Makes the UK's lead thieves look small time!

A 200-year-old church building has disappeared from a village in central Russia, officials from the Russian Orthodox Church say.
The building had stood near the village of Komarovo since 1809.
It was intact in July but some time in early October thieves made off with it brick by brick, they said.
Local prosecutors had been informed and an investigation was under way, a spokesman for the local Russian Orthodox Church said.
The disappearance of the Church of the Resurrection, some 300 km (186 miles) north-east of Moscow, was not immediately noticed.
It was in an out-of-the-way area and was not being used, although Church officials were considering resuming services there.
Now all that remained of the two-storey building - a school before it was turned over to the Church - were its foundations and some sections of wall, the Church said.
Thieves often target churches in rural Russia. Religious icons can be sold and church structures sold off for building materials.

Russian Rat Craze

Russian pet shops are reporting a shortage of domestic rats, as shoppers snap them up ahead of the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Rat.
Shoppers are said to be buying even mice, hamsters or gerbils. But vets warn that some unwanted rats will be released in the streets.
While Russia's main religion is Christian Orthodox, Chinese astrology is a pastime for many.
Chinese New Year, based on the Moon's cycles, begins on 7 February this year.
Rats are soft, charming and clean and do not need a great deal of care, traders say.
But "not everyone is going to be delighted to get a real rat as a present, and those that can't house them will either return them to a shop, or release them in the streets," said one Moscow vet quoted by the AFP news agency.
In December customers hoping to buy rats formed long queues in pet shops in the northern city of Novgorod, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

50 Years Ago Today

The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space--a dog name Laika--aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. Laika, part Siberian husky, lived as a stray on the Moscow streets before being enlisted into the Soviet space program. Laika survived for several days as a passenger in the USSR's second artificial Earth satellite, kept alive by a sophisticated life-support system. Electrodes attached to her body provided scientists on the ground with important information about the biological effects of space travel. She died after the batteries of her life-support system ran down. At least a dozen more Russian dogs were launched into space in preparation for the first manned Soviet space mission, and at least five of these dogs died in flight. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1. He orbited the Earth once before landing safely in the USSR.