An Albanian woman says she went around for 12 years with a bullet lodged below her cheekbone without her noticing it.
Mrike Rrucaj said she was shot in her sleep in 1997 at a time when the Balkan country was plagued by anarchy and chaos amid prote
sts against fraudulent pyramid schemes, but a doctor said the bullet had passed through her. At the time many Albanians fired bullets into the air in frustration.
"I was covered in blood and I thought I had been killed," Rrucaj said of the incident in 1997.
But one week ago she collapsed from pain when she bent her neck. An X-ray revealed a bullet, which was more than an inch long.
"The unique thing about this case is not the operation, but the fact she kept the bullet unknowingly for 12 years in her head," said Fatos Olldashi, chief neurosurgeon at Albania's military hospital.
FINLANDText the lord. Mobile phone messages may allow worshippers in Finland to donate money to their church without having to attend services.
Under current laws, the church cannot raise funds by texts in Finland, the home of mobile phone giant Nokia. Dean Matti Pikkarainen of Oulu Cathedral, in the north of the country, said he aimed to raise the issue at a nationwide church meeting next month.
"It depends more on parliament than the church… I believe the church is ready for this kind of modernisation this year," Pikkarainen said, suggesting a change in the law.
Parishioners could use their phones to donate money after the end of church services, so as not to disturb other worshippers, he said. Text messages would also give people more freedom to donate, as they would not have to come to church.
"If you're listening to the service on the radio, TV or internet, you can do it from home too. People nowadays are not always in church," he said.
SPAINBeing all in the genes is not necessarily a good thing. Rare inherited genetic disorders worsened by repeated inbreeding may have brought down the powerful Spanish Habsburg dynasty, researchers believe.
Checks of genealogical charts and analysis of the reported health problems of King Charles II, below, suggest he may have had two rare conditions called combined pituitary hormone deficiency and distal renal tubular acidosis, the Spanish researchers speculated in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.
"The last king of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty was Charles II. He was physically disabled, mentally retarded and disfigured," wrote Gonzalo Alvarez and colleagues at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
"He proved impotent since no children were born from his two marriages. When Charles II died in 1700 the line of the Spanish Habsburgs died with him and a new dynasty – the French Bourbons – was installed in Spain."
The team's analysis showed nine out of 11 marriages over the 200 years were between first cousins or uncles and nieces.
MEXICOBurger King has apologised for an advertisement featuring a squat Mexican draped in his country's flag next to a tall American cowboy and said it would change the campaign.
Mexico's ambassador to Spain said posters released in Europe for Burger King's new Tex-Mex style "Texican Whopper", a cheeseburger with chilli and spicy mayonnaise, inappropriately displayed the Mexican flag, whose image is protected under national law.
The ambassador wrote a letter complaining to Burger King and requested the ad campaign be discontinued.
Burger King said the ads were meant to show a mixture of influences from the southwestern United States and Mexico, not to poke fun at Mexican culture, but said it would replace them "as soon as commercially possible".
"Burger King Corporation has made the decision to revise the Texican Whopper advertising creative out of respect for the Mexican culture and its people," it said in a statement.
"The existing campaign falls fully within the legal parameters of the United Kingdom and Spain, where the commercials are being aired, and were not intended to offend anyone," it added.
A TV version of the ad shows the strapping cowboy and the pint-sized Mexican wrestler – nicknamed "Just a Little Bit" – living together as roommates. The American lifts up the Mexican to help him put a trophy on a high shelf.
Mexico was involved in another controversial ad campaign last year when Absolut vodka posted billboard ads in Mexico with an early 19th-century map showing chunks of the United States as part of Mexico. The campaign angered many US citizens and was dropped.
MOVERS & SHAKERS
SERGIO RAMOSIt's a bit different to sitting up all night drinking, but Real Madrid defender Sergio Ramos has had to apologise for his off-field behaviour.
The star left before the end of the champions' Primera Liga 2-0 victory at home to Real Valladolid to go and watch a friend compete in a bullfight nearby. "I apologise to anyone who may have been offended. It wasn't right and if the club decide to punish me, I will accept it," he told a news conference.
STEPHEN COLBERTNasa has named its new living quarters on the International Space Station "Tranquillity", denying US TV comedian Stephen Colbert's desire to get the new Node 3 named after him.
But the US space agency did make one concession. It said it will make a new Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT) – a fancy way of saying "exercise treadmill" – a key fixture in the space station.
"Your name will be in space in a very important place," astronaut Sunita L Williams told Colbert on his TV show. "Every day somebody will have to jump on the COLBERT," she said.
Initially, the comedian seemed upset, but then he hit on an idea. "By running on the treadmill, that is what powers the Space Station?" asked a hopeful Colbert.
"Well, not really," said Williams, who in the past served as a flight engineer aboard the space station.
The name Colbert had drawn the most votes in a popular vote to rename Node 3.
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKEYou can't move on Mount Kilimanjaro for celebrities. After a posse of stars went up for Comic Relief , Justin Timberlake has announced he wants a go – to raise awareness of the global water crisis.
The singer will join rapper Lupe Fiasco and singer Kenna in the ascent of the Tanzanian mountain, and the trio are already in training for the event, due to take place this autumn.
Timberlake told GQ magazine: "I've been training four times a week to expand my lungs."
He added: "We'll climb a week straight, carrying 30 pounds on our backs."
OH, REALLYA Kenyan man bit a python that wrapped him in its coils and hauled him up a tree in a struggle that lasted hours.
Farm manager Ben Nyaumbe was working when the snake, apparently hunting for livestock, struck in the Malindi area of Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.
"I stepped on a spongy thing on the ground and suddenly my leg was entangled with the body of a huge python," he told the Daily Nation newspaper. When the snake coiled itself round his upper body, Nyaumbe became desperate. "I had to bite it," he said.
The python dragged him up a tree, but when it eased its grip, Nyaumbe said he was able to take a mobile out of his pocket and phone for help.
