BBC news: now with 12 per cent more goats

photo of debra lafave via abcactionnews.com;
goat courtesy bbc

1. "goat-free roads made me speed"

A Swiss man caught speeding on a Canadian highway has blamed his actions on the absence of goats on the roads. The man was caught driving at 161 km/h (100mph) in a 100 km/h (60mph) zone.

A traffic officer's notes said the Swiss driver had said he was taking advantage "of the ability to go faster without risking hitting a goat".

Canadian police spokesman Joel Doiron said he had never found a goat on the highways of eastern Ontario in his 20 years of service. "Nobody's ever used the lack of goats here as an excuse for speeding," Mr Doiron told the AFP news agency."I've never been to Switzerland, but I guess there must be a lot of goats there," he said.

I guess so.

2. Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal. The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up". Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case."They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife," Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi. "We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

No word about how the goat feels about this. A cross-cultural observation. Well, a question: if this were a likely consequence for the supposed epidemic of high school teachers having sex with their teen-aged students, would it prove a more effective deterent than jail time and court-appointed counseling?

3. Somewhat more seriously, Pharmed' goats seek drug licence

"Down on the "pharm": The goats of Massachusetts"

Imagine you could get life-saving medicines from milking a common farmyard animal.

That idea moves a step closer to becoming a reality this week, as the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) considers the final stages of an application to license a natural human protein extracted from the milk of goats.

To license is to restrict, as in to patent. They want to patent a natural human protein? Scientific innovation and the intellectual property rights are poor bedfellows, maybe even more so than Mr Alifi and the missus.