How to catch a bobcat, step 1: Deploy window blinds

When a wayward bobcat got caught up in some window blinds, one RCMP officer MacGyvered a solution with two broom sticks, a knife, and of course, a roll of duct tape.

The incident began on Friday afternoon in Nelson, B.C., when Leanne Kalabis, who has a young son and is five months pregnant, heard strange noises coming from her basement.

She caught a glimpse of a furry face and thought it might have been a lost domestic cat, but when she went downstairs with her dog to investigate, it turned out to be a wild one.

"That's definitely not a house cat... that's definitely a bobcat," she recalled thinking.

Her dog gave chase and got a little scratched up, and the bobcat then scaled a wall and made it to the top of a window, where it caught up in the blinds.

Hissing and lunging for the dog, Kalabis said it became "quite entangled," and she decided to call for help.

"What do I do? I've got a bobcat in my basement," she said.

She called over a neighbour, who agreed the bobcat was going nowhere fast, and then the Mounties. The RCMP officer who responded had to improvise.

"He initially thought maybe he could put a blanket over the bob cat and try to get it out this way. But realised quickly that it was very distraught and very vicious — Its claws were coming out and it was hissing," Kalabis said.

Instead, the officer MacGyvered a solution. 

"He very creatively thought to put two broomsticks together, tape them with duct tape, put his knife on the end and was able to, from a corner, get the stick close enough to the blinds where he could cut the blinds and free the bobcat," she said.

The bobcat dropped from the cut blinds, ran at a few windows trying to get out, and then found the basement door and made it outside.

Kalabis said the whole incident was very surreal, and that she will be double-checking that her basement door — which she thinks blew open earlier in the day — stays closed from now on. 

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As NORAD tracks Santa, critics track NORAD

The U.S. and Canadian military will entertain millions of kids again this Christmas Eve with second-by-second updates on Santa's global whereabouts. But there's something new this year: Public criticism.

A children's advocacy group says an animated video on the NORAD Tracks Santa website injects militarism into Christmas by showing fighter jets escorting Santa's sleigh. It's a rare swipe at the popular program, which last year attracted a record 22.3 million unique visitors from around the world to its website.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command defends the video as non-threatening and safe for kids.

The kerfuffle erupted two weeks ago over a 39-second video on noradsanta.org called "NORAD Tracks Santa Trailer Video 2013."

A 5-second segment of the video — which is also available on youtube.com — shows two fighter jets flanking Santa.

The Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood said the video brings violence and militarism to a beloved tradition. Others had similar criticism. Blogs and Twitter lit up with volleys from both sides.

Josh Golin, the coalition's associate director, reiterated his criticism in an interview with The Associated Press — but he called the brouhaha "a media-manufactured controversy." The coalition hadn't known about the fighter jet video until reporters called, he said.

"Nobody in my organization was out there protesting," he said.

U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a NORAD spokesman, said he understands the critics' point of view but disagrees.

"We really do feel strongly that it's something that is safe and non-threatening, and not something that would negatively impact children," he said. "In fact, we think that it's a lot of fun."

Davis said the fighter escort is nothing new. NORAD began depicting jets accompanying Santa and his reindeer in the 1960s, he said.

And he insisted the fighters in the video are unarmed: They're Canadian Air Force CF-18s, with a large external fuel tank under the belly that might look like a bomb. The wing racks that would carry bombs or missiles are empty, he explained.

The flap has driven lots of viewers to the video — nearly 265,000 on YouTube by midday Monday.

"That's way off the charts for any other videos we've done before," Davis said.

A second video on noradsanta.org and on YouTube, "NORAD Tracks Santa Command Video 2013," has drawn nearly 122,000 views. It's a longer, fast-paced mix of animation and real-life footage billed as a test flight for Santa, who gets the military tag "Big Red One."

"This is very much a fun and safe and nonviolent site that children of all ages can visit," Davis said. "Parents can be confident their children will walk away (and) have had fun and potentially have learned something, too."

NORAD is a U.S.-Canadian operation based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. It's charged with defending the skies over both nations and monitoring sea approaches.

The Santa program began in 1955 when a typo in a local newspaper advertisement had children calling the hotline of NORAD's predecessor, asking to talk to Santa.

It's now a Christmas tradition that thrills millions of kids, and parents. Last year, global monitoring of Santa's voyage logged 114,000 phone calls to NORAD, 1.2 million Facebook followers and 129,000 Twitter followers.

