It's the Chinese Year of the Rat but it is unlikely the animal's status could be elevated above the sewer and loathsome level. Never mind that last year's hit film Ratatouille showed their humorous - and culinary - side and that Mickey Mouse and Tom and Jerry have been a long-time favorites.

A Pennsylvania owner of a pharmacy gave $20 lottery tickets to his relatives for Christmas, later on discovering that one of those tickets won the $1M lottery. Fred DePasquale, owner of The Medicine Shoppe, said that he bought 35 tickets from his own store, giving away 20 to relatives, five to customers, and 10 to himself. It was later on that one of the tickets, given to an in-law, won the $1 million prize.

Irish physician Dr. Brendan Kelly conducted a tongue-in-cheek study, the findings of which he published in the medical journal Lancet. Dr. Kelly randomly selected 20 medical romance novels and found that majority leaned towards "brilliant, tall, muscular, male doctors with chiselled features, working in emergency medicine" who were "commonly of Mediterranean origin and had personal tragedies in their pasts", according to The Associated Press (AP).

The U. S. Embassy in Manila has come to the aid of "blistered and crackled" paintings made by the foremost Filipino artist in the lobby of the Philippine General Hospital, the country's first public hospital. Willie Estonato, a painting conservator from the National Museum said, the murals created by Carlos "Botong" Francisco in 1953, were already on the brink of collapsing.

The Board of Registration in Medicine, which is the governing authority issuing licenses to Massachusetts doctors, has reportedly suspended a Boston anesthesiologist from the practice of medicine for dozing off during an operation. In December 2005, Thomas Ho admitted inhaling anesthetic gas while on lunch break on another occasion. The Board also added that following month Ho had taken a prescription drug that caused him to doze off. When he fell asleep he was the only anesthesiologist in the operating room at Children's Hospital Boston.