Who needs legs? Meet Joby, the 3ft 5in world champion arm wrestler who can bring down opponents twice his size
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 11:28 AM on 06th October 2009
Instead of bemoaning what he lacks, Joby Matthew is using what he's got.
Despite being several feet shorter than others at his gym, Mr Matthew is able to defeat opponents twice his size with ease... at arm-wrestling.
Mr Matthew - who is 3'5'' - has severely under-developed legs, a condition caused by Proximal Fimoral Focal Deficiency (PFFD).
Legs just weigh you down: Joby Mathew does his routine morning exercise on the banks of Periyar river on the outskirts of Ernakulam last month as he builds up his upper body strength
But he has so much upper body strength that he is a world champion arm wrestler who can crush challengers with no disabilities.
Stunningly, the father-of-one has so far made it onto five world podiums during his career.
In these amazing pictures the pint-sized powerhouse, from Kerala, India, can be seen easily jumping up steps using only his hands.
And in further astonishing displays of muscular prowess Mr Matthew, who has just become a dad for the first time, amazes onlookers as he lifts huge weights and does push ups on just one hand.
His thirst for life means he also drives a specially-converted car that lets him drive using only his arms.
In a heart-warming twist to his amazing story, the nine stone sports trainer at a petroleum company says his incredible journey against all odds began with a supportive family.
Level playing field: Mr Mathew practices his arm-wrestling skills with a bodybuilder colleague at a local gym in Aluha last month
Facing a troubling trek just to get to school every day, his relatives showed him how to overcome the physical challenges he would face.
'I was definitely given a lot of encouragement at home,' he said.
'My home was located on top of a hill, and for a physically-challenged person it wasn't the most conducive place for mobility.
'There were obstructions everywhere. I had to walk a quarter of a mile before I got to a real road and my mother used to carry me to school. That is how I made it to school in first year.'
At school, Mr Matthew became all the more determined to overcome his disability as he was forced to sit on the sidelines while other students played exciting sports.
'I had many painful experiences there like when I was left out of games and sports,' he said.
Now you're just showing off: Mr Matthew gets creative with his exercises on the riverbank last month
'But I don't want to blame anyone. They presumed that since I was handicapped I wouldn't be able to compete.
'I saw kids coming to school riding their bicycles and I felt bad knowing I would never be able to do that. But even then, I tried not to concentrate on things I could not do, but on things I could do.
'So I began playing sports like volley ball, badminton and soon I was playing with able-bodied kids.'
Mr Matthew's quest to be the best eventually led him to challenge the bigger children at playground arm-wrestling where boys would battle it out to be the strongest.
'I realised I would never play football so I began searching for games that I could do well. Arm-wrestling was my answer.
Championship material: Mr Matthew poses with his medals at the gym
'I began to arm wrestle with my schoolmates and found I could beat them. Back in school it was a mark of machismo, so I had to win.'
It was the start of a journey that would eventually see him scoop a gold medal, one silver, and three bronze on the world stage.
In the Japan World Championships 2005 he impressively bagged three bronze medals - one for general category against non-disabled competitors and two in disabled categories on different hands.
Then - reaching the top of his game at the 2008 World Championships in Spain - he coolly pocketed gold for the general category and silver for the disabled event.
During the competitions opponents are assigned to classes according to weight.
Despite his differences, Mr Matthew has never regarded himself as less able than others.
'y legs were extremely small at birth,' he said. 'According to science my legs are 60 per cent underdeveloped.
'But I think all of us are physically challenged in some way, so I never consider myself handicapped. According to the world I am, but it will never stop me from trying anything.'
To keep himself fighting-fit, Mr Matthew hits the gym for an hour every day before swimming in a local river until he reaches his astounding limit.
After working out he returns home to 25-year-old wife Megha, a dance expert, and his two-month-old baby boy.
With his insatiable appetite to reach new physical heights he has also begun a gruelling personal training program in mountain climbing.
After earning crucial experience in the lower Himalayas' and New Zealand his new dream is to climb Mount Everest.
'It could take me eight years until I'm ready,' he said. 'But with everything I've achieved I know I can do it.'
Woman, 74, Hospitalized After Being Mauled by Pack of Raccoons
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
LAKELAND, Fla. — A 74-year-old Lakeland woman was hospitalized after being mauled by a pack of raccoons she tried to shoo from her yard.
