Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.

Juliane Koepcke is not someone you'd expect to attract attention. Plainly dressed and wearing prescription glasses, Koepcke sits behind her desk at the Zoological Center in Munich, Germany, where she's a librarian.

Yet this unassuming middle aged woman has one of the most exciting and unbelievable stories of tragedy and survival to tell.

It was Christmas Eve, 1971, when Koepcke, then aged 17, and her mother boarded a Lockheed Electra turboprop for a flight from Lima, Peru, to Pucallpa in the Amazonian rainforest. Her parents, both famous zoologists, ran a research station in the jungle studying wildlife.

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.

The body of a 41-year-old man was found in a wooded area next to a guillotine he built and used to kill himself, police said.

The man, from the Detroit suburb of Melvindale, was discovered Monday by workers from a shopping center near his home.

Groundskeeper from the Fairlane Green shopping center at Outer and Fairlane drive discovered the body shortly before 11 a.m. Monday.

A picture taken by a 12-year-old Kirkland girl during the holiday week in December surprised her family by capturing a mysterious object.

The girl, her family and her 15-year-old friend were staying at cabins overlooking a river in Winthrop when the incident occurred.

At sunset, the girl was experimenting with a new digital camera she had received as a gift.

The girl and her 15-year-old friend took pictures of each other, snow on the trees and snowflakes at night. At one point, they saw an object moving and tried to capture it on camera.

A West Palm Beach man told police that he used a butcher knife to kill his 1-year-old nephew because he believed the boy was possessed, investigators said.

Eric Sawyer, 38, was arrested around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday after police found his 1-year-old nephew Brandon Cole wrapped in bloody sheets in the laundry room of a home on the 5800 block of Orchard Way in West Palm Beach.

Sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said the killing was "premeditated," and that Sawyer told police that he had been thinking about killing the boy for days, WPBF News 25 reported.

Rangers at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park are launching a program to stop people from leaving religious offerings at the summit of Mount Kilauea -- including food they say attracts rats and cockroaches.

Visitors leave 45 pounds of offerings from Halemaumau Crater each week, including flowers, bottles, money, incense, candles and crystals, park rangers say.

Some things John Grisham knows: He got 15 rejections before his first book, "A Time to Kill," was published. He made $9 million last year. He's not James Joyce or William Faulkner. He's an entertainer.

"I'm not sure where that line goes between literature and popular fiction," the mega-selling author says. "I can assure you I don't take myself serious enough to think I'm writing literary fiction and stuff that's going to be remembered in 50 years. I'm not going to be here in 50 years; I don't care if I'm remembered or not. It's pure entertainment."

Grisham is happy to write what he hopes is "a high-quality popular fiction." But that matters not to fans, who gobble every word.

If records were kept on per capita misery, Skidmore, population about 350, might be near the top of the list.

The town sits on a hill above the Nodaway River amid cornfields in northwestern Missouri. Residents farm, man the town's lone gas station and clock in at nearby factories.

Skidmore is not a hotbed of any activity, much less the criminal kind. In 2005, all of Nodaway County recorded 16 violent crimes.

But for such a small town, Skidmore has an unusually violent history. The most recent of the especially brutal crimes was the slaying of a pregnant woman whose fetus was cut from her womb.

Go to work, come home.

Go to work, come home.

Go to work -- and vanish without a trace.

Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why.

The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil.

Italian police tipped off by an anonymous phone call found a 70-year old woman living with the corpses of two older sisters who had died roughly a year ago, an Italian news agency reported.

It was not clear if the dead sisters, aged 73 and 78, had died of natural causes or were killed, ANSA said.

"Everything is clearly linked to religion, they believed in resurrection," a local prosecutor at the scene told ANSA. "Some years ago they completely isolated themselves from everyone, many friends thought they were away at a holiday home."

A man killed his girlfriend, then filleted and cooked parts of her body before calling police to tell them what he was doing, authorities said Sunday.

Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, called 911 on Saturday and told an emergency dispatcher he had killed Jana Shearer, 21, and was boiling her body parts at his mother's home, said Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith.

KETK has learned the man charged with Capital Murder in the death of his girlfriend, 21-year-old Jana Shearer is dead.

Smith County sheriff's officials say 26-year-old Christopher McCuin was found unresponsive in his jail cell on Sunday afternoon.

Chief Gary Pinkerton tells us, Christopher McCuin died at a local hospital just after one o'clock.

Officials believe he died from natural causes and they do not suspect foul play.

Friends and family of a 21-year-old who police say was killed and mutilated by her boyfriend struggle to put aside the grisly details of her death.

"You can't sleep. You can't think straight anymore," said Amy Gage, a friend and neighbor of the victim, Jana Shearer. "Then you just keep finding out more and more. It's the most difficult thing anyone can go through."

Shearer's boyfriend, Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, was charged with capital murder after police said they found her body, an ear boiling in a pot on a stovetop, and a hunk of flesh with a fork in it on a plate at the crime scene.

Deadly attacks by large groups of ravens on young livestock are on the increase, farmers have warned.

Lambs, calves and sheep are being targeted across Britain, but especially in Scotland and Wales.

The ravens flock together to attack their victims in scenes which some describe as reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film The Birds.

Even if the animals survive the attacks, they are left in excruciating pain.