NYC’s ‘skinniest’ house sells for $2.1m

NEW YORK: A town house dubbed New York City’s skinniest house has sold for $2.1 million. The red, 9 1/2-foot wide, 42-foot long brick building in Greenwich Village was built in 1873 on land used as an alley between homes. The town house was listed for sale last August at $2.7 million. The two bedrooms, two bath home last sold in 2000 for $1.6 million. A plaque on the narrow Bedford Street home notes poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once lived there; so did anthropologist Margaret Mead. The newly sold building was listed on real estate websites Wednesday as a rental available for $10,000 a month. An e-mail seeking comment from the listed rental agent Wednesday was not immediately returned.

Stomachache reveals 22-year-old fetus

Bhubaneswar, India: When a 45-year-old woman in Orissa complained of a severe stomachache, few could have suspected the real reason behind it. Doctors found a 22-year-old dead fetus in her uterus. Sumal Puli, a resident of MV-42 village, was operated upon Wednesday and the fetus was removed at the district government hospital at Malkangiri, some 618 km from here. “It was a very unusual case. We were surprised,” specialist Sapan Kumar Dinda, who operated upon her along with three other doctors, said. “We wonder how it remained undetected for about 22 years,” he said. Puli said she thought she had become pregnant in 1988 but later came to believe it was a tumor. Although she had been suffering from acute pain, she had not consulted any doctor fearing the treatment cost would be huge, she said. A group of social activists and local residents came forward to help her.

Hippo swims to freedom from flooded zoo

PODGORICA: Montenegro’s only hippopotamus escaped from the mountainous Adriatic nation’s zoo during floods this week, officials said on Wednesday. The two-ton female called Nikica broke out of her cage and swam away after seasonal floods hit the zoo just outside the Montenegrin capital Podgorica, zoo manager Davor Mujovic said. “She remains at large, but one of the guards is keeping an eye on her and is feeding her daily,” he said. The hippo found a dry spot a mile away from the zoo as shelter from cold flood waters. Mujovic said zoo guards would have to wait until the water recedes to try to lure the animal back to its enclosure with food. In its native Africa, the world’s third largest mammal on land is considered aggressive and dangerous. But zoo owner Nikola Pejovic said Nikica was not a threat to people. “People like her, and she is used to people, villagers are bringing her fresh hay,” he said.

Polish dog given crash course in English

LONDON: Staff at an animal sanctuary thought a dog was deaf until they realized it only understood Polish. When Cent the collie failed to respond to basic commands, such as sit and stay, staff thought he was deaf until they looked into his history and saw he came from a Polish family and did not speak English. Staff at the dog home in Manchester, England, looked up the Polish equivalents of the basic commands on the Internet and in just four months, the dog has learned English and is ready to be re-homed. “When he came in he wasn’t responding to the basic commands,” said a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals spokesman. “When we’ve looked at his records (we saw) he had come from a Polish family (and) doesn’t understand the English language, so therefore he won’t understand our basic commands. “We’ve learnt a few basic ones which are sit — siad — and come — do mnie — and he now seems to understand what we’re saying.”

— Compiled from agencies