Ladies of a certain vintage often prefer to keep their age to themselves.

But Rosie the donkey has no chance of doing that.

At the grand old age of 54 she is thought to be the oldest of her species in the world.

According to Guinness World Records, the current oldest donkey, named Suzy, was from New Mexico and died in 2002 at 54.

Rosie’s owner, Lesley Manger, believes she is definitely in her fifties although is unsure of her exact age. The usual donkey lifespan is 25-35 years.

We don’t have an exact date of birth for her, but talking to people who have owned her over the years, she should be about 54,’ she said.

‘Her teeth have ground right down and a dentist who looked at her said she’d be about that old.’

Other contenders for the crown include a Blackpool donkey called Lively Laddie, who was said to have reached 62, although his age was never formally verified. He died in 2005. (Daily Mail)

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A 56-year-old man from the northern Mexican city of Matamoros has been arrested 600 times in 10 years for misdemeanours, such as roaming around drunk or disturbing the public order, the daily Reforma reported.

Since 2000 the man, who sells sweets for a living, has been taken to the municipal prison at least once a week, sometimes at his own request.

"Sometimes we find him really drunk in the Capilla neighbourhood, and we take him in so that he is not run over, or he himself asks us to arrest him," one police officer was quoted as saying.

Sixteen times, the man was indeed run over, and he was mugged at least nine times.

When he is found drunk, police often prefer to take him to his home. When he lands in prison, however, he prefers to spend 36 hours there rather than pay the fine that would allow him to walk free sooner.

According to Reforma, if he had paid all those fines he would be $27,690 poorer. (IOL)

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A Chinese man who nursed a dying snake back to health claims it saved his family by raising the alarm when their house was on fire.

Yu Feng, of Fushun, in Liaoning province, found the dying black snake outside his home.

"I treated it with herbal medicines, and in 20 days it recovered," he said.

He took the snake to a nearby mountain more than a mile away to release it back into the wild – but the next morning it was back at his house.

"I then set it free another two times, but it always came back," Yu added. "People around me said the snake had come back to repay my kindness, so I kept it."

He named the snake Long Long and adopted it as a pet – then one night, he claims it saved the whole family.

Yu explained: "I was asleep when suddenly I felt something cold on my face. I opened my eyes and it was Long Long.

"He had never woken me up before but I was so sleepy I went back to sleep. But Long Long grabbed my clothes with his teeth and whipped the bed with his tail.

"Then he went to my mother’s bed and whipped her bed with his tail. I woke up then and smelt something burning, and saw my mother’s electric blanket was on fire so I leapt up and turned it off."

Local reptile experts say snakes don’t have the intelligence to act in this way – but Yu believes Long Long acted out of kindness, to repay Feng for saving his own life. (Liaosheng Evening Post)

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First came see-through frogs. Now Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing goldfish whose beating hearts can be seen through translucent scales and skin.

The transparent creatures are part of efforts to reduce the need for dissections, which have become increasingly controversial, particularly in schools.

‘You can see a live heart and other organs because the scales and skin have no pigments,’ said Yutaka Tamaru, an associate professor in the department of life science at Mie University.

‘You don’t have to cut it open. You can see a tiny brain above the goldfish’s black eyes.’

The joint team of researchers at Mie University and Nagoya University in central Japan produced the ‘ryukin’ goldfish by picking mutant hatchery goldfish with pale skin and breeding them together.

‘Having a pale colour is a disadvantage for goldfish in an aquarium but it’s good to see how organs sit in a body three-dimensionally,’ Tamaru said.

The fish are expected to live up to roughly 20 years. They could grow as long as 25cm (10in) and weigh more than 2kg (5lb), much bigger than other fish used in experiments, such as zebrafish and Japanese medaka, Tamaru said.

‘As this goldfish grows bigger, you can watch its whole life,’ he said. (roundup)

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He paints six pictures a week and his last exhibition sold out in 14 minutes…

Kieron Williamson kneels on the wooden bench in his small kitchen, takes a pastel from the box by his side and rubs it onto a piece of paper.

‘Have you got a picture in your head of what you’re going to do?’ asks his mother, Michelle. ‘Yep,’ Kieron nods. ‘A snow scene.’

I ask: because it is winter at the moment? ‘Yep.’ Do you know how you want it to come out? ‘Yep.’ And does it come out how you want it? ‘Sometimes it does.’

Like many great artists, small boys are not often renowned for being talkative. While Kieron Williamson is a very normal seven-year-old who uses his words sparingly, what slowly emerges on the small rectangle of paper in his kitchen is extraordinarily eloquent.

This month, Kieron’s second exhibition in a gallery in his home town of Holt, Norfolk, sold out in 14 minutes. The sale of 16 new paintings swelled his bank account by £18,200.

There are now 680 people on a waiting list for a Kieron original. Art lovers have driven from London to buy his work.

Agents buzz around the town. People offer to buy his school books. The starting price for a simple pastel picture such as the one Kieron is sketching? £900.

Kieron lives with his father, Keith, a former electrician, his mother, who is training to be a nutritionist, and his little sister, Billie-Jo, in a small flat overlooking a petrol station. (Daily Mail)

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Lots of people have a favourite colour – but very few take it as far as one Los Angeles woman, who is so obsessed with the colour pink that all her clothes, her house and even her dog are the colour.

