Brentwood International

It’s lucky he’s such a good-natured beast.   Because if this horse turned grumpy, there’s no way a petite woman armed with a rope could hold him back. 

Standing 20.2 hands - that’s 6ft 10in - at the shoulder and weighing 200 stone, Poe is the tallest horse in the world, according to owner Shereen Thompson.   He lives on Miss Thompson’s farm in Tupperville, Ontario, in Canada.

Poe - who is 10ft tall with his head held high - needs two bales of hay a day, 10lb of grain and 75 gallons of water.

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Crawling out from underneath a school coach with a nervous grin, this is the moment a young illegal immigrant gave up on his desperate attempt to get into Britain from France. The boy and a companion, both believed to be 14, were found after getting underneath the coach which was parked in a Calais supermarket car park.

The children used the coach's exhaust to climb on top of its engine in an attempt to smuggle themselves across the Channel.  But the exhaust cracked as they stepped on it thereby aiming poisonous fumes directly where they were hiding.  The coach driver rumbled the pair, who quickly crawled out of their hideaway and fled. He said the youngsters were later seen in the car park trying to find an alternative route out of the country. The Travel De Courcey bus had been hired by Exhall Grange School in Coventry for a week-long trip and was on its way to the ferry port for the journey home.   The schoolchildren on board were the same age as the stowaways, who would have been killed if they'd not been discovered.

The happy couple were given a redcarpet welcome when they arrived at the hotel for their wedding.

As part of the package there was Buck's Fizz, a three-course meal with wine for 35 guests, plus a 50-person evening buffet.

And the total bill? That will be £51 ($80 US), please. Lee and Colette Clark won their bargain wedding day through shrewd operating on the auction site eBay.

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El Paso and Juárez have long been considered a single community, one divided by a borderline but united by everything else. Their economies depend on each other.  They have the same culture and values. But the brutal drug war taking place in Juárez during the past 18 months, which has claimed more than 2,500 lives, is slowly dividing these two cities. 

Residents in El Paso now advise one other not to go to Juárez. Many have stopped making trips to see friends and relatives. Others no longer cross to visit doctors and pharmacists. Wealthy residents of Juárez, fearful of the violence, have fled to El Paso; those who can't afford to do the same resent what they see as their neighbors' abandonment.

Ironically, El Paso is one of the safest American cities—and it now lies alongside the unsafest city in Mexico.

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A dose of alcohol may be a good treatment for people with head injuries, emergency doctors suggest. Their basis for this is the discovery that people appear less likely to die following brain trauma if they have alcohol in their bloodstream.  It could be that alcohol dampens the body's inflammatory response to injury, the US team told Archives of Surgery.   But they stressed that alcohol can cause medical complications and is contributory to many accidents.   Experts cautioned people should not interpret the findings as an excuse to drink more alcohol.

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For weeks, Randy Joubert and Gary Nisbet laughed off customers’ comments that the two furniture deliverymen looked similar enough to be brothers.  It wouldn’t be long before fate would prove the old adage, the customer is always right.  Joubert said something in him clicked after yet another customer asked the same question during a routine delivery in late August.   Joubert realized that the man who had been on the other end of countless couches, mattresses and recliners since July wasn’t just a co-worker. Nisbet was the long-lost brother for whom he had been searching.

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Ever wondered how long a woman can keep a secret? Well the answer, it seems, is less than two days.  Researchers found that they will typically spill the beans to someone else in 47 hours and 15 minutes.  A study of 3,000 women aged between 18 and 65 also found that four in ten were unable to keep a secret, no matter how personal or confidential the news was. 

The Virtual Museum of Iraq was unveiled last week in Italy. Available in Arabic, English and Italian, the Virtual Museum of Iraq offers visitors the opportunity to move through eight virtual galleries and see highlights from the collection from the prehistoric to the Islamic period. Animated videoclips provide details. It is one of the best museum websites I've seen.

Click here to visit the museum

A GREEDY cat from London is competing for the award of Greediest Pet as his owner revealed that he will only eat home-made beef lasagne.  

Just like the character Garfield, Humphrey the cat refuses to eat anything else and consumes three portions of the pasta dish a day.

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Cat travels 3800 kms in 3 years.MEET Clyde, the cat who survived a miraculous and mysterious odyssey of more than three years and 3800km that took him from Tasmania to Mt Isa.

The moggy wandered into Cloncurry Hospital about four months ago, on the fringe of the dry western plains about 120km east of Mt Isa. Nobody knew where he was from or how he got there.  Now his owners in southern Tasmania are about to be reunited with their beloved cat, three years after he vanished without a trace.

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Bolivian said 9/9/09 was satanic 666 upside down.

A Bolivian religious fanatic told police he hijacked a Mexican jetliner from the resort city of Cancun on Wednesday after receiving a divine revelation, Mexico's public safety secretary told reporters.   Flores used a fake bomb to hijack the plane, Garcia Luna said, then ordered the pilot to circle over Mexico City seven times. He said he wanted to warn Mexican President Felipe Calderon of an impending earthquake.  Police, who did not fire a single shot, led as many as eight handcuffed men away from the airplane, which was isolated at the end of a runway in an area designed for emergencies.

Police later said Flores acted alone and that the others were detained when it was still unclear who was involved.

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