NowMyNews

Dog and cat lovers have a new way to make sure their pets get plenty of exercise and nourishment: phone apps that track how much an animal plays, runs, sleeps and eats. Whistle, an iPhone app and monitor worn on a dog's collar that was launched last week, measures an animal's activity throughout the day. The app can track changes over time and can compare exercise levels with other dogs of the same breed.   Created with input from veterinarians, Whistle Labs' app aims to help owners detect early medical problems by showing changes in a dog's activity level and behavior compared to other animals of the same age, breed and weight. "What (veterinarians) get today are hyperemotional responses, often driven by one or two anecdotes," said Ben Jacobs, chief executive of the San Francisco-based company. "What we found out was that a) vets didn't really have the information they needed and b) there's no breed weight and age standards," he added

A group of mostly elderly women, half of them in their 90s and some using canes, escaped unharmed from a stretch limousine that burst into flames at a gated senior community in Northern California, police said on Monday. The incident on Sunday afternoon came a month after a bride and four friends died trapped in another burning limo as it crossed a bridge over San Francisco Bay some 30 miles away.   The California Highway Patrol was looking into links between the two fires, said Lieutenant Jay Hill of the Walnut Creek Police Department. In the most recent incident, the 10 women were sitting in a black limousine in their gated community in Walnut Creek at noon on Sunday when it caught fire, Hill said. The group had been headed to a birthday party for one of the nonagenarian women, some of whom used canes and walkers. One of the passengers, Mary Chapman, told local KGO-TV that they became alarmed when they saw smoke coming out of the car. "When I looked out, there was red fla

The Belgian village of Doel is facing its final battle for survival against plans to expand the adjacent port of Antwerp that will erase it from the map to make way for a new dock. Doel is wedged between a nuclear power plant and an existing set of docks and once had a population of over a thousand. Bu it is now a collection of boarded up houses and vacated shops and home to only about 30 people.   The Flemish regional government aims to include the village in one of Europe's largest ports from June 17 over the objections of the remaining villagers who will ask the country's highest administrative court to block this change. "You have to be very stubborn and you have to be willing to put up a fight, even if you can't be sure of victory," said Frie Lauwers, who is part of the initiative to keep the village alive, and lives in a former school building. The transformation plan would dig a ship-sized dock across the village and turn surrounding farmland into a n

A coach whose enthusiasm for the trade was forged by the 'Football Manager' video game will be thrown into the deep end on Wednesday when Nambia host African champions Nigeria in a World Cup qualifier. Ricardo Mannetti, 38, won more than 60 caps for his country, played at the African Nations Cup finals and was a professional in the league in neighboring South Africa but had no desire to coach.   It was only after hours of playing the video game with his brother-in-law that his interested was fired. Seven years later he takes charge of Namibia for the first time hoping for an upset victory that will keep alive their remote hopes of qualifying for next year's finals in Brazil . "I wasn't into video games before that, I never had any interest in playing them, but Football Manager captured my imagination," Mannetti told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. "I was always winning and everyone said it proved I would make a good coach." Shortly after

After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness. Ship's cook Okene, 29, was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May 26 due to heavy Atlantic ocean swells around 30 km (20 miles) off the coast of Nigeria, while stabilizing an oil tanker filling up at a Chevron platform.   Of the 12 people on board, divers recovered 10 dead bodies while a remaining crew member has not been found. Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African divers eventually rescued him. "I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it's the end. I kept thinking the water was going to fill up the room but it did not," Okene said, parts of his skin

Ireland's prime minister said he had been sent letters written in blood and been branded a murderer by opponents of his government's plans to allow limited access to abortion, an issue that has polarized the country for decades. Enda Kenny's government agreed draft legislation in April to allow for limited access to abortion where a woman's life is in danger, including the threat of suicide, following months of protests from both sides of the debate.   Ministers signed off on the completed legislation at a meeting on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the government said, and it hopes to enact it before parliament adjourns in July. After about 40,000 people massed outside government offices in Dublin on Saturday in the largest anti-abortion demonstration in traditionally Roman Catholic Ireland's history, Kenny delivered a trenchant defense of the plans. "I am now being branded by personnel around the country as being a murderer, that I am going to have on my so

Shark attacks at Surfside : A shark attacks at Surfside Beach, but the predator didn’t win, the shark was given a fight by the young victim. A 15-year-old boy was swimming in waist deep water when he felt something clamp down on his leg with force. It was a shark and the teen immediately began punching the creature in the snout, according to “Fox and Friends” live on Tuesday, June 18, 2013. CNN reports today that the teen was at Surfside Beach along Texas’s Gulf coast with his church group when the attack happened. The other kids in the group came to this kid’s aid, which says a lot about the integrity of these young adults, most would run out of the water. A Surfside police officer just happened to be at the scene when the teen was bitten and he bandaged the boy’s leg and hand until paramedics arrived. The teen was flown to a hospital after the attack. He is in stable condition at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center with “non-life-threatening injuries, according