Gretchen Whitted fell when five raccoons surrounded and attacked, suffering extensive cuts from her neck to her legs.
"We're not talking about a lot of little bites here," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said. "She was filleted."
A neighbor called for help after hearing the woman's cries and seeing her covered in blood.
Whitted received dozens of staples and sutures and was treated for rabies
, though officials doubt the animals were infected.
Fire crews flooded nearby drains where some of the animals escaped, but none turned up. Animal Control officers hope to catch them in traps baited with wet cat food and sardines.
Egyptian politicians call for Gigimo Artificial Virginity Hymen kit to be banned
Egyptian politicians have demanded that an ‘Artificial Virginity Hymen’ kit be banned in the country, calling it a “mark of shame”.
By Tom Chivers
Published: 10:50AM BST 06 Oct 2009
The Gigimo Artificial Virginity Hymen kit: controversial in Egypt Photo: GIGIMO
Artificial Virginity Hymen is distributed by a Chinese company called Gigimo and sells for about £19. It consists of a pouch which is inserted inside a woman’s vagina before sex and leaks a blood-like substance when broken during intercourse.
Its website says, in broken English: “No more worry about losing your virginity. With this product, you can have your first night back anytime... Add in a few moans and groans, you will pass through undetectable.”
Sheik Sayed Askar, a member of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood political party, said: "It will be a mark of shame on the ruling party if it allowed this product to enter the market."
"This product encourages illicit sexual relations. Islamic culture forbids these relations except within the confines of marriage.
Abdel Moati Bayoumi, a prominent Islamic scholar, agreed. He said: "I think this should absolutely not be allowed to be exported because it brings more harm than benefits. Whoever does it (imports it) should be punished."
However, the product has met with some support. Marwa Rakha, an Egyptian blogger and activist for women’s rights, said the Artificial Virginity Hymen "sticks it in the face of every male hypocrite" in an Arab culture that condemns women’s sexuality but turns a blind eye to male promiscuity.
The Gigimo website offers shipment of the product to all Middle Eastern countries – and, by alphabetical chance, its default destination is the profoundly illiberal Afghanistan. It is not advertised in Egypt, but a reporter played an Arabic translation of the Chinese advert on Radio Netherlands, sparking the controversy.
In a region where premarital sex is not just frowned upon but actively condemned, with so-called honour killings not unheard of, being able to show one’s virginity on one’s wedding night can be vital.
A surgical method of reconstructing a hymen can cost up to 1000 Egyptian pounds (around £115) Many women seek it out, despite the sum being prohibitive for the poor, for fear of reprisals.
Egypt is considered more liberal than many other Middle Eastern states. Nonetheless, a 2005 UN report estimated that 52 out of a total 819 murders in the country in 1995 were honour killings
The blind seven-year-old 'Bat Boy' who sees the world by clicking his tongue and listening for the echoes
By Paul Sims
Last updated at 12:42 PM on 06th October 2009
Ever since he was born Lucas Murray has been unable to see.
But thanks to a technique using a form of sonar the seven-year-old can now visualise his surroundings for the very first time.
By clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth the youngster can discover where and how big objects are by deciphering the echoes that bounce back. 
Defying odds: Schoolboy Lucas Murray can visualise his surroundings by making clicking sounds with his tongue and listening to the echoes bouncing off objects
The technique has transformed his life - and means he can play freely with other children his age.
'We went through real grief when Lucas was younger because we had only really seen blind people being led or using canes,' said his mother, Sarah Murray, 33.
'We thought that was going to be Lucas's life. But now he is so independent, his mobility is fantastic and he hardly ever needs to ask for help any more than a normal seven-year-old would. It has given Lucas a fantastic future. Now he can do all the things he dreams of doing.'
Echolocation, a technique also used by bats and dolphins, means Lucas can play freely with other children his age. The technique begins with a click of the tongue on the roof of his mouth.
Lucas - who loves playing basketball and even goes rock climbing - listens to the echoes as they bounce off the objects before him. He can then determine how far away an object is by the time it takes for the sound to travel back, while its position can be estimated by which ear it hits first.
Lucas, seven, can now play basketball after learning how to use echolocation
He is also able to estimate the size of an object by the intensity of the echo, with a smaller object reflecting less of the sound wave.
The technique works in part because the blind often have more acute hearing than the fully sighted.