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1959 message in a bottle a clue to glacier melt

Ward Hunt Island is one of Canada's most northerly pieces of land.

​In the High Arctic, it's not unusual to find a cairn of rocks built by human hands, even somewhere as remote as Ward Hunt Island, which sits off the northern coast of Canada's most northerly Arctic Island, Ellesmere. The nearest community is tiny Grise Fiord, Nunavut (pop. 150) 800 km to the south, and many who travel to these distant realms feel an urge to leave something behind.

But the message found in a bottle there this summer sent shivers through the spines of a team of scientists.

"It was really quite extraordinary to be holding that piece of paper in my hands," says Dr. Warwick Vincent, who led a team of scientists to Laval University's remote research station established on the island in 2010. "It was like a message from the past."

American geologist Paul T. Walker showed unusual foresight by leaving a message in a bottle designed to document the retreat of a glacier. Click for larger image. (Denis Sarrazin CEN/ArcticNet)

The note was signed by Paul T. Walker, an American geologist who'd been on the site in July 10, 1959. It left detailed instructions asking whoever found it to measure the distance between another cairn and the glacier.

In 1959, the distance between the cairn and the glacier was 1.2 metres. This summer it was 101.5 metres.

Ian Howat is an associate professor at Ohio State University, where Walker was working at the time. He says it took foresight to leave the note to measure how far the glacier had moved.

"You weren't going to get any proposals funded to study deglaciation in the 1950s, so if anything, most scientists would think their cairn and their message in a bottle would be overridden by the advance of the glacier, not a marker for retreat."

Walker never heard from anyone.

Exactly one month after he wrote the note, he had to be flown out after he became paralyzed by a brain seizure.

He died a few months later in hospital. He was 27.

After reading and photographing the message, Vincent and his team put it back and added their own, that they hope will also receive a response sometime in the future.

 

 

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How to catch a bobcat, step 1: Deploy window blinds

An RCMP officer used two broomsticks, a knife and a roll of duct tape to free a bobcat trapped in the blinds of a home in Nelson, B.C.

The incident began on Friday afternoon when Leanne Kalabis, who has a young son and is five months pregnant, heard strange noises coming from her basement.

She caught a glimpse of a furry face and thought it might have been a lost domestic cat, but when she went downstairs with her dog to investigate, it turned out to be a wild one.

"That's definitely not a house cat... that's definitely a bobcat," she recalled thinking.

Her dog gave chase and got a little scratched up, and the bobcat then scaled a wall and made it to the top of a window, where it caught up in the blinds.

Hissing and lunging for the dog, Kalabis said it became "quite entangled," and she decided to call for help.

"What do I do? I've got a bobcat in my basement," she said.

She called over a neighbour, who agreed the bobcat was going nowhere fast, and then the Mounties. The RCMP officer who responded had to improvise.

"He initially thought maybe he could put a blanket over the bob cat and try to get it out this way. But realised quickly that it was very distraught and very vicious — Its claws were coming out and it was hissing," Kalabis said.

Instead, the officer MacGyvered a solution. 

"He very creatively thought to put two broomsticks together, tape them with duct tape, put his knife on the end and was able to, from a corner, get the stick close enough to the blinds where he could cut the blinds and free the bobcat," she said.

The bobcat dropped from the cut blinds, ran at a few windows trying to get out, and then found the basement door and made it outside.

Kalabis said the whole incident was very surreal, and that she will be double-checking that her basement door — which she thinks blew open earlier in the day — stays closed from now on. 

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Supersonic sketches capture the art of flying a CF-18

A Vancouver artist says he became the first person to make art while flying at supersonic speeds when he was allowed to fly on board a CF-18 fighter jet.

Michael Markowsky got the chance as part of  the Canadian Forces' Artist Program, which supports Canadian artists who wish to contribute to the history of the Canadian Forces.

"My goal is to convey the experience of travelling at the speed of sound, so that all Canadians can share in my experience," he told CBC News in an email.

While he was up in the clouds in Canada's most sophisticated front-line combat aircraft, a RCAF CF-18 Hornet fighter jet plane, Markowsky managed to sketch 100 drawings of the 90-minute flight.

Markowsky said the drawings will inform his creation of a 21-metre long mural and a life-size wooden sculpture based on a CF-18 that is intended to be something that can be climbed on and in.

Flying in a fighter jet is something Markowsky says he's wanted to do since he was a kid going to air shows. 

"I was finally able to achieve my dream," Markowsky said in an interview with CBC Radio's Rick Cluff on The Early Edition.

Michael Markowsky is seen sketching while in-flight in a CF-18 Hornet fighter jet. The drawings will inform a mural and life-size sculpture he will be creating, and footage from the experience is to become part of a short film about the project. (Michael Markowsky/YouTube)

But getting the permission for July's 90-minute flight did not happen overnight. Markowsky worked on his proposal with the Canadian Armed Forces for five years, and underwent six months of extensive training before he even got on base.

"It's probably the first time an artist has had to physically train!"

Flying with a qualified military pilot from the armed forces, Markowsky says he was able to take control of the plane at times, proudly noting he was able to do a "loop-de-loop."

He says people in the forces were initially skeptical of his plan, but they appreciated the art afterwards.

As part of an accompanying documentary project, the experience was recorded as digital video and a teaser trailer with some of the footage has been posted to YouTube.

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6,000 people dressed as Santa Claus run in Spain

Around 6,000 people dressed as Santa Claus and his elves have run a "mini-marathon" through the streets of Madrid to promote festive cheer as the country tries to emerge from a two-year recession.

While grown-ups dressed in red costumes with wispy white beards, children donned green elf outfits to run the 5.5-kilometre course through the city centre.

The race was organized Saturday by one of Spain's leading department stores and it contributed 1 € (or about $1.34 US) for each entrant to a charity that buys Christmas presents for deprived children around the world.

Javier Menendez, one of the runners, said he was surprised at the number of people who have donned the robes for the run.

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MDs say James Bond an impotent alcoholic unfit for 'defusing a nuclear bomb'

He may have a license to kill, but is James Bond sober enough to shoot?
 
British doctors who carefully read Ian Fleming's series of James Bond novels say the celebrated spy regularly drank more than four times the recommended limit of alcohol per week. Their research was published in the light-hearted Christmas edition of the medical journal BMJ on Thursday.

Daniel Craig as James Bond in the action adventure film, "Skyfall" in a film image released by Columbia Pictures. The level of functioning Bond displayed in the books is inconsistent with the physical, mental and sexual functioning expected from someone drinking so much alcohol, British doctors say. (Francois Duhamel/Sony Pictures/Associated Press)

 
Dr. Patrick Davies and colleagues at Nottingham University Hospital analyzed 14 James Bond books and documented every drink Bond had. They also noted days when he was unable to drink, such as when he was hospitalized, in rehab or imprisoned.
 
The academics found that the spy also known as 007 drank about 92 units of alcohol a week; more than four times the safe amount recommended by the British government.
 
One unit is about eight grams of pure alcohol. A pint of beer has three units of alcohol, about the same as a large glass of wine.
 
Bond's drinking habits put him at high risk for numerous alcohol-related diseases and an early alcohol-related death, the authors write.
 
"The level of functioning as displayed in the books is inconsistent with the physical, mental and indeed sexual functioning expected from someone drinking this much alcohol," the authors conclude.
 
Davies and colleagues also suspect Bond's trademark order that his martinis be "shaken, not stirred" may have been because he had an alcohol-induced tremor and was simply unable to stir his drinks.
 
They noted his biggest daily drinking binge was in the book, From Russia with Love, when he downed nearly 50 units of alcohol. They also suspected alcohol may have been a factor in Casino Royale, when he knocked back 39 units before getting into a high-speed car chase, lost control and crashed the car.
 
The authors recognized that Bond's high-stress job may have also driven him over the edge.
 
"Although we appreciate the societal pressures to consume alcohol when working with international terrorists and high stakes gamblers, we would advise Bond be referred for further assessment of his alcohol intake," they concluded.

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Zebra on the loose in Tennessee

Tennessee Bradley County dispatchers say they've had several people call to report sightings of a Zebra near homes, businesses and even a highway. (The Roanoke Times/Stephanie Klein-Davis/Associated Press)

The black-and-white-striped animal that's been spotted at different places around a Tennessee town isn't a funny-looking horse.

Nope, there's a zebra loose in East Tennessee.

Bradley County dispatchers say they've had several people call to report sightings of the animal — near homes, businesses and even a highway.

Although some people have tried to catch him, the animal named Zeek has remained elusive.

