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... A local official had given the camel to Mr Hollande in gratitude for France spearheading a drive to flush out Islamic extremists from Mali. But the well-intentioned gift soon proved a liability. The camel ruined its handover ceremony by drowning out a Malian official's speech with its screeching. Mr Hollande's voice could just be heard over the din when he promised: "I will use it as a means of transport as often as possible." ... The camel had already embarrassed Mr Hollande when Said Toureg, a man from the Timbuktu region, claimed that it had been stolen from him...

OTTAWA – Ancient, mummified camel bones dug from the tundra confirm that the animals now synonymous with the arid sands of Arabia actually developed in subfreezing forests in what is now Canada's High Arctic, a scientist said Tuesday. About 3.5 million years ago, Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island's west-central coast would have looked more like a northern forest than an Arctic landscape, said paleobotanist Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

Ali Al Saloom is a cultural adviser and public speaker from the UAE. Dear Ali: Do people eat camel meat in the UAE? And if so, why? And where can I taste it? CQ, Dubai Dear CQ: Yes, we do eat camel meat. It might sound odd but it is like coming across crocodile meat at a hotel in Dubai. I was really shocked and thought: wow, I didn't know you can eat it. But it was no surprise to my Ozzie friends. See, camel meat is one of our national specialities and is regarded as a "comfort food" that...

(Reuters) - Arab-American groups have sharply criticized a Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad depicting an Arab walking through the desert with a camel, and one group said it would ask the beverage giant to change it before CBS airs the game on Sunday before an expected audience of more than 100 million U.S. viewers. "Why is it that Arabs are always shown as either oil-rich sheiks, terrorists, or belly dancers?" said Warren David, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC. Coca-Cola released an online teaser of the commercial last week, showing the Arab walking through a desert. He soon sees...

Pushed out by large crowd watching the stunt performance Saudi ArabiaAn old Saudi man driving a pick-up laden with a camel plunged into a pit as he tried to avert being hit by a car involved in stunt performance in Saudi Arabia. A 200-second YouTube film showed the pickup fell into the pit and remained stuck there for several minutes for it was pushed out by a large crowd gathering to watch the stunt performance in a sandy area in the northwestern town of Hail. It was clear from the film, carried in Jazan News and other Saudi newspapers, that...

Want to take a ride on a real camel in northeast Fresno to get an experience of the Middle East? The Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno is offering camel rides -- and more -- at its first bazaar, which will be from 4 to 10 p.m. Oct. 27 at the center, 2111 E. Nees Ave. The center is making arrangements to bring the camel from the Los Angeles area. Huda Munjy, chairwoman of the bazaar and a board member at the center, says the camel rides are to provide the community with an experience they can enjoy and remember for...

The Emirates Palace Hotel organizes a unique contest to choose the best Berger Sandwich made of camel meat. The head-chef of the place started the contest by choosing 5 working chefs to prepare 5 Camel burger sandwiches. Media representatives who attended the contest, have voted for the best meal, in the presence of a number of officials of Emirates Palace. First place Camel burger sandwich winner was Chef Amit Gomes. The head-chef decided to place his winning sandwich on the Emirates Palace’s / Le Cafe / list of available food and a number of restaurants in the palace, to be...

A camel kicked his 70-year-old Saudi owner to death after it went mad when the farmer and his workers tried to push the animal onto a van to sell it. The camel stubbornly resisted all attempts to be loaded onto the van and kept baring its teeth as if to tell its owner it refuses to be sold. After failing to move the camel, which kept lying down, its owner in turn went mad and started pushing it violently towards the van.

NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep is taking a Revolutionary Road trip from Tunisia to Cairo to see how the countries that staged revolutions last year are remaking themselves. He's also sharing with us here at The Salt what he's been eating. Dear Salt, In Tripoli, there is an outdoor restaurant called Al-Athar, which is located next to an ancient Roman arch. And my eyes were drawn to the menu item that said "baby camel." I tell you, you do not order a meal with a name like this without first pausing to think. The menu might as well have...

