“They call him ‘Twenty-Four.’ Yoandri Hernandez Garrido’s nickname comes from the six perfectly formed fingers on each of his hands and the six impeccable toes on each foot. Hernandez is proud of his extra digits and calls them a blessing, saying they set him apart and enable him to make a living by scrambling up palm trees to cut coconuts and posing for photographs in this eastern Cuban city popular with tourists. One traveller paid $10 for a picture with him, Hernandez said, a bonanza in a country with an average salary of just $20 a month. ‘It’s thanks to my 24 digits that I’m able to make a living, because I have no fixed job,’ Hernandez said.” w/ photos

“It is certainly what you could call a gem of a discovery. Astronomers believe they have found an entire planet made of diamonds. Scientists at the University of Manchester think they have unearthed a once-massive star in the Milky Way that has been transformed into a small planet made of the precious rock. The international research team first detected an unusual star, called a pulsar, and followed up their discovery with research using a telescope based in an observatory in Cheshire. The findings led the scientists to discover the gravitational pull of a small companion planet orbiting the pulsar. Pulsars are small spinning stars more than ten miles in diameter – the size of a small city – that emit a beam of radio waves.” w/ photos + videos

“It’s certainly one way of brightening up the boring old rubbish bin. British inventor Nick Staley has created a secret shed for his bin, which doubles as a flower display. Mr Staley, 38, said his wife ‘found it embarrassing’ to keep their bin so close to their front door, but with no side passage – and Mr Staley having spent more than a year landscaping their back garden – they had only one option. ‘I decided to hide it,’ he said. ‘I looked at the bin covers on the market and was disappointed to find that none of them are very good – some look worse than the bin itself. So I decided to make my own one.” w/ photos

“Like a lot of youngsters she likes to relax in front of the TV and will eat anything in sight. Beaky the pet emu also quite enjoys a soak in the bath. In fact, the two-year-old bird is almost as much a part of the Newby family as the six children. She arrived in an unhatched egg, an unusual Christmas present for Ian Newby, 44, from his wife Lisa, 36. Now his present is a fully grown emu, weighing 38lbs and standing 6ft tall. Despite her great size – emus are the second tallest birds in the world after the ostrich – she has defied expert opinion by remaining tame and domesticated.” w/ photos

“These photos prove that even baby monkeys can’t get by without their favorite toy. And this 15-day-old mandrill happened to find one that was the spitting image of him. The male primate has grown attached to the worn yellow soft toy at Yageer Zoo in Ningbo, China. He can be seen wrapping his arms around it and crossing his fingers with the dexterity of a human. The monkey even curls up in a ball and sucks his thumb. And just like a baby, he’s fed milk by breeders breeders – although powdered.” w/ photos

“This bear got so tired of trying catch a salmon that he fell ASLEEP in the middle of a rapidly flowing river. The confounded carnivore became so bored he slumped down onto his front on the edge of a mini-waterfall, using his paws as a pillow. And despite his best efforts the huge creature left empty-handed – and probably hungry. World-renowned wildlife photographer Marsel van Oosten captured the amazing moment the brown bear succumbed to a power nap after a long day’s fishing at Katmai National Park in southern Alaska.” w/ photos

“The mayor of a small Canadian town is under police investigation after dumping a 20-tonne, gift-wrapped boulder on his ex-wife’s driveway. Dany Larivière, who is the mayor of Saint-Théodore-d’Acton, near Montreal, claims to have deposited the rock in Isabelle Prévost’s driveway in a bid to get her to stop harassing him. Mr Larivière, who also owns an excavation company, sprayed the rock with fluorescent orange birthday greetings and topped it off with a pink bow. ‘I had to do something so she’d leave me alone,’ he told French TV station TVA. ‘She never had a rock big enough for her tastes, now she has one. That’s the biggest rock she’ll ever get in her life,’ he added, claiming the boulder was a ‘gift’ The pair, who split acrimoniously three years ago, have each accused each other of harassment.” w/ photos

“A fire has ravaged a massive wooden replica of the ‘World’s Largest Stove’, which was built for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and became a state landmark. Fire crews were called to the site of the the 15-ton, 25-foot cooking stove at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit on after storms moved through the area. It is thought the blaze, which burnt the iconic structure to its frame, was sparked by a lightening bolt. ‘It’s gone through so many evolutions, so many changes in the city and still survived all those years,’ said Jan Kaulins, a photographer who sells prints of the stove and other Detroit landmarks on his website. ‘It’s multi-generational. Objects like that help bind history.’ Michael Herron, a Detroit Fire Department senior chief, said reports indicated that ‘natural causes’ were to blame for the fire, adding it was most likely a lightening strike.” w/ photos

“Dressed in skimpy neon outfits, these are the scantily-clad female players being used to draw more interest to women’s basketball. Teams playing in the Lingerie Basketball League have to strip to their bras and panties for the games, which are proving popular with male fans. Four teams – the Beauties, Divas, Glam and Starlets – compete each week in the games being played in LA. But the revealing matches have been criticized for setting back women’s sports. Sports publicist Angie Meyer defended the lingerie league and said it is a serious contest. ‘On paper, it looks and sounds derogatory towards women,’ she told Fox News. ‘However, when you sit down and watch the intense athleticism of these women, you learn the league is much more than a pretty powder-puff team.” w/ photos

“They’re wet and just wild about breaking the world record for the largest number of people ever to shower together. Temperatures soared as 152 people – many girls in bikinis – washed their way into the record books on Bournemouth beach. They lathered up under a giant 19-foot shower structure. The bid organized by Lynx beat the previous record set in America two years ago when 145 people showered together in Illinois.” w/ photos