Bird of pray  

The bird has become a fixture at 12th-century St Mary’s in Portchester Castle, Hampshire, after fluttering in during the worst snow of the winter, says the Daily Mail. Reverend Charlie Allen, 31, is delighted with her new red-breasted friend whose vocal contributions to sermons and hymns are easily audible.

Rev Allen said, “This robin is just so wonderfully tame — and also wonderfully noisy. The vicar first spotted the bird inside the church last month. Since then the chirpy chappy has made its home there and received considerable attention from parishioners.

  The furred reich  

An animal trainer for German television and movie productions has been slammed for teaching a dog called Goldie to give the ‘Heil Hitler!’ salute. Goldie raises her right paw in homage to the Fuehrer in a new production about the destruction of the airship Hindenburg that airs next weekend, reports the Telegraph.

The Zeppelin crossed the Atlantic in May, 1937, but crashed killing 35 of the 97 people on board, bringing to an end the age of airship travel. Goldie plays the pet of a cabaret artiste opposed to the Nazis in the two-part dramatization.

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  Oldest woman dead  

The world’s oldest woman has died in Texas aged 115, the US media reported. Eunice Sanborn, who held the title of world’s oldest person for less than three months after the death of Eugenie Blanchard, a nun from the French West Indies in November 2010, died yesterday morning, the Daily Progress newspaper quoted a friend as saying.

Sanborn celebrated her 115th birthday on July 20. She had been confined to her bed for several years, but was often helped to a chair outside her home in Jacksonville where she had lived for 75 years. She was married three times.