The news you probably haven’t seen…

STORIES THAT SHOULD GET YOUR ATTENTION

The latest satellite data has shown a big change in Arctic ice volume, but not in the way some of you might think.

The European CryoSat data has revealed a 50% jump in the thickness of Arctic sea ice in 2013, following on from yearly increases after a recent low in 2007.

Thicker sea ice is harder to melt, and is another slap in the face for climate scientists who’ve been routinely predicting the disappearance of sea ice.

Meanwhile Antarctic summer sea ice has been at record levels despite the southern summer.

Still on climate…ten years ago British climate scientists famously predicted that within a decade, “children won’t even know what snow is” because of global warming.

Just as that decade comes up, the Iranian news agency is reporting what it calls an “unprecedented’ snowfall across Iran, dumping the white stuff two metres deep in many places, more than deep enough to bury any children wondering what it was.

Several houses have collapsed because of the weight of snow on their roofs, and ten cities have been cut off because of the blizzard.

An American woman gave birth to three children, only to discover the children weren’t hers.

DNA tests required for family assistance welfare after her marriage break-up, revealed that her children were not actually related to her, even though her former husband was definitely the father.

Confused?

So was she. Lydia Fairchild faced prosecution for attempted welfare fraud – federal authorities believed she was trying to pass off another woman’s babies as her own to get a benefit.

Even the testimony of her obstetrician, who told investigators he had personally delivered the babies from Mrs Fairchild’s womb, failed to convince the Feds.

It was not until further medical tests revealed a terrible secret, that the truth came out.

Lydia Fairchild was actually two people. Unbeknownst to her, she was a twin and very early in her own fetal development her body had absorbed her other twin. But that other twin didn’t die. Its genetic code remained inside Lydia Fairchild, and it was the unborn twin who was actually the biological mother of Lydia Fairchild’s three children.

There have been only 30 cases of this documented in the world.

From our off-the-planet file, NASA has released a stunning new photograph of Earth, taken from the surface of Mars.

The image was taken at twilight by the Mars Curiosity rover last week, and shows Earth and the moon in the distance, almost alone in the evening  Martian sky.

In the light challenged camera conditions the moon can be seen only as a tiny speck of light in the photo just underneath Earth, but would easily be visible to the naked eye for someone standing on Mars.

You can see the photo at investigatemagazine.co.nz

You can read more about any of these stories on investigatemagazine.co.nz tonight