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  About 4000 people showed up at the funeral of Ah Meng, the Sumatran orang utan of Singapore Zoo, on Sunday morning. Ah Meng, who died of old age on Friday, was a Singapore tourism icon as well as the face of the zoo for many years. She was 48 years old.

Ah Meng is survived by four children and six grandchildren.
Alagappasamy Chellaiyah, Ah Meng’s minder for 36 years, said: “All the 25 orang utans knew that something had happened because she (Ah Meng) died in the facilities. They knew that Ah Meng (was) gone. They were very quiet. Even the free ranging orang utans, they came, they refused to take food.”
Judging from the turnout at the funeral, it is clear that Ah Meng had touched the hearts of many.

For two hours starting 9am, people from all walks of life queued up to pay their final respects to Ah Meng. Many of them were visibly upset.
The atmosphere was sombre. Strangers were sharing with each other their encounters with Ah Meng.

“It’s very sad. Every time (on) my son’s birthday, I come over here,” said a member of the public who attended the funeral.
“Many years ago when we were small girls, we used to come to the zoo and look at Ah Meng,” said another.

In 1992, she became the first and only non-human recipient of the Special Tourism Ambassador award. Zoo officials, who were visibly distraught by Ah Meng’s death, said they will continue their work with Sumatran orang utans, who are critically endangered with only about 7,500 left in the world.

source: Channel News Asia

The 88 year old Spaniard Faustino Olivera is recovering from a rather odd operation. Doctors from the hospital in Barbastro, Aragon removed a bullet from Olivera’s left side. The bullet had been there since the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The bullet’s presence only came to light when the veteran decided to see a doctor about pains he felt in his left hand side of torso. Diario de Alto Aragón reported this on their website.

” I am doing very well, at least I don’t have a fever.” Faustino Olivera told the newspaper.

Olivera, born in the Barbastro region, fought on the Nationalist side during the Civil War. His side, led by dictator Francisco Franco, later won the war. On the 11th November 1938 Olivera was struck by a bullet in the trenches. He was treated for his injuries, but medics were not able to find and extract the bullet.

Last week’s operation was successful without any complications. Mister Olivera is expected to make a full recovery. Faustino’s nephew is already the proud owner of the bullet which he describes as an ‘emotional souvenir’.

  Dutch police arrested three women, aged 18, 24 and 28, on Saturday, who forgot to take with them the child they took with them on their proletarian shopping spree. They had left the 4-year-old in a shopping cart inside the supermarket they had tried to steal groceries from. This was announced by the police in a press release

A total of four women tried to leave the store, with their shopping bags full of groceries, without paying for the wares. Unfortunately for the women, supermarket personnel subjected them to a routine checkup. The women decided to make a run for it and left the shopping bags and shopping cart containing the child in the store.

Later that day, the police was able to arrest three of the women after they had decided to come back for the kid.

  Two children have died and five other people are seriously ill after eating a cake poisoned with thallium delivered to a soccer club in Baghdad.

The cake was delivered to the Air Force soccer club on February 2 by a coach who had left on bad terms and then recently returned, said the club president, Samir Kadham.

The club’s general secretary, Mohammed Rasool, and its chief administrator, Sattar Ibrahim, took some of the cake home and their families ate it, Mr Kadham said. By the next day, seven members of the two families were ill.

Two of Mr Ibrahim’s sons died, a 14-year-old and an 18-month-old. The other five were taken to hospital in Amman, where they were diagnosed as suffering thallium poisoning and are gravely ill.

Police said the coach who delivered the cake to the club had been arrested.

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