (890,000 kilometers) when it passes Earth in 2040. CNN reported that is twice the distance between the earth and the moon.

“An analysis of the new data conducted by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shows that the risk of collision in 2040 has been eliminated,” NASA said.

Despite the elimination of a possible threat, NASA called on other organizations to assist them on the study of the asteroid since the asteroid’s path was difficult to observe.

“While there is general consensus there is only a very small chance that we could be dealing with a real impact scenario for this object, we will still be watchful and ready to take further action if additional observations indicate it is warranted,” Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program at NASA’s headquarters in Washington said.

Wondering how huge will be the damage of an asteroid impact here on Earth? Just imagine an explosion carrying about 100 megatons of energy, several thousand times stronger than the atomic bombs that closed out World War II.

It has been widely known that an asteroid impact caused the extinction of dinosaurs millions of years ago. Even the possible asteroid impact on Earth is still 28 years from now in 2040, we should really be praying that no such phenomenon will be happening on us.

One day, there is someone out there that was reported by someone. And that someone has various inside sources. There are different news and opinions about what happened yesterday, but there’s no such proof.

Everyday, there are some instances that comes and goes. There is someone and something that will be brought somewhere. Everyday, there’s a recent news, and every recent news is the latest breaking news.

Moreover, the incident has caused serious damage to everyone out there. It’s from this country and to that country, and to all countries across the globe.

What will happen tomorrow, today, or in the future? It will go beyond unexplained realities, but it’s someone has it, it will be raised in a positive manner of such eloquent behavioral theory.