In America, users of the technique have learned to differentiate between people, trees, buildings and parked cars by interpreting the pitch and timbre of the echo they produce.
Some say they can determine the height, density and shape of objects up to 100ft away.
As for Lucas, he can use it to play basketball, determining which direction the hoop is in and how far away it is, before making his shot.
He is among the first youngsters to use the technique in Britain.
It was pioneered by blind 41-year-old Daniel Kish, from California. He created the 'No Limits Mobility' programme and spent three days working with Lucas and his family.
'Lucas already had a cane but we used to have to spend a lot of time holding his hand and guiding him,' said Mrs Murray, a mother of two from Poole, Dorset.
'While Daniel taught Lucas echolocation and cane skills, he taught us that the most important lesson as parents is to let him do it himself. Lucas picked up the clicking-quite quickly and very soon we could tell it was having a real impact on his life.
'When people see him walking or running around and hear that he is blind they are just blown away.'
Lucas met Mr Kish after his parents, Sarah and Iain, saw him on television two years ago.
Lucas said: 'I love basketball and it's much easier to play now that I can use my click to find out where the hoop is. It was quite hard to learn what the echoes meant at first but now I find it a lot easier.'
Mr Kish said youngsters often pick up the basic technique of echolocation very quickly - but warned it can take years to master the skill.
'How quickly, to what extent, and how reliably they pick it up depends largely on the support given to them,' he said.
Cops: N.Y. Mother Slashed Baby's Throat Because He Would Not Stop Crying
Monday, October 05, 2009
A Brooklyn mother, apparently upset when her baby wouldn't stop crying, slashed him across the throat yesterday and then plunged a knife into her own leg, police told The New York Post.
Cops took Tineka Johnson, 29, into custody after responding to an early-morning 911 call at her East Flatbush home.
She was charged with attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
The baby's grandmother reported the incident on East 38th Street, and Johnson was taken away without incident, authorities said.
The 5-month-old boy was rushed to Kings County Hospital a block away where officials said he was in stable condition yesterday.
Wooly Mammoth World Tour: First Stop, America
Monday, October 05, 2009
A baby woolly mammoth, frozen in soil for 40,000 years in Siberia, was so well preserved that traces of her mother's milk were still in her stomach.
Lyuba, who was thought to be just one month old, was discovered three years ago when nomadic reindeer dug her up. Scientists believe she died after being sucked into a river bed. Mud was found in her trunk and throat, suggesting she had suffocated.
The body is preserved enough to provide DNA samples, but the prospect of cloning the creature is still a long way off. Researchers found the animals' hump acted like a furnace, which helped maintain body temperature during colder weather. This supports the theory that mammoths were born in early spring.
Lyuba is being transported to Chicago to be exhibited in the Field Museum, where she will be the star attraction at a mammoths and mastodons exhibit. Daniel Fisher, the lead curator of the team studying the mammoth, said: "There's a visceral awe that takes hold of you looking at a specimen like Lyuba.
"The exhibition as a whole demonstrates how close we can come to knowing what these animals were like."
As the body was so well preserved, researchers have already learned more about mammoths from it than any previous discoveries.
"We had no idea from preserved skeletons and preserved carcasses that young mammoths had a discrete structure on the back of the head of brown fat cells," Mr Fisher told reporters.
Lyuba is going to be exhibited in 10 cities across the world, with the final stop on the tour being London's Natural History Museum in 2014.
Circular rainbow seen from aircraft window
A rare image of a circular rainbow has been taken from the window of a Thai Airways jet.
By Tom Chivers
Published: 12:21PM BST 06 Oct 2009
A circular rainbow spotted from a Thai Airways airliner's window Photo: EPA
The picture shows the ring-shaped spectrum against a backdrop of cumulocirrus clouds.
The aeroplane’s shadow can be faintly seen in the centre of the ring, with the colours fading from blue to red around it.
Rainbows are formed when sunlight strikes the curved inside of a raindrop at a specific angle and is reflected back through the water, creating a prism effect.
The apparent semicircle of a normal rainbow is only limited by the horizon. The full circle could be seen if the viewer were standing on a sufficiently high cliff, although it is more easily seen from aircraft.
Rainbows are long said to have had a profound religious and mythological significance. Before they were explained scientifically, they were described in the Bible as a symbol of God’s covenant with Noah, promising that mankind would never again be destroyed by flood.
