Beyoncé reveals she's pregnant

Beyonce revealed her pregnancy after performing at the show - courtesy MTV Video Music Awards

Beyonce's pregnancy news at Sunday night's MTV video music awards (VMAs) has broken a Twitter record.

Users on the microblogging site posted 8,868 tweets per second when the singer showed off her baby bump after her performance at the event.
The previous record was 7,196 after Japan's win over the US in the women's World Cup final in July.
This will be the first child for 29-year-old Beyonce and her husband of three years Jay-Z, who is 41.

It's raining money! Chaos on Dutch motorway

Drivers couldn't believe their eyes when it started raining money on the Dutch A2 on Monday. A money transporter had lost a container containing innumerable Euro notes – which were all flying about on the motorway.

The A2 motorway near Maastricht was dotted with Euro notes on Monday: tenners, twenties and fifties were scattered around the road near Esloo in the south of the Netherlands.
The unexpected money shower caused huge traffic jams, as many motorists decided to stop and pick up some dosh. Police took over an hour in order to get the traffic flow back to normal.
While most motorists handed back the money they found to the police, some managed to sneak away with a few notes. It is not yet clear as to how much money was lost during the incident.
An investigation is now being launched into how it could be that the back door of the money transporter opened up and lost these valuable goods…

UK's atomic clock 'is world's most accurate'

An atomic clock at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has the best long-term accuracy of any in the world, research has found.

Studies of the clock's performance, to be published in the journal Metrologia, show it is nearly twice as accurate as previously thought.

The clock would lose or gain less than a second in some 138 million years.

The UK is among the handful of nations providing a "standard second" that keeps the world on time.

However, the international race for higher accuracy is always on, meaning the record may not stand for long.

Inside the clock, caesium atoms are gathered into bunches of 100 million or so, and passed through a cavity where they are exposed to these electromagnetic waves.

The colour, or frequency, is adjusted until the spins are seen to flip - then the researchers know the waves are at the right frequency to define the second.

At the last count in 2010, the UK's atomic clock was on a par with the best of them in terms of long-term accuracy: to about one part in 2,500,000,000,000,000.

5 9 EARTHQUAKE Virginia East Coast USA, BREAKING NEWS, 5.9 RICHTER SCALE

5.9M Earthquake Rocks Virginia East Coast USA

A magnitude-5.9 earthquake has struck the east coast of the United States.

The quake was felt in Washington, where the Pentagon and US Capitol Building were evacuated, as well as in New York.

There were no immediate reports of any major damage or injuries.

Scottish SPCA helps silly cow remove head from ladder

Poor cow!

                        

An animal charity has rescued a cow in South Ayrshire which got its head stuck in a ladder.

Members of the public called the Scottish SPCA after spotting the bewildered beast in a field beside the Troon to Barassie road last month.

An inspector contacted the farmer who owned the Belgian Blue bullock and helped return it to the herd unharmed.

The farmer, who recently took on the lease to the land, said he had no idea how the ladder ended up in the field.

'Surprisingly calm'

Scottish SPCA Inspector Kerry Kirkpatrick contacted the farmer after being alerted to the cow's plight.

He said: "When the job came through my first thought was, this is a wind up, but I arrived at the field to find the cow looking confused but surprisingly calm despite having his head wedged tightly in between the rungs of the ladder.

"The farmer's family rounded up the whole herd into a holding pen and we managed to gently pull the ladder off the cow's head.

"The farmer had no idea how the ladder ended up in his field as he only recently took on the lease for the land. It may have been used to patch up a hole in the fence or it could have fallen off a passing van or lorry. Either way, it's a rescue I won't forget in a while."

Teen Awards

Highlights from the Teen Awards

Can polar bears and people coexist?

CUTE  BUT  DANGEROUS!

We have an odd relationship with polar bears.

As we watch them pace inside their zoo enclosures, or marvel at their portrayal within natural history documentaries, we are drawn to their big paws, fluffy white fur and button-like black noses. We find polar bear cubs adorable.

We grant them special status, elevating polar bears to represent all that is most majestic about the frozen parts of our planet.

Yet we often forget that polar bears are killers.

It is in their nature. As the top carnivore in their icy world, and the largest land predator alive, polar bears hunt to survive, mainly stalking other large mammals such as seals, walruses and whales.

Occasionally, and tragically, we now know, they will also kill people, as evidenced by the death of a young British tourist in Norway and the mauling of four others.

Incidents like this, however, could become more common.

The reason is climate change. As rising temperatures melt the sea ice, the number of polar bears may rapidly dwindle. That could mean that there are far fewer bears surviving for people to come into conflict with. But if polar bear numbers fall, we may revere them even more, with more tourists and adventurers flocking to catch a final glimpse of these animals.

If the sea ice retreats, it will also mean that more polar bears will be forced to hunt further inland. And that means more polar bears roaming around parts of the Arctic and sub-Arctic that people call home.

A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E !!!