BagOfNothing.com

He survived against all the odds; now Peng Shulin has astounded doctors by learning to walk again.

When his body was cut in two by a lorry in 1995, it was little short of a medical miracle that he lived.

It took a team of more than 20 doctors to save his life.

Skin was grafted from his head to seal his torso – but the legless Mr Peng was left only 78cm (2ft 6in) tall.

Bedridden for years, doctors in China had little hope that he would ever be able to live anything like a normal life agan.

But recently, he began exercising his arms, building up the strength to carry out everyday chores such as washing his face and brushing his teeth.

Doctors at the China Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing found out about Mr Peng’s plight late last year and devised a plan to get him up walking again.

They came up with an ingenious way to allow him to walk on his own, creating a sophisticated egg cup-like casing to hold his body with two bionic legs attached to it.

He has been taking his first steps around the centre with the aid of his specially adapted legs and a resized walking frame.

Mr Peng, who has to learn how to walk again, is said to be delighted with the device.

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Congressional investigators set up a bogus company with only a postal box and within a month obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that allowed them to buy enough radioactive material for a small “dirty bomb.”

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who will ask the NRC about the incident at a Senate hearing Thursday, said the sting operation raises concerns about terrorists obtaining such material just as easily.

Nobody at the NRC checked whether the company was legitimate and an agency official even helped the investigators fill out the application form, Coleman said in an interview Wednesday.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged that more checking is needed in such licensing and said that since being told of the GAO sting operation it has tightened licensing procedures.

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• Every child of Texas that had to take a long spring or summer road trip owes her a bit of thanks for making that ride more pleasing to the eye.  There’s nothing like spring time in Texas as the bluebonnets begin to bloom.
• One may think she was the longest living first lady since she died at the age of 94, but that distinction belongs to Bess Truman who died at the age of 97 in 1982.
• She was protected by the Secret Service longer than anyone in history.  It wasn’t until 1997 that a law was made that limits Secret Service protection for a former president and his or her family to 10 years, unless an acting president decides to extend that duration.  On a side note, President Bush will be protected by 103 full-time Secret Service agents starting in January 2009.  Source