A mutt who stopped a bomb attack will live with one of the soldiers he saved.
Also:
Zedonk!
They may be an unlikely pair, but just five days ago a zebra and donkey in Georgia welcomed into the world one very unique-looking baby girl -- a zedonk. Officials at the
Chestatee Wildlife Preserve, where the cute little crossbred was born, are as surprised as anyone by the very
rare coupling. It turns out, the zebra/donkey romance has been many years in the making, but somehow the duo managed to keep it a secret. "The animals have been running (in the fields) together for more than 40 years, but this is the first time that this has happened here," says the preserve's founder. "We never suspected that they (had mated), so it was quite a surprise when the zedonk was born."
Pet tiger escapes in South Africa on trip to vet
A tiger which was being kept as a pet in South Africa has escaped from the back of a truck and is running loose. A search is on to find the animal, called Panjo, after it escaped on the trip between Johannesburg, its home, and Springs, where it was being taken to a vet clinic for a check-up.
The authorities urged people to stay away from the animal. But its owner said was it was used to humans and told anyone who came across Panjo to treat it "like a dog".
Owner Rose Fernandes told local radio that all people had to do
was pick up a stick and say "No" in a loud voice.
Brenda Santon, national wildlife manager for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), said SPCA teams were working to locate the escaped tiger and warned people not approach it. "We believe it is wrong to keep tigers as pets. The animal must be left to live in the jungle. They remain dangerous," she said.
Chinese zoo accidentally gasses giant panda to death
A Chinese zoo accidentally killed one of its giant pandas after a faulty ventilation system pumped toxic gas into its enclosure. Quan Quan, a 21-year-old panda at Jinan Zoo in Shandong province, in eastern China, died
after inhaling a mixture of chlorine, chlorine hydride and carbon monoxide, according to a spokesman.
The panda, which had given birth to seven cubs, arrived on loan at the zoo in 2007 from the Wolong panda reserve in Sichuan province. Quan Quan was one of the zoo's star attractions, helping to boost visitor numbers to around 30,000 a day. Workers had been disinfecting an air raid shelter inside the zoo when the gases leaked through the ventilation system into the panda house.
"The ventilation system was built in 1995," said a spokesman. "It was used to keep the panda house cool, but it fed large amounts of smoke into the panda enclosure." At 21, Quan Quan was the equivalent of more than 70-years-old in human terms, according to Chen Lihua, the head of the animal-breeding department at Shanghai zoo. Most pandas live to between 20 years and 25 years.
"The zoo must give a full explanation for the death of the panda on Thursday as soon as possible. Without the panda, the zoo will lose the top attraction for its visitors," said Wang Jingjing, a 27-year-old interior designer in Jinan. "She was quite healthy when I visited her last time," she added.
Of the billions of dollars the US Defense Department has spent allegedly reconstructing Iraq, 96% of 
A woman flying on standby on a Southwest Airlines flight was removed from the plane because one passenger needed two seats:
Tonight I discovered that the deleterious effects of bottom trawling were first noted (and first protested) in... 1376! This text comes from a petition to King Edward III:
