Ginza Tanaka unveils Solid Gold Christmas Tree Worth $2 Million

For those of you who love Christmas but can’t stand falling needles and cheap plastic, Japanese jeweler Ginza Tanaka has created the ultimate Christmas tree – made of pure gold and worth a whopping $2 million.

After making a 24-karat gold horse for Japan’s newborn prince, and creating another tree worth $850,000, Ginza Tanaka decided to step it up even more and came up with a solid gold Christmas tree for this holiday season. Measuring 2.4 meters high and weighing around 12 kg, the luxurious tree is decorated with golden plates and around 60 heart-shaped ornaments, and covered with ribbon. It’s the most expensive thing Ginza Tanaka has ever made.

While $2 million is an impressive price for a Christmas tree, this is far from the most expensive tree ever. Just last year a seven-star hotel in Abu Dhabi exhibited a 13-meter-high evergreen Christmas tree decorated with silver and gold bows, ball-shaped ornaments, small white lights and expensive jewelry like necklaces and earrings hanging from its branches. It was worth $11 million.

Boxing Legend 'Smokin' Joe' Frazier Dead at 67

Former world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier, who was known for his personal and professional battles with Muhammad Ali, has died at the age of 67 after a brief fight with cancer.

The youngest of 12 children, Frazier was born in 1944 into a working-class family on a farm in the racially-segregated southeastern U.S. town of Beaufort, South Carolina. Frazier dreamed of becoming a prize fighter from an early age, watching boxing matches on his family's black-and-white television.

After fighting as an amateur for several years, Frazier won a gold medal for the United States at the 1964 Olympic Games.  But "Smokin' Joe" Frazier really made his name in the 1970s during his epic rivalry with boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

Frazier became the first man to beat Ali, winning the heavyweight title in 1971 in a dramatic, 15-round unanimous decision at New York's Madison Square Garden. Dubbed the "fight of the century," an estimated 300 million people worldwide viewed the match, which left both men hospitalized.

After Ali responded with a 12-round victory in 1974, the two men met in the Philippines for the famed "Thrilla in Manila," considered as one of the most famous sporting events in history. After battering each other for 14 rounds, Frazier was forcibly held back by his trainer after nearly being blinded by Ali's punches. Ali later said the match was the "closest thing to dying" that he had ever experienced.

The no-nonsense Frazier was often overshadowed by Ali's more aggressive and charismatic personality. Frazier resented being verbally attacked by Ali, who referred to him as a "gorilla" and accused Frazier of being too accommodating to the white-dominated society.

The two men remained bitter enemies for decades. But in later years, Frazier came to forgive Ali, saying he felt no bitterness against him for his attacks outside the ring. Ali also later apologized, saying the insults were only meant to promote the fights.

Ali said in a statement late Monday that "the world has lost a great champion," and that he will always remember Joe with "respect and admiration."

Frazier's aggressiveness, close-range style and devastating left hook compensated for his relative small size. He weighed just 93 kilograms - considered small for a heavyweight boxer. Frazier retired in 1976 with a record of 32 wins, 4 losses and 1 draw.

The boxing icon's family said late Monday that he died in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia - one month after being diagnosed with an advanced form of liver cancer.

Newfound Raptor Dinosaur had 'Switchblade' Killing Claws

Battle damage linked to the fearsome curving talon of a newly discovered dinosaur relative of Velociraptor is shedding light on how it was used as a weapon, scientists find.

This research also adds to the mysterious complexity seen in the lost continent where this fossil was found, researchers added.

The newfound 75-million-year-old dinosaur is a feathered raptor named Talos sampsoni — "Talos" in homage to a winged bronze giant in Greek mythology that could run at lightning speed and that succumbed to a wound to his ankle, "sampsoni" in honor of Scott Sampson of the PBS series "Dinosaur Train," and a research curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

Fossilized remains are all that's left of the once mighty dinosaurs that dominated our planet. Here, the most recent finds from these ancient beasts.

The raptor dinosaurs, made famous by the book and film "Jurassic Park," all possessed unusually large, sickle-like claws on the second toes of each foot, which they held off the ground like folded switchblades.

A famous discovery made in Mongolia 30 years ago seemingly of a Velociraptor locked in mortal combat with prey — fossils dubbed the "fighting dinosaurs" — suggested these talons were used as weapons. Now the injured claw of Talos sheds even more light on how they lived with these weapons.

Wooly Rhino Fossil Found in Tibet

High on the Tibetan Plateau, paleontologists have discovered the skull of a previously unknown species of ancient rhino, a woolly furred animal that came equipped with a built-in snow shovel on its face.

This curiosity, a flat, paddle-like horn that would have allowed it to brush away snow and find vegetation beneath, suggests the woolly rhinoceros was well-adapted for a cold, icy life in the Himalayas about 1 million years before the Ice Age. Those adaptations may have left the rhino perfectly poised to spread across Asia when global temperatures plummeted, ushering in the Ice Age.

"We think that the Tibetan Plateau may be a cradle for the origins of some of the Ice Age giants," said study author Xiaoming Wang, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Such large, furry mammals ruled the world during Earth's cold snap from 2.6 million to about 12,000 years ago. "It just happens to have the right environment to basically let animals acclimate themselves and be ready for the Ice Age cold."

Wang and his colleagues uncovered the complete rhino skull and lower jaw, along with a neck vertebra, in southwestern Tibet. The 3-foot-long (1 meter) skull is 3.7 million years old. It would have belonged to an animal that weighed 1.2 to 1.4 tons (1,090 to 1,270 kilograms), Wang said. That's close to the size of modern rhinoceroses and about 10 percent smaller than the woolly rhinos found a million years later during the Ice Age. The new rhino has been dubbed Coelodonta thibetan.

No impressions of hair were found, but based on rhino hairs preserved in permafrost in Siberia, the researchers believe this rhino would have been covered with long hairs much like the fur of a modern yak. But the most notable feature of the rhino skull was its large front horn, which was flattened to form a paddle.

"The horn is leaning forward; it's tilting forward from the nose," Wang said. "That is in line with the adaptation of snow-sweeping, so the animal does not have to strain its neck as much as it tries to sweep the snow."

The rhino had another feature that would have made it a master of winter weather. The teeth have high crowns, making them more durable and able to handle tough, high-altitude vegetation.

Extinction Of 'Arabian unicorn' Saved

The return of wild Oryx to the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula is being hailed as a conservation achievement story.

The latest International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species states that the wild population of the two-horned antelope species now stands at around 1,000, nearly 40 years after the last wild animal was hunted and killed.

"To have brought the Arabian Oryx back from the edge of extinction is a major feat, one which we hope will be recurring many times over for other threatened species," said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Director General of the Environment Agency -- Abu Dhabi.

The species is now listed as "vulnerable" and is the first time an animal listed as "extinct in the wild" has enhanced its status by three categories.

The turn-around has been the result of conservation efforts that began in 1982 in Oman. Captive bred oryx were effectively released back into the desert habitats of the country and then in regions of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel and Jordan.

Known locally as Al Maha, the Arabian Oryx is thought to be exclusively adapted to living in harsh, dry environments with its ability to smell water from miles away.

It is thought that it was also the source of the unicorn legend, as when viewed in profile the two horns appear as one.

Eight new species of amphibians are classified as decisively endangered, just one place from "extinct in the wild." The IUCN says that amphibians are one of the most threatened species groups with an estimated 41% at risk of extinction.

The main threats come from habitat loss, pollution, diseases and invasive species.

The IUCN estimates that human impact has meant extinctions are happening at anything between 100 and 1,000 times the natural rate.

Yoda Crowned World's Ugliest Dog 2011

A 1.8-pound scruffy mutt named Yoda who has been mistaken for a rat won the World's Ugliest Dog title for 2011 t at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma.

Yoda won a trophy 15 times her size and $1,000. The beady-eyed pooch also gets a picture shoot and an overnight stay in the Loft Suite at the Sheraton Sonoma County, according to fair officials.

Her owner, Terry Devine Schumacher, said her daughter found Yoga in a grassland 14 years ago when the pup was 2.

"I told her to put it down because I thought it was a rat," Schumacher said.

Fair officials permitted the spectators to vote this year via text. Other favorites in the 23rd annual contest were Icky, Cuda, Handsome Hector and Ratdog.

New York Hosts World’s First Fancy Rat Convention

The ‘much-hated’ rats are valuable pets for many in New York as they can be trained like dogs and are clean like cats.

According to them, the social creatures are also expressive, able to bond and very playful.“Rats are very misunderstood, noting that to know one is to love one. The rat is as much a part of us as your dog is a part of you and your family. We love them, and we feel love back,” The New York Daily News quoted Raquel Citron, organizer of the N.Y.C. Rat Meetup Group, as saying.

Dozens of rat lovers gathered in Manhattan to attend the world’s first Fancy Rat Convention, where pet fashion designer Ada Nieves showed off her rodent clothing collection, featuring rat tuxedos, wedding dressed, bridesmaids gowns and other elite designs. Her creations come complete with crystals or feathers and sell for about $80 each. ‘The rats look very pretty and seem to like wearing them. Rats are much admired these days and the owners love to dress them up,’ the pet fashionista said.

According to rat owners present at the Fancy Rat Convention, in spite of the negative stereotype people have about rats, these creatures have astonishing personalities which make them much more suitable pets than cats, dogs or ferrets. They are very sociable, clever, loving, and can be trained to do all kinds of tricks, from dancing to fetching stuff.

The pet-rat trend took off when celebrities began adopting rats and showing them in public and now people spend up to $115 for the latest breeds, and a lot more on cages, toys, designer clothes and other accessories. The models for the Fancy Rat Convention fashion show were offered by the Big Apple Rattery, which specializes in Manx and Dwarf rats, in case you’re interested.

World's Oldest Panda Dies In Chinese Zoo At 34

The world’s oldest panda, Ming Ming, has passed away. Chinese state media broke the news to the rest of the world with a headline in the Global Times that read, “China’s Oldest Panda Kicks Bucket.” The panda died due to old age and kidney failure.

According to experts, wild pandas are expected to live until about 15 years of age. Those kept in captivity are only expected to live until 22; Ming Ming was 34.

The famous panda was rescued from the forest of Sichuan Province, China, and brought into custody in 1977 as an abandoned cub. She traveled between various zoos in China and Europe all over her life.

Ming Ming was the subject of much international debate in 1991 when she was sent to the London Zoo to mate with German panda Bao Bao. After fighting with Bao Bao and failing to generate any cubs, Ming Ming returned to China amid much diplomatic turmoil.

Forbes reports that giant pandas are one of the most endangered class in the world. Only an estimated 1,600 remain in the wild. China maintains over 300 in captivity, mostly in breeding programs that attempt to increase the population. As Ming Ming’s international match-making dissatisfaction shows, breeding giant pandas in custody is no easy task.