Granddad guns down terror squirrel

A vicious squirrel which terrorised a Cheshire town has been shot dead by a grandfather seeking vengeance. The animal had already attacked a man mowing his lawn and woman walking down the street, in Knutsford. But when it sank its teeth into Kelsi Morley's face, her grandfather Geoff Horth decided to act.

He went out and killed it.

[Erik says: Stephen King and Clive Barker will be meeting tomorrow morning at dawn to duel for the novelization rights.]

DNA tests for Swedish saint

A shrine to Saint Birgitta, considered as Sweden's patron saint, is to be opened on Tuesday so that DNA tests can be carried out to determine whose remains it contains. Birgitta, a widow and mother of eight, is highly popular in northern Europe, Germany, Hungary and Poland. The shrine, at the Vadstena church in central Sweden, is dedicated to Birgitta Birgersdotter (1303-1373), who was canonised in 1391. It contains the remains of three people - Birgitta, her daughter Katarina and Saint Ingrid - but only two skulls.

Birgitta's remains were placed in Vadstena a year after she died in Rome, while those of Katarina, Vadstena's first abbess, were added in 1389. The remains of Saint Ingrid, who founded a nearby convent, were placed there in the early 1500s, but a skull was removed from the shrine during the 17th Century and taken to a Dutch convent.

"We will know if Birgitta is here or in the Netherlands," said Marie Allen, a researcher at the Uppsala laboratory north of Stockholm.

[Erik says: Just when you thought that collecting Saint relics was a lost art!]