“A pensioner had to do a double-take this morning as she emerged from her house to find autumn had arrived EIGHT MONTHS early. Retired grandmother-of-three Irene Robinson couldn’t believe the giant pile of leaves she found on her doorstep when she was prevented from leaving the house after a night of strong winds. Gardens, pathways and even residents’ cars were submerged by the mysterious covering in Wednesbury, West Midlands. Winds, which reached up to 70 miles an hour in the area yesterday, brought the 3ft pile of leaves over from the nearby New Southgate Cemetery and Crematorium. Irene, 77, said she had never seen anything like it. ‘I could not even get out my front door on Monday it was so bad,’ she said. ‘I had to go round the back. ‘It has been like this all week, I have lived here 23 years and I have never seen it like this. ‘I have asked the council for help clearing it off my drive but they said they can only clear leaves from the footpaths.’ The leaves have completely filled people’s front gardens, covering their rubbish bins, cars and garden walls. Van driver Karen Thomas, aged 40, who lives in the road, said it had been a regular problem whenever the wind picked up.” w/ photos

“Walking more than 2,200 miles across the U.S. sounds like enough of a challenge. But not for Erik Bendl, who has spent much of the last four years trekking through 23 states with the extra burden of a six-foot-high, 80lb inflatable canvas globe. Mr Bendl, 48, who calls himself ‘World Guy”, is now on his fifth epic trek in four years. The walks have taken him as far east as Acadia National Park in Maine and as far west as Pike’s Peak in Colorado – all to raise awareness of diabetes.” w/ photos

“She may be 4,000 years old, but that hasn’t stopped her from causing trouble between the US and China. A museum in Philadelphia has been told it cannot display the ‘Beauty of Xiaohe’, a nearly-perfect preserved mummy from far western China with hair and eye lashes still intact, along with a host of other historical artefacts. The museum announced on Wednesday that it was stripping the ‘Secrets of the Silk Road’ display of all objects that was due to open today at the request of Chinese officials. No reason has been given for why the exhibition has suddenly been halted after four months travelling around the US but there was speculation that it may be linked to the mummy’s Western appearance and Chinese sensitivities about what that implied for the region’s history. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology declined to say which officials they were and the Chinese consulate was unavailable for comment because of the Chinese New Year holiday. The Beauty of Xiaohe was the centre-piece of the exhibition along with a well-preserved mummy of a baby, along with vibrantly coloured burial trappings of a third mummy. The artefacts come from the Tarim Basin in the autonomous Xinjiang Uyghur region of China and are of particular interest because of their Caucasian features. This proves that people migrated east from Europe, taking their customs and skills with them.” w/ photos

“A feline fanatic has spent the last 60 years amassing a bizarre collection of over 2,000 ceramic cats… and she won’t stop until it’s purr-fect. Pamela Cole, 60, from Birmingham, has been collecting the cats since the late 1940s, after her mother gave her a replica of a beloved kitten. The collection, thought to be worth over $68,000, contains ornaments worth anything from 10p to over $1,300 and she even has one cat dating back to 600BC.  Pam, who now has a staggering 2,222 cats of varying shapes and sizes, says she keeps them in her spare bedroom and has stopped anyone sleeping in there.” w/ photos

“A hospital in China has sewn the left foot of a patient on to his right leg in a bid to save both the foot itself and his left limb. The patient, named as Mr Ma, had the surgery in Zhengzhou, in central China, following a work accident two weeks ago which badly damaged his left leg. It appears that doctors felt that the infected wound in the leg would have ultimately led to amputating the foot and leaving the limb 7in shorter – so decided to make their radical decision. They decided to attach the left foot to the right leg and use that limb’s arteries and veins to keep the foot healthy thereby leaving the patient, for the moment, with two right feet. Further surgery will then reattach the foot back to the patient’s left leg in around a month’s time.” w/ photos