The al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia has mocked the new $33 million bounty on its top leaders heads by offering its own bounty for President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – 10 camels for Obama and 20 chickens for Clinton. "Anyone who helps the Mujahideen find the whereabouts of Obama and Hillary Clinton will be rewarded with 10 Camels to the information leading to Obama and 10 hens and 10 cocks for Hillary," said senior Shabaab commander Fuad Mohamed Khalaf in a statement reported on numerous websites.

Police car bears brunt of damagePolice officers in the town of Sar-lat in southwest France were nonplussed when a camel smashed in the front window of their Ford Focus patrol car earlier this month. "There was nothing I could do," police officer Laurent Legal, who collided with the animal, said. "It's a good thing I wasn't driving very fast." The 500-kilogram animal, named Pépette, was part of a Christmas market attraction, along with his mate Cléopatre. After a hectic day of rides and a stint in the petting zoo, Pépette was spooked by a number of fans who crowded its...

A camel broke free from its farm in Saudi Arabia and ran amok through the streets, damaging cars and sending frightened people into their homes. The camel chased passers by and smashed car windows as it kept running astray through the streets of the western town of Taif. Its owner chased and tried to stop the animal but could not and the situation was quickly reversed when the owner was himself chased by the camel. “Car started to honk and this made the camel more mad…after wreaking havoc, the camel ran out of the streets and disappeared,” the Arabic language...

You can get ice cream in lots of different flavours like mint, vanilla and chocolate. Yum. Well there's a new type of ice cream being launched in the UK and it's made from camels' milk! The makers reckon it has half the amount of fat of dairy ice cream, and three times the amount of vitamin C. The camels' milk is shipped in from the world's only commercial camel farm in the Netherlands, which is home to 58 of the humped beasts.

They shared pasta but not much conversation. Disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, were spotted dining at La Bottega in Chelsea's Maritime Hotel on Saturday - but she "looked miserable," according to a witness. The couple were sharing a plain pizza, a salad and pasta but spent most of the meal chained to their cell phones, said the witness. They were both sporting wedding rings. "No one was really positive that it was him, but then we saw the name on the credit card and we were like, 'Wow, it's really him,' " said a waiter...

Kill a camel, earn cash for cutting greenhouse gases: That offer may be coming soon in Australia, where vast numbers of the nonnative, methane-belching animals have been trampling the Outback for more than a century. The government has proposed that killing camels be officially registered as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia has the world's largest population of wild camels _ an estimated 1.2 million _ and considers them to be a growing environmental problem. The proposal, released for public comment this week, would allow sharpshooters to earn so-called carbon credits for slaughtering camels. Industrial polluters around the...

No joke: The Daily Show brought a camel to the protests in Madison the other day, presumably to help make fun of the Cairo/Madison comparisons. As this video shows, the gag didn't turn out so well: Who knew that an animal indigenous to the Middle East couldn't walk on snow and ice in the Midwest? Local firefighters eventually rescued the camel. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the Daily Show didn't use any footage of the camel in its Tuesday night broadcast. Update: If I'm not mistaken, it appears that Daily Show correspondent John Oliver walks in front of the...

A camel has fetched SR three million ($800,000) in Saudi Arabia, one of the highest price paid for the desert animal in the Gulf Kingdom, the Saudi Arabic language daily Sharq reported on Thursday. The whitish male camel, named Nomas, is of a rare breed and was sold this week during a camel festival east of the central town of Taif, the paper said. “Nomas fetched one of the highest prices paid for a camel in east and north Saudi Arabia…camel prices have sharply increased over the past few years and some of them have fetched over SR15 million,” it...

Vietnamese expats get 45 days each in Saudi prison for slicing the camel aliveA Saudi court sentenced two Vietnamese expatriates to 45 days in prison after they were found guilty of cutting off a leg of a camel alive just to taste its meat, the Saudi Arabic language daily Alwatan reported on Tuesday. The two sneaked into a farm in the southwestern town of Najran with a heavy metal bar after seeing the camel pasturing alone, the paper said. “They clubbed the camel with the bar on the head and it fell unconscious…they cut off its leg and left the...

