February 8, 2010 – 7:11 pm
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The Xinchun sisters strike a pose in Jingmen, China on Sunday (February 7) in an apiary wearing clothes made out of bees.
The girls wear the special outfits for an hour to attract the Queen bee. The other bees then follow her onto the clothing.
A new honey bee colony is formed when the queen bee leaves the old colony with a large group of worker bees, a process called swarming.
Their father Liu says as bee keepers, they all have developed antibodies to bee stings, so bee stings no longer affect them.
February 8, 2010 – 12:13 pm
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A street performer from Australia has set a Guinness World Record by swallowing 18 swords at one time.
Chayne Hultgren, also known as “The Space Cowboy,” swallowed the swords, each just over 28 inches long, in Sydney this morning (February 8).
“It’s amazing,” he says. “I’ve been preparing for this since I was 16.”
The 31-year-old calls the feat “an educated risk” that he is able to do by using hoses to stretch his throat.
“I don’t just straight away grab 18 blades and shove them down my throat,” he says. “You’ve got to practice a lot and build up to it.”
February 8, 2010 – 3:35 am
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A spectacular display recently captured shows how thousands of flamingos gather in Tanzania’s saltwater Lake Natron in Africa.
The lake, part of a dry region, provides one of the largest nesting sites for the flamingos in the world and is an integral part of their habitat and is necessary for their survival.
Despite being the most populous flamingo, the species is suffering from a declining population as their breeding sites across the continent are threatened by human activities.
February 7, 2010 – 4:50 am
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Structural steel for the 1776ft tower that will be known as
One World Trade Centre has risen 200 feet above street level in a tangible sign of ground zero progress since the September 11 2001 terror attacks.
Says Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the 16-acre trade centre site: “This progress is one more sign that the site is not a pit anymore.”
Workers are currently in the midsty of installing 16 steel nodes on the 20th-floor level which serve as joints between the steel framing for the building’s podium and the steel for the rest of the tower.
The 104-storey skyscraper is due to be completed in 2013.
February 5, 2010 – 5:10 pm
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Two grave robbers from China didn’t know the value of the antiques they dug from ancient tombs and sold them as cheap as 3 Yuan, the equivalent of 44 cents in Zhengzhou, China.
They managed to dig out more than 20 antiques from the tomb under the opening and sold them altogether for 12,000 Yuan ($1800).
Among the antiques was a painted woman pottery figure, which is worth more than 1 million Yuan ($146 000), but they sold it for only 3 Yuan (44 cents).
“We didn’t know the value of the things,” says the thief. “The collector said the pottery means nothing, so we gave it to him and he paid 3 Yuan for the pottery woman.”
However, when the tomb raiders learned that the tomb they dug is from the Sui Tang Dynasty, which is more than 1000 years ago, they were stunned by their discoveries and the low price they had asked for.
The two tomb raiders confessed that in the past two years they raided two tombs but sold all the unearthed objects at a super cheap price.
All items have been confiscated by the police.
February 5, 2010 – 4:44 am
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Diners continued eating unperturbed after a car broke into a restaurant through a window in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province on Tuesday (February 2).
The driver was trying to park to have lunch there when he mistook the accelerator for the brake.
One waitress and two customers were injured in the accident.
