I completely missed this information, one month ago.

On Feb 6, 2003, Heidi, an English Sheepdog, received from Oracle Corp Japan's chief executive Masaaki Shintaku, a certificate of thanks and a one-year supply of beef jerky as her retirement pay.

"I want to thank you for helping staff and customers relax," said Shintaku.

She worked at Oracle Japan for 11 years, as the official company pet. Her job was to come to the office twice a week, in order to help everybody to relax ;-)

She will be replaced by Wendy, a dog of the same breed.

Photo: Heidi kissing Masaaki Shintaku during the ceremony.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), 2.4 bil. Yen (EUR 18,500,000) of cash was found in Tokyo in 2002, down 1.2% from previous year.

Also, the lost-and-found center got (in 2002) some 330,000 umbrellas, and 90,000 mobile phones (250 per day!!).

Maybe you never heard about Tama-chan, especially if you don't live in Japan.
This is a seal who was spotted recently along the Katabiragawa river, near Yokohama.
Its nickname, Tama-chan, was given when it was first seen on Tama River, about 6 months ago.

Tama-chan will be registered as Yokohama resident next week, by Nishi Ward in Yokohama. On its resident card, the following information will appear:
Tamao Nishi (aka Tama-chan)
Banks of the Katabiragawa river
Nishi-hiranumacho, Nishi Ward
Yokohama

Sugoi, ne!

She was 42, her name was Kalpana Chawla, she was beautiful.

She died yesterday, in Columbia shuttle, with six other people...

She was the symbol of one fifth of the mankind, and her name was not even prononced on Radio France Internationale.

Instead we had a 5-10 minutes about one of the other seven casualties, coming from a small country, apparently more important than India...

I would like to know about her instead...

I am sad for all of them, and their families...

8 years ago, on Jan 17, 1995, at 5:46 am, a 20 seconds earthquake seriously damaged Kobe city, making 4,500 casualties and hundreds of thousands of homeless people.

As a side effect, Barings famous british bank collapsed after Nick Leeson's operations on the Singapore Futures Exchanges .