“Swimming is supposed to give you a healthy glow, but these swimmers weren’t quite sure what was going on when they took a late-night dip and turned a fluorescent shade of blue. ‘It was like we were playing with radioactive paint,’ said photographer Phil Hart who snapped the bizarre sight as his friends emerged from a lake in the dark of night. The light is created by a chemical reaction called bioluminescence, which happens when a naturally-occuring micro-organism in the water is disturbed. Phil, 34, put his camera on a very slow shutter speed and threw sand and stones into the water to cause the reaction and capture as much of the blue haze as possible. These images are particularly stunning because the concentration of the micro-organism ‘Noctiluca Scintillans’ was abnormally high when he took the photos at Gippsland Lakes in Victoria, Australia. Phil said: ‘To be there watching this bioluminescence is spellbinding and to see it like this is very rare. ‘I am a program director with an organisation that has been running canoeing camps on the Gippsland Lakes for 50 years. Nobody can remember the bioluminescence ever being as bright as this.” w/ photos

“At first, my mouth feels warm and dry; then, as the droplets in the smoke settle, I can make out the particular flavors. The lemon tart is zingy and fresh. Next, a whaf of tarte tatin fills my mouth with caramel. It might sound mad, but ‘whaffing’ is ­predicted to be the futuristic way of eating. That’s why I’ve travelled to Paris to try one of only two Whaf machines in the world. Best of all, each breath (or ‘whaf’) ­contains hardly any calories — so you can have as much as you like without gaining weight. This magical invention has been ­conjured up by a Harvard University professor and aerosol scientist. And five minutes after meeting Professor David Edwards, 49, it’s clear why he’s compared more often to Willy Wonka than Einstein.” w/ photos

“Andreas Muller, 39, has gone to extreme lengths to win himself a car – having the word ‘Mini’ tattooed on to his penis… The crazy German decided to have the rather painful tattoo after a radio station ran a competition to win a $27,000 Mini Cooper. The brief: whoever pulled the craziest stunt to get the car would win. Unsurprisingly, Muller’s offer to have the car manufacturer’s name branded on to his penis topped the list of crazy suggestions. ‘There were a lot of crazy stunts put forward by listeners, but Andreas won by a short head,’ said one of the competition’s organisers. Radio listeners were then treated to Muller’s cries of agony while the unique piece of branding was created.” w/ photos

“He was born the same year Tommy Steele was topping the charts and the Russians sent Sputnik into space. Like his famous namesake, he’s been around for donkey’s years – but at the age of 54, Eeyore is being hailed as the oldest living donkey in the world. Believed to be born in 1957, he is now a Guinness World Record contender for oldest donkey in the world. The animal named after the gloomy Winnie the Pooh character has outlived other donkeys whose lifespan is usually 25-30 years. Like his Winnie the Pooh namesake, old Eeyore is prone to glumness – perhaps because he keeps outliving his animal companions. But just for today, if he could talk, he’d likely echo the catchphrase: ‘Thanks for noticin’ me’ But unlike the 1926 AA Milne creation which was renowned for its love of eating thistles and having the catchphrase ‘Thanks for noticin’ me’ – Eeyore is celebrating his latest birthday with his favourite diet of hay and carrots. Owner Selwyn Demmy, took in Eeyore earlier this month at his animal sanctuary in Cheshire and discovered his two previous owners had him for over 50 years combined. Originally living with a family in Disley, Derbyshire, the beloved donkey was once tended to by a 20-year-old girl who is now 72 – proving his age to be over 50.” w/ photos

“The ‘newest’ big cat species known to science, the Sunda clouded leopard, has two sub-species, scientists have discovered. Researchers only realised it was a new species – distinct from clouded leopards living elsewhere in Asia – in 2007. Now a genetic analysis has confirmed that the cat comes in two forms, one living in Sumatra, the other on Borneo. Clouded leopards are the most elusive of the big cats, which include lions, tigers, jaguars, snow leopards and normal spotted leopards. Living across south-east Asia, into China and India, the leopards have larger cloud-like spots than ordinary leopards. Until 2006, all clouded leopards were thought to belong to a single species. However, genetic studies revealed that there are actually two quite distinct clouded leopard species. As well as the better known clouded leopard living on the Asian mainland ( Neofelis nebulosa ), scientists determined that a separate clouded leopard species lives on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. This leopard is now known as the Sunda clouded leopard ( Neofelis diardi ), though it was previously and erroneously called the Bornean clouded leopard. The two species are thought to have split over one million years ago. Since 2008, it has been listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.” w/ photos