In Irish folklore, the leprechaun hides his pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. This would, however, be harder to do in the case of a circular one.
U.S. state halts executions after botched lethal injection attempt on murderer
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 11:23 AM on 06th October 2009
A U.S. state has put a temporary halt to three executions after prison officials took more than two hours to find a suitable vein on one inmate to administer a lethal injection.
Ohio governor Ted Strickland yesterday ordered the five-month reprieve to give the prisons department more time to update procedures.
The first beneficiary is Lawrence Reynolds, who was due to be executed on Thursday for killing a neighbour.
Child killer Darryl Durr was scheduled to die next month for strangling a girl.
Condemned: Lawrence Reynolds and Romell Broom are due to be executed
Earlier yesterday, a court delayed Reynold's execution following problems with another one, the unsuccessful attempt on September 15 to put Romell Broom to death for raping and killing a teenage girl he had abducted at knifepoint in Cleveland in 1984.
Strickland stopped that execution after two hours when executioners couldn't find a usable vein.
Until it was halted, the execution attempt had taken the longest in Ohio to date, and Strickland's order to stop it was unprecedented nationally since the country resumed executions in the 1970s.
Ohio has put 32 people to death since 1999, when executions resumed there.
The U.S. Supreme Court was weighing whether to uphold the delay for Reynolds when Strickland issued his reprieves.
Strickland said prison staff have been researching backup or alternative procedures for lethal injection that would comply with state law.
A death chamber used to administer lethal injections. The state of Ohio has put a temporary stop to the practise
'Although they have made substantial progress in this regard, more research and evaluation of backup or alternative procedures is necessary before one or more can be selected,' Strickland said.
The backup procedure also will require training and other preparation, Strickland said.
Texas executed two people immediately after Broom's execution was stopped. Virginia is preparing to put Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad to death next month.
Muhammad's lawyer Jon Sheldon said he had no plans to raise an injection issue as part of an upcoming appeal. He said it's difficult to challenge the constitutionality of injection in Virginia because the state keeps many details of its process secret.
Virginia, unlike Ohio, doesn't permit witnesses to view the insertion of the IVs. It also shields its protocols, considering them related to security, said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.
Texas also doesn't permit anyone to witness the placement of the IVs.
Broom's case is likely to affect inmates whose cases most closely resemble his, such as condemned killers who argue they also have veins that might be difficult to find, said David Dow, litigation director for the Texas Defender Service.
Broom's execution is on hold while his lawyers prepare for a November 30 federal court hearing. The attorneys argue that a second execution attempt on Broom would violate a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The impact of Broom's case nationally will probably become clearer once U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost holds that hearing, said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor and lethal-injection expert.
The reprieves Strickland issued provide some insight into his position on how the state executes people, since he could have gone even further, said Lori Shaw, a University of Dayton death penalty expert.
'What he hasn't done is put a moratorium on executions,' she said. 'He took this step, but he didn't take a greater leap.'
Judge Boyce Martin said Broom's case raises questions about the state's lethal-injection procedures, including the competence of the state's execution team.
'Given the important constitutional and humanitarian issues at stake in all death penalty cases, these problems in the Ohio lethal-injection protocol are certainly worthy of meaningful consideration,' the judge wrote.
He said Frost should consider the cases of Broom and Reynolds together in November.
Judge Jeffrey Sutton dissented, arguing that the state's policy addresses a scenario in which executioners can't find suitable veins after repeated attempts.
'Why assume an execution protocol is unconstitutional when one of the humane features of the protocol - that the state will not continue trying to access a usable vein beyond a sensible time limit - is being followed?' he wrote.
Strickland delayed Reynolds' execution until March 9 and Durr's until April 20.
Prosecutors say Reynolds strangled Loretta Foster, who lived three doors down from him in Cuyahoga Falls, near Akron, when he needed money to fuel his alcohol addiction.
'We are disappointed for Loretta Foster's family, who has waited a very long time to see Reynolds' sentence carried out, and ultimately, to see final justice for her murder,' said Brad Gessner, criminal division chief at the Summit County prosecutor's office.
Durr, of Elyria, in Lorain County, was scheduled to die November 10 for raping and strangling a 16-year-old girl, Angel O'Nan, in 1988
Shelley Walsh talks about family tragedy
By Lisa Davies
The Daily Telegraph
October 06, 2009 12:01am
THEY were the familiar words of a mother to her children - but they were to be her last.
