BEAR Grylls eat your heart out.

Giant pandas are to be sent to survival school, to help teach them how to survive in the wild.

Zhang Zhihe, head of the giant panda breeding research base in Chengdu, China, said a £6 million training centre was to be built in south-western Sichuan province.

Animals brought into the centre will be kept in cages for the first few years before being moved to caves where they will be taught foraging skills.

They will then be moved to more natural forested areas with less human contact.

Finally they will be introduced to a nature reserve where it is hoped they will then be able to fend for themselves.

You might want to think about changing your name, Bear. But somehow Panda Grylls doesn’t have quite the same ring…

With this ring I thee get stuck

The earth didn’t quite move for Wolverhampton man James Bill when his girlfriend presented him with a stainless steel ring. But it might as well have done.

The ring got stuck on the 42-year-old’s finger.

Mr Bill walked round to nearby Fallings Park fire station to get help after his finger began to swell and throb.

Two hours and five broken ring-cutter saw-blades later, firefighters were no nearer removing the ring, despite using ice packs, cold water and even a packet of frozen peas to try to reduce the swelling.

They then called an earthquake rescue team from Birmingham International Airport. The specially-trained firefighters rushed to the rescue with blue lights flashing – and used a titanium blade to saw through the ring in five minutes.

Blonde leading the blonde

The people of Latvia have come up with a novel way of beating the recession blues: a festival of blondes.

The blonde parade began last year and was planned as a one-off but returned by popular demand as a two-day festival.

Hundreds of blonde Latvian women, most dressed in pink and wearing high heels, marched through the capital Riga to try to bolster the national spirit.

Most of the participants dressed in pink and wore high heels. The festival also featured parties, concerts and a Marilyn Monroe lookalike competition.

Latvia has been hit badly by recession. Its economy shrank by 18 per cent in 2009 and it has Europe's highest unemployment.

Marika Gederte, president of the Latvian Association of Blondes, told the BBC the idea came out of the economic gloom.

"I was so tired, you know, every day opening the computer and reading the newspapers and just reading about problems. We decided... let's do something nice. And I asked myself the question: what can I do for my country? And this is what I did... We are very proud to be blonde."

Next year, it seems, Riga's blonde ambitions are even bigger, with a blonde carnival planned.

Who needs Rio?

Kooky creatures 1

An Australian kookaburra got so fat from eating too many sausages it could no longer fly.

Now the porky bird has been given its own personal trainer, to help it shed the pounds.

Its weight problem started when residents at a Sydney park began feeding it meat from their barbecues.

Before long, the bird had ballooned to 1.2 pounds, nearly 40 per cent heavier than a normal adult bird. It became so unfit that it couldn't fly.

"Out in the wild she'd eat a whole small animal such as a mouse or skink (lizard), but butcher's sausages are just too much of a good thing," said Gemma Watkinson, Sydney's Taronga Zoo wildlife hospital nurse.

A Sydney resident brought the bird to the zoo after spotting dogs chasing it along the ground.

"The kookaburra's been down at the rehabilitation aviary for a couple of weeks on a special 'lite n'easy' diet designed by our bird keeper," said Ms Watkinson.

Following a rigorous exercise regime up to three times a day with a personal trainer, the kookaburra is winning the battle of the bulge, but still has a little more weight to shed before it can be returned to its native habitat.

"We've fitted the temporary home out like a 'bird gym'," said Ms Watkinson.

Kooky creatures 2

'Drunk' parrots suffering from a mystery illness have been discovered in Australia's Northern Territory.

The red-collared lorikeets were found stumbling around Darwin, falling out of trees or simply passed out after being hit by the illness, which apparently brings on symptoms just like being drunk.

At the Ark Animal Hospital in Palmerston, where locals have been taking the birds, vets have been treating up to eight of the creatures a day for several months.

Dubbed the 'drop lorry' or 'drunken lorikeet' disease for the moment, the illness is thought to be the result of an unidentified virus outbreak, or caused by fermented nectar from a plant eaten by the parrots.

Veterinary surgeon Lisa Hansen said one symptom of the affliction was a change in mood, turning the parrots from 'obnoxious' to 'really friendly and jovial'.

'They act quite like a drunken person would,' she confirmed to The Times.

'They stumble around and are very uncoordinated. Some have even fallen off their perches in the aviary.'

Describing a lorikeet that was found in the bottom of an aviary, leaning up against the mesh, she said 'he looked just like a drunken person leaning against a wall to keep himself upright'.

Hangovers are another sign of the illness, it seems, with headaches, disorientation, lethargy and general unhappiness common.

We all know how they feel.