This is a first, and it's not something to be proud of, but I have to be honest: I didn't actually ingest this week's "I'm Eating What?!?" products. Yes, the whole aim of this column is to chomp down on unusual things, swallow, research and report. But when something smells so gawd-awful that it makes me want to wretch -- no gig is worth that. (My friend and fellow taster, a particularly vociferous bacon-lover, even pulled the Jew card as an excuse for not trying the products, claiming they weren't kosher. Girl, puuuuhhhlleeease.) However, we are pleased to report that...

A vet said Moses was unharmed by the ordeal Firefighters in the US state of Oregon have had to use all their shovelling skills to do a delicate job: dig a camel out of a sinkhole. They were called by the Clackamas County owners of the 1,500lb (680kg) animal, named Moses, who said they were simply unable to free him. The rescuers had to dig for hours to rescue Moses, whose long skinny legs were deep in the mud. A veterinarian later checked the animal and said he was unhurt. The firefighters got a call from the animal's owners late...

Ralph and Wynona Passow bought their first camels a decade ago to rid their farm of weeds. The camel herd has grown to more than 30.Lanky legs and neck sprawled too far forward, then too far backward. That black, furry newborn was going to stand and nurse somehow, Passow decided. The mother camel blinked long, dreamy eyelashes and watched carefully as Passow coaxed the big baby to the mother's side. "The females are lovely," Ralph Passow said, watching his wife try to turn the baby toward the patient mother. "But the male camels will kill you." About 30 minutes earlier,...

The United Arab Emirates has been pushing hard for the European Union to accept imports from its camel dairy farms. Until now the EU has not considered the camel to be a dairy animal, but in the last few weeks the legal process has moved along. Could camel milk soon arrive on a supermarket shelf near you?

DUBAI (Reuters) – Hard on the hooves of cow's and goat's milk, European grocery shelves may soon be invaded by milk from that proverbial ship of the desert, the camel. An animal famous for bad breath and ill humour might seem an unlikely source of liquid to lubricate a bowl of breakfast cereal or froth up a latte, but promoters from the United Arab Emirates say it is healthy -- and almost like mother's own. "People with lactose intolerance can drink it with no problem, unlike cow's milk, it doesn't cause protein allergies, and it's high in insulin," said Ulrich...

A red-faced Bahrain toy dealer has admitted to officials that he made a mistake by importing a toy of two “kissing camels,” one of which bears the name Bahrain in Arabic and the other which bears the name Israel in English.

Wild dromedary camels, brought to Australia in the mid-19th century to help explore and develop the outback, were left to breed and survive on their own. Now they number a million in the wild and have become pests, officials say. Camels are not usually associated with Australia, but Australia is home to the largest herd of feral camels in the world. About 12,000 dromedary camels were brought to Australia in the mid-19th century to carry people and supplies during the exploration and development of the Interior but after the advent of the automobile, they were abandoned and left to fend...

<p>Considering the name of this blog, we took great concern with the left Eye of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, which appeared puffy on Wednesday while she testified to a Senate committee.</p> <p>Sebelius had a basal cell carcinoma removed from her forehead on Tuesday during a successful standard outpatient procedure, according to HHS spokeswoman Jenny Backus.</p>

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. – Philadelphia Eagles fans thirsty for predictions on whether their team will win or lose each week won't get them from a New Jersey pigskin-prognosticating camel. Princess, the star of Popcorn Park Zoo, won't predict the results of any Eagles games this season to protest the signing of quarterback Michael Vick. Vick spent 18 months in prison for organizing a dogfighting ring. The 2,600-pound camel went 17-4 last year and correctly picked the Pittsburgh Steelers to win the Super Bowl.

Thousands of camels will be shot from helicopters and turned into burgers in a bid to halt their trail of havoc across Australia. Marksmen plan to gun the animals down amid concern the thirsty dromedaries are barging into people's homes and ripping up their bathrooms looking for water. Government officials plan to wipe out 650,000 of the feral population in the remote Outback area of the country. The creatures were first introduced to Australia in the 1840s to help explorers travel through the Australian desert. There are now about one million camels roaming the country. They compete with sheep and...

At the Centralian Gold abattoir outside Alice Springs, business is brisk. Scores of animals are brought in each week to be slaughtered, deboned and packaged into sausages, steaks and mince. But the largest slabs of meat on the racks are not beef, lamb or even kangaroo, but camel. Garry Dann, who owns the business, describes camel meat as "beautiful, healthy and organic" and says demand for the product is growing every month. Travelling in large, aggressive packs, they prevent Aboriginal women from venturing into the countryside for fear of being attacked or trampled Mr Dann, who sells camel sausages, mince...

