WEIRD STUFF

Dog nearly dies after eating panties

A dog underwent emergency surgery after it ate eight and a half thongs.

Bodhi was rushed to Goodard emergency vets in Northolt, North West London, England, on July 11 by his owner Sarah Tillet.

Staff found Bodhi ate eight and a half pairs of Sarah's teenage daughter's knickers, which he helped himself to from the laundry basket.

Sarah is quoted by The i Paper as saying: "We were speechless".

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Baby born 30 years late

A baby boy has been named the "world's oldest baby" after he was born from an embryo that was frozen in 1994 and "adopted" 30 years later.

Lindsey, 35, and Tim Pierce are the parents of Thaddeus Daniel Pierce -- who was born on July 26.

Thaddeus' arrival came after the Ohio, USA, couple struggled to conceive for eight years, and chose to "adopt" an embryo.

And in May 1994, their embryo was created when Linda Archerd, 62, and her ex-husband underwent in vitro fertilisation (IVF) because they also had difficulty conceiving naturally.

Linda and her ex-husband produced four embryos, with one resulting in the birth of their daughter, 30, and the other three were frozen in case they wanted to add to their brood.

After the couple split, Linda was awarded custody of the embryos and she later put them up for adoption because Linda felt "it was the right thing to do".

Linda gave them to Nightlight Christian Adoptions -- a Christian embryo adoption agency -- and because the embryos were considered "hard to place", they were placed under its Snowflakes' Open Hearts scheme.

And years later, Lindsey and Tim applied for the Snowflakes' Open Hears Scheme, and their dream of becoming parents became a reality following IVF.

Lindsey -- who had the embryo implanted by the Rejoice Fertility clinic in Tennessee, USA, is quoted by the Daily Mail newspaper as saying: "We are in awe that we have this precious baby.

"We had a rough birth, but we're both doing well now."

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Late sleeping linked to diabetes and mental illness

Going to sleep after midnight increases the risk of over 90 health conditions.

Poor sleep has often been linked to negative health consequences and new evidence shows that those who don't go to bed until late are more likely to suffer from gangrene, liver damage and type 2 diabetes.

Scientists at Peking University and Army Medical University in China have concluded that going to sleep past 12:30am could raise the risk of ill health.

The researchers wrote in Health Data Science: "Evidence suggests that sleep traits might be associated with a number of diseases affecting diverse systems, such as cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders, and mental diseases.

"However, in most publications to date, sleep has been measured by subjective recall of the participants, which has been found to bear systematic error in some aspects and may lead to misunderstanding of sleep's health impact.

"Furthermore, the available literature has mainly focused on certain sleep traits, namely, sleep duration, while other traits such as sleep timing and sleep rhythm have less often been analysed."