Kitten Kay Sera, 46, says that she’s had her pink obsession for 25 years – and hasn’t worn anything but the colour for much of that time.

Kitten, an actress, even wears pink to funerals, has decorated her home in California entirely with pink, and has gone to the length of having her dog Kisses dyed to match.

So strong is her devotion to pinkness in all its forms that she has even broken up with lovers if they didn’t share her passion for the rosy hue.

Kitten insists that she isn’t strange – she says that she simply has a natural affinity for the shade, which makes her feel ‘lovely and luxurious’. (Metro)

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Setting a new record for Israeli Jews, which is unlikely to have contestants queueing up to beat, an Israeli man has divorced for the 11th time.

The 50-year-old from the Jerusalem area said his custom is to divorce his wives every two years and look for a new bride immediately after.

"I throw out a hook and the fish come on their own," he is reported to have said.

The man has been re-setting his own record for the past several years. The previous Jewish Israeli record for divorces by a single person was six.

His most recent marriage also lasted two years, and ended with the sides agreeing to split the debts the husband had run up. The woman claimed her husband had promised to work but ended up living off her assets and those of her parents.

For all his marriages, the man has only one child – to whom he is unable to make child support payments.

He said that he regretted divorcing his first wife because it set in motion a never-ending search for the next "experience." (Jerusalem Post)

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A man who returned home from a weekend break to find £8,000 worth of property including his new kitchen had been stolen tracked down the burglar using eBay.

Tristan Brooks had saved for ten years to buy and decorate his dream home in Pontcanna, Cardiff, but before he had even moved in, he was targeted by a very thorough thief.

As well as a £700 fridge freezer, a Hotpoint electric oven and a series of BT cordless phones, the culprit took the curtains and hooks, a tool case, toaster, Brabantia bin and a shower head. The total value of the property was estimated to be around £8,000.

As police had no leads, Mr Brooks began to search online and discovered his fridge being sold on eBay by a man 30 miles away.

He posed as an interested buyer, confirmed the fridge was his and called the police, who arrested the seller and unearthed the rest of Mr Brooks’ property.

The 30-year-old transport planner had been saving for ten years to buy his £400,000 Edwardian terraced home and was just about to move in after weeks spent doing it up.

But while he was away on a weekend break, he received a call from his builder who said there had been a break in.

He returned to discover large holes where his fridge and oven had been.

"They had stolen everything they could get hold of," Mr Brooks told the Daily Mail.

"I had saved up for ten years and renovated the house and someone else had come along with no consideration for what has been done and taken everything."

His builder had already alerted the police – his tools were stolen too – but house-to-house inquiries revealed nothing and Mr Brooks’ girlfriend suggested looking on eBay.

"I logged on and all of a sudden I was staring at the screen and looking at my fridge freezer. It was being sold by somebody in Bridgend," he said.

He arranged to view the fridge freezer that same evening and, having confirmed it was his, he told the seller he needed to check the measurements against his kitchen and went outside to call the police.

They raided the house and recovered other stolen items including Mr Brooks’ oven and gas hob hidden under blankets.

Mr Brooks had remembered to take down their serial numbers and was able to take them home immediately.

A man was arrested and released on bail but failed to appear before magistrates in October. There is now a warrant out for his re-arrest. (roundup)

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A Nevada brothel owner said she is hoping to begin offering male prostitutes for female clients by the middle of January.

Bobbi Davis, owner of the Shady Lady Ranch brothel in Nye County, said the Nevada State Health Division agreed to write men into the state codes governing prostitution earlier this month and she is scheduled to meet Jan. 5 with the Nye County Commission for final approval, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Monday.

Davis said, if all goes as planned, she could add two men to her current stable of five female prostitutes the week after the meeting with the commission.

Several experts, including industry lobbyist George Flint, have already predicted failure for Davis’ venture. Flint said several brothel owners have attempted hiring men to service women in the past, but the gambles always failed, in large part due to the amount of time the few female customers wanted to spend with their sex workers before intercourse.

"Women won’t come in for a quickie. They’re not jackrabbits like men are," Flint said. "There is just nothing about it, fiscally or any other way, that makes any kind of sense."

However, Flint and other experts said male prostitutes in brothels could potentially succeed if they catered to gay clients. Davis said it will be up to the workers to decide whether to take same-sex jobs. (UPI)

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A Japanese engineer has set a new record for the longest flight with a paper-only plane.

Using a specially designed 10cm long paper plane, Takuo Toda’s origami flight in a Japan Airlines hangar near Tokyo’s Haneda Airport lasted 26.1s.

While just short of the world record 27.9 seconds, it was a new record for a paper-only plane — the world record (also held by Toda) was set by one with tape on it.

Toda – head of the Japan Origami Airplane Association – said he was pleased with the record but hopes to achieve a 30 second flight soon.

Dubbed the ‘origami virtuoso’ Toda says the secret to a perfect paper aeroplane flight is to aim upward so that it can slowly circle back to the ground. (Newslite.tv)

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