Camels' 'Milk Chocolate' is coming to the US.. A company in Dubai plans to bring Milk Chocolate (made with Camels' milk) to the America. Apparently, camel-milk chocolate is considered a delicacy.

JEDDAH: The June 4 speech at Cairo University by US President Barack Obama was watched widely in the Arab world, including the desert of Hail province where traffic virtually vanished during the address. According to a report in Asharq Alawsat daily, residents of Dhabi village gathered around TV screens to catch Obama’s words. “Obama’s speech caused the postponement of some of my appointments by request of my guests, relatives and friends, as well as some nearby Bedouin,” said Awad Khudair Al-Shammari, the owner of one of the few television sets in the area. Al-Shammari, who owns and breeds camels, said...

Evidence for health claims is thin, but a Pittsboro woman is pushing for testing. There is nothing smooth about a cool glass of camel's milk. The animals aren't cooperative, milk production is less than stellar and it's illegal to sell across state lines. Still, proponents, led by Millie Hinkle of Pittsboro, say camel's milk may be an elixir, curing maladies from allergies to autism to diabetes – although the science behind such claims is thin. The prospect of a cure-all is what inspires Hinkle, a naturopathic physician who read about the health benefits in a magazine three years ago and...

/begin my translation N. Korea: Why Importing Camels? (Beijing Reuters = Yonhap News) A report surfaced recently, which says that N. Korea imported camels and yaks, prompting speculation over what the wild animals are for. According to a Feb. 19th dispatch by China's Xinhua agency, a zoo located in Dairen, Liaoliang Province recently exported two yaks, a kind of wild buffalo, and four camels to N. Korea. It briefly mentioned, "This is the first time these wild animals are exported to N. Korea from Dairen or Liaoling Province in general." It did now spell out where in N. Korea they...

Camel wrestling contest attracts thousands of spectators    Some 130 wrestling camels from the Aegean and Mediterranean regions competed in the 27th Selçuk-Ephesus Camel Wrestling Festival.  The 27th Selçuk-Ephesus Camel Wrestling Festival, which was held Sunday, drew nearly 20,000 local and foreign spectators. Some 130 wrestling camels from the Aegean, Marmara and Mediterranean regions competed in the festival. Fighting camels do no work for nine months of the year, and in the competitive season, they fight only about a dozen times. Their owners pamper them and often become deeply attached to them.Selçuk Mayor Hasan Hakkı Doğan, who delivered a...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — It may have seemed like a mirage: Two camels nibbling on a pine tree along a street in this desert metropolis on the Texas border. Police tried lassoing the animals, which lunged at the officers with snapping teeth as onlookers chuckled. But in the end, officials say all it took was some juicy green leaves on a branch held by the caretaker to lure the camels back into captivity.

DAMASCUS, Syria – Scientists have unearthed a camel jawbone in the Syrian desert that they think may be a previously unknown tiny species of the animal and say dates back a million years.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — "It's just like judging a beautiful girl," said Fowzan al-Madr, a camel breeder from the Kharj region southeast of Riyadh. "You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck — maybe 39 or 40 inches." As he spoke, Madr was surveying the offerings at Saudi Arabia's largest camel market, on the outskirts of Riyadh. The days are long past when camels were crucial to life, a chapter lost in increasing urbanization and technology. But there is still pleasure in raising them, sometimes for milk and meat, for racing and, yes, for their beauty. Camel...

<p>MADINAT ZAYED, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Dubai's crown prince bought a camel for an unprecedented high price of $2.7 million during a desert festival in the emirate of Abu Dhabi.</p> <p>Sheik Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the son of Dubai's ruler Sheik Mohammed and his heir apparent, bought 16 camels for $4.5 million during a camel beauty pageant taking place during a desert carnival that aims to preserve the nomadic way of life in the oil-rich Gulf.</p>

HAIL, 16 March 2008 — A seven-year-old boy fell into a swimming pool here recently during a private social function and the men in attendance were helpless to do anything about it. According to a report in Al-Riyadh newspaper, none of the men knew how to swim and were otherwise almost clueless about what to do as the child flailed about in panic. One man grabbed the pool ladder and tried to ease it over to the boy to no avail. Others tried to tie a couple of shumaqs (the Saudi headdress for men) to make a lifeline, but it...