"Have a good day at school," Shelley Walsh said as she left the youngsters in the care of their grandparents.
Her father's response was caustic - "No, they won't".
"I didn't think anything of it because that's just Dad," Shelley recalled.
Within hours John Walsh had murdered Shelley's seven-year-old son Kevin and daughter Jamie, 5, as well as his wife Jean, 52, in their Cowra home in New South Wales, The Daily Telegraph reports.
Walsh bludgeoned his wife with a piece of wood and hammer and stabbed her in the neck, then battered Kevin to death and drowned Jamie in the bath.
Two months ago the 69-year-old was sentenced to life in jail.
Ms Walsh told A Current Affair she had agreed to the interview to help others because it appeared her father's depression led to his murderous act.
She believed it was her brother's suicide a few years before the murders that started Walsh's deadly spiral.
"It just hit us out of the blue . . . overnight my parents got old, for Dad there was a huge change," she said.
"He just didn't want to do anything . . . he stopped playing lawn bowls, stopped socialising with people.
"It was shocking. He just . . . wasn't him (self anymore)."
He also refused to get counselling.
"Looking back, wondering had we approached him, had we done something, would the outcome be different? Would we have stopped (the killings)?"
Ms Walsh also recalled the family's reaction to news Walsh's brother James - her uncle - had committed a murder in Scotland.
"(Dad) was indifferent. I remember him saying, if anybody in the family was going to do something like that it would be him cause he's always been borderline crazy," she said. "That was about the extent of Dad's reaction."
"I don't know if that gave Dad the idea. We'll never know.
"Is there any possible reason that he could give me where I'm going to go 'Oh, I get it now'. No.
"So at the end of the day it doesn't matter cause there's nothing he can say that's going to be an explanation.
"I can't get Mum back, I can't get the kids back, but everything else in my life I can get back and the more I do the less he has, because if I give in to it he wins - and he's taken enough."
Teenage mother who stubbed out cigarette on her baby daughter's back because she was 'stressed out' is jailed
By Andy Dolan
Last updated at 9:56 AM on 06th October 2009
A teenage mother who repeatedly stubbed a cigarette out on her 15-month-old daughter's back because she was 'stressed out' by the infant crying was jailed for nine months yesterday.
Charlotte Sutton, 19, burned the child's skin three times - scarring her for life - when the toddler started to cry, a court heard.
The 14-stone teenager shrugged her shoulders as she was sent to a young offender's institution by a judge yesterday.
She had earlier chain-smoked ten cigarettes in ten minutes outside court as she awaited her fate.
Hereford Crown Court heard the alarm was raised by the child's paternal grandmother who had spotted the burns whilst changing the child's nappy and called social workers, who tipped off police. 
Charlotte Sutton, 18, smokes a cigarette outside Hereford Crown Court yesterday
Pauline Eaton told a jury that the baby resulted from a relationship between Sutton and her 24-year-old son Carl three years ago.
Mrs Eaton and her husband Joe had looked after their granddaughter on several occasions in the past because Sutton claimed she was tired and could not cope.
They had collected the child from Sutton at a pre-arranged rendezvous point in Worcester shortly before discovering the burn marks on her back, the court heard.
Sutton told police that the tip of her cigarette had accidentally fallen down the back of the child's clothing while she was talking to friends outside a McDonald's restaurant.
She admitted her daughter had 'temper tantrums' but said she was able to cope and would never have stubbed a lit cigarette out on her.
But a consultant paediatrician who examined the child shortly after the incident in May last year said it was 'highly unlikely' that the burn marks had been caused accidentally by contact with hot ash.
A jury took just an hour to find Sutton, of Warndon, Worcester, guilty of child neglect after a two-day trial at Worcester Crown Court last month.
Several members of the jury gasped in horror and two even broke down in tears when they were shown pictures of the little girl's injuries.
The trial heard Sutton had told a social worker she knew of other young mothers who stubbed out cigarettes on their children to keep them quiet, but refused to name names.
The defendant later denied the claims and said the social worker had 'invented' the conversation.
Sentencing her yesterday, Judge John Cavell told her: 'You quite deliberately applied a lighted cigarette to a 15-month-old child.
'The only sentence this court can pass is a prison or custodial sentence.'
The child is now being cared for by her grandparents.