Animals in the news

***** In the Macedonian city of Bitola, a bear was convicted of theft and damage for stealing honey from a beekeeper. Since the bear had no owner and belonged to a protected species, the court ordered the state to pay the 140,000 denars ($3,500) to the beekeeper for damage the bear had caused to the hives.

***** After two years of debate, the Dutch Parliament voted unanimously yesterday to make sex with animals a crime. Sex with animals and making "animal pornography" now carries a penalty of up to six months jail.

*****The government of Randolph, Iowa, has rescinded a five dollar bounty on stray cats . Instead, the town has agreed to work with animal rescue groups on a catch, neuter and release program.

***** In a bid for privacy, Leanne, the Sumatran tiger at the San Francisco Zoo, licked the video camera being used to monitor her and her newborn cub. To everyone's surprise, Leanne has three new babies, not just the one which had been filmed. The three 9-day-old Sumatran tiger cubs, all males, had their first health exam on Saturday, March 15, 2008. (Photo: George Nikitin, San Francisco Zoo)

***** Daniel J. Collins, 39, of Indiana, is being held on one count each of animal cruelty and battery and two counts of neglect of a dependent. He forced his 7-year-old daughter to kill the family cat by holding a knife in her hand and making her stab the feline. Collins told his 11-year-old son and daughter he wanted them to "learn how to kill."

***** Delta Flight 4704 was delayed more than five hours at the Des Moines International Airport on Thursday morning because of a mouse. Crews set up traps with peanut butter on board the plane when a flight attendant was too frightened to fly with the mouse onboard.

***** In Church Hill, TN, investigators are searching for whomever poured deer urine into an air conditioning unit at a school in eastern Tennessee. About a dozen students became ill after the prank at Volunteer High School.