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait, March 10, 2008 – Like devoted fans, about 100 servicemembers anxiously awaited Clyde’s arrival here on March 7. And, like a true celebrity, Clyde was fashionably late. Army Sgt. Dale Carson with the 76th Brigade out of Indianapolis, Ind., gets a wild ride from Clyde the camel March 7, 2008, on Camp Buehring, Kuwait. Clyde comes to the base once a month as part of the Morale, Welfare and Recreation office’s efforts to give the troops a break from their day-to-day routines. Defense Dept. photo by Samantha L. Quigley  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “I...

Camel hunting, the new Aboriginal pastime By Nick Squires in Sydney Last Updated: 7:05pm GMT 10/02/2008 Aborigines in Australia's arid desert interior have hit on an innovative way of tackling the boredom and substance abuse which have ravaged so many of their communities - hunting camels. Camel hunting is the innovative new way of tackling the boredom and substance abuse which have ravaged Aboriginal communities Where their forbears pursued traditional prey such as kangaroos and monitor lizards, the younger generation is heading into the scrub to shoot plentiful one-humped dromedaries. The camels were introduced in the 19th century from India...

A Palestinian man interacts with a camel as he waits for tourists on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem's Old City, Jan. 14, 2008. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators took on the most contentious issues in their bitter conflict Monday, under a U.S.-backed effort to hammer out a final peace deal by the end of the year

TROUTMAN, N.C. -- A man is recovering after he was attacked by his pet camel at his home along Buffalo Shoals Road near Troutman in Iredell County. The man bought the camel from a petting zoo and planned to keep it as a pet but Wednesday night it attacked him, stepped on him and pinned him to the ground. A neighbor heard his yells for help and freed him. The victim had several lacerations but is expected to be OK. He said he's going to return the camel to its original owners on Thursday.

An Australian woman was killed by a pet camel given to her as a 60th birthday present after the animal apparently tried to have sex, police said Sunday...

RIYADH (Reuters) - Hundreds of camels have died in Saudi Arabia this week from a mystery ailment. The Agriculture Ministry has said 232 camels died in the space of four days in the Dawasir Valley, 400 km (250 miles) south of Riyadh. King Abdullah has promised compensation for owners, who say the real number of deaths is far higher. Agriculture ministry officials have denied an infectious disease caused the deaths and blamed them on animal feed supplied by food storage authorities.

WEWAHITCHKA, Fla. — The owner of an exotic animal farm has died after being kicked and then sat on by a 1,800-pound camel. Cathie Ake and the 4-year-old camel were being filmed by a local television station on Sunday when the camel kicked her and sat on her during a break in filming. The station was doing a story on Mini-Akers Exotic Animals, the farm Ake owned with her husband. Ake's husband, Donnie Ake, said he thinks Polo, the camel, was agitated by mating season. He said he would find a new home for Polo, which they bought three weeks...

Kyzyl Al'Tajik (Kazzie) 4/1996-7/19/2007 Died sometime overnight of a freak slip/fall accident. Rest in peace, buddy.

For anyone with a yen to help out financially strapped Algerian nomads, now's your chance. Alissa Descotes-Toyosaki, a Japanese-French writer and interpreter living in Paris, is offering a "camel owner plan," through which purchasers lend their beasts to Tuareg nomad camel handlers in southern Algeria.

Dead camel found on the roadside... in Sweden (AFP) 2 July 2007 STOCKHOLM - Motorists in Sweden are accustomed to seeing elks along the roadside, but the discovery of a dead camel on the shoulder of the E22 autoroute left more than a few eyebrows raised, media reported on Monday.‘But as the police patrol arrived at the scene it turned out to be completely true,’ police officer Lars Lindwall told Swedish news agency TT.Police got the call during the night between Sunday and Monday and found the visibly injured animal dead by the roadside outside the southern Swedish town of...