Zeek's owner, Ronald Price, told WRCB-TV  that the animal escaped from his farm in Cleveland about three weeks ago by jumping a high fence.

Price says he's keeping a watch out and hopes that someone is able to help Zeek return home safely.

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WestJet 'Christmas miracle' video warms hearts on social media

More than 250 passengers on Calgary-bound flights were part of a "Christmas miracle" put on by WestJet. 

The Calgary-based airline had a virtual Santa ask passengers what they wanted for Christmas as they scanned their boarding passes at a kiosk in Toronto and Hamilton. 

While the flights were en route, 175 WestJet volunteers gathered gifts from Best Buy and CrossIron Mills. 

Once at the Calgary International Airport, passengers' asked-for items started filling up the baggage carousel. 

In a blog post explaining the video, WestJet's sponsorship lead Greg Plata wrote they would give away holiday flights to a family in need if the company cracked its goal of 200,000 views — which the video met Monday evening around 7:30 p.m.

"In early August, we sat down with our friends at Studio M and started brainstorming what 'giving' looked like at its best. We wanted to do something big, exciting and fresh," wrote Plata. 

Studio M is a digital production company based out of Toronto. 

The airline tried a similar stunt last year, when passengers going from Calgary to Toronto were surprised by a flash mob of singing and dancing elves. 

The 2013 video, which was posted Sunday, made quite a splash online Monday afternoon. 

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Titan Arm: a cheap, light exoskeleton for everyone

Need a hand lifting something? A robotic device invented by University of Pennsylvania engineering students can help its wearer carry an additional 18 kilograms.

Titan Arm looks and sounds like part of a superhero's costume. But its creators say it's designed for ordinary people —those who need either physical rehabilitation or a little extra muscle for their job.

In technical terms, the apparatus is an untethered, upper-body exoskeleton; to the layman, it's essentially a battery-powered arm brace attached to a backpack. Either way, Titan Arm's cost-efficient design has won the team accolades and at least $75,000 in prize money.

"They built something that people can relate to," said Robert Carpick, chairman of Penn's mechanical engineering department. "And of course it appeals clearly to what we've all seen in so many science-fiction movies of superhuman strength being endowed by an exoskeleton."

The project builds on existing studies of such body equipment, sometimes called "wearable robots." Research companies have built lower-body exoskeletons that help paralyzed people walk, though current models aren't approved for retail and can cost $50,000 to $100,000.

Prosthetic aid, injury prevention

The Penn students were moved by the power of that concept — restoring mobility to those who have suffered traumas — as well as the idea of preventing injuries in those who perform repetitive heavy-lifting tasks, team member Nick Parrotta said. 

"When we started talking to physical therapists and prospective users, or people who have gone through these types of injuries, we just kept on getting more and more motivated," said Parrotta, now in graduate school at the university.

So for their senior capstone project last year, Parrotta and classmates Elizabeth Beattie, Nick McGill and Niko Vladimirov set out to develop an affordable, lightweight suit for the right arm. 

They modeled pieces using 3-D printers and computer design programs, eventually making most components out of aluminum, Beattie said.

The final product cost less than $2,000 and weighs eight kilogram — less than the backpack that Beattie usually carries.

A handheld joystick controls motorized cables that raise and lower the arm; sensors measure the wearer's range of motion to help track rehab progress.

From soldiers to seniors

Since its unveiling, Titan Arm has won the $10,000 Intel Cornell Cup USA and the $65,000 James Dyson Award. The resulting publicity generated a slew of interest from potential users, including grandparents who find it hard to lift their grandchildren.

"We found out that some people can't even lift a cast-iron pan to cook dinner," McGill said.

Experts say the aging population represents a potentially big customer base for exoskeletons, which originally were researched for military applications.

"There is certainly a market, but it's slowly emerging because the systems are not perfect as yet," said Paolo Bonato, director of the Motion Analysis Lab at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston.

Titan Arm's design impressed Yong-Lae Park, an assistant professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who watched a video demonstration. He noted, though, that its low cost represent parts only, not the salaries or marketing built into the price of other products.

Park's research is focused on making exoskeletons less noticeable — "more like a Spider-Man suit than an Iron Man suit," he said.

The Titan team hopes to refine its prototype, although three members are now busy with graduate studies at Penn and one is working on the West Coast.

Among the considerations, Parrotta said, are different control strategies and more innovative materials and manufacturing. 

And, of course, a second arm.

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