Live like a Hamster, for a mere $150 a day!

This is all true!

An French rental home is giving people the opportunity to live like a hamster in a specially designed abode that features a running wheel and a crate made of hay.

The Villa Hamster, located in Nantes in western France, was the brainchild of Yann Falquerho, a 42-year-old scenographer, who felt the hotel industry had missed out on the little-known animal-transformation niche.

Sometimes, people really do just want to live like their caged pets, was his reasoning.

"We have a lot of success with this little house. It is because of the concept to transform into an animal," Falquerho said in a Tuesday interview with CBC Radio's As It Happens.

The small home, which dates back to the 1700s, boasts cage-like features such as containers of organic grain, a water tube which guests can sip, and a double bed accessible only by a step ladder and a quick scramble on all fours, according to a description in the Guardian newspaper.

Since opening two weeks ago, the Villa has been inundated by media and bookings, so much so that Falquerho, who owns the house, plans to raise the rate from $156 a night to about $230 in 2010.

The hamster villa has been successful enough for Falquerho to consider expanding into other animal worlds.

"Perhaps if we made a special house where you can transform into a dog or a cat, it might be [just as popular.]"

Falquerho said the most difficult part of the venture was finding a hamster wheel big enough for humans. He sought help from an interior designer and an architect. One of his favourite aspects is to see the reaction of his guests.

"When you push the door open to this little house, you think, 'Ahh, my God! What is it? Where am I?' When we see the effect on our customer, it's always amazing," he said.

"We always ask them, 'Why do you want to come into our house?' And every time they tell us, well, 'It was so strange so we wanted to see this house. We've never seen a place where we can transform into a hamster.'"

Vive la Merde!

Brazilian Navy races to crash site to begin retrieval operations.

The grim task of recuperating the bodies and piecing together what happened to AF 447 begins today.

By Alonso Soto – 2 hrs 53 mins ago
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazilian navy divers rushed on Wednesday to reach the wreckage of an Air France jet and start pulling debris from the Atlantic Ocean, where the plane with 228 people went down in the airline's worst disaster in its 75-year history.
Four navy ships with recovery equipment and a tanker were headed to a 3-mile strip of water strewn with plane seats, an orange buoy, wiring, hunks of metal and jet fuel stains about 745 miles northeast of the coastal city of Recife.
Rear Admiral Domingos Nogueira said the navy was battling tough weather as officials predicted the hardest task would be finding the flight data and voice recorders that hold clues to why the plane fell out of the sky during a severe storm in the middle of the night.
Distraught relatives who had prayed for a miracle gave up hope as experts were certain that all aboard died on the flight, which left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday night bound for Paris.
"I just want to find my son's body so that he can have a dignified burial," said Aldair Gomes, the father of Marcelo Parente, who was the head of the Rio mayor's cabinet.
So far no bodies have been sighted on flyovers by the air force, which spotted evidence of the catastrophe on Tuesday, allowing the navy to mount a retrieval operation.
"The ships are equipped to arrive and pick up pieces of the Airbus," Nogueira said. "Each ship has two divers on board and smaller ships to throw into the ocean to try and get pieces."
Helicopters would then be used to take wreckage of the Airbus A330 from the ships to a base on the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, 430 miles from the crash site.
On Wednesday, armed forces spokesman Christophe Prazuck told Reuters that the French army had no doubt that the debris belonged to the stricken plane.

Brazil confirms Air France plane went down in the Atlantic. Wreckage is found!

The sad news were confirmed about 5 minutes ago.

By FEDERICO ESCHER and ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press Writers Federico Escher And Alan Clendenning, Associated Press Writers – 1 min ago

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil – Brazilian military planes found a 3-mile (5-kilometer) path of wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean, confirming that an Air France jet carrying 228 people crashed in the sea, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said Tuesday. Jobim told reporters in Rio de Janeiro that the discovery "confirms that the plane went down in that area," hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha.

He said the strip of wreckage included metallic and nonmetallic pieces, but did not describe them in detail. No bodies were spotted in the crash of the Airbus in which all aboard are believed to have died.

The discovery came just hours after authorities announced they had found an airplane an airplane seat, an orange buoy and signs of fuel in a part of the Atlantic Ocean with depths of up to three miles (4,800 meters).

Jobim said recovery of the of the plane's cockpit voice and data recorders could be difficult because of the depth of the ocean where the debris was found.

"It's going to be very hard to search for it because it could be at a depth of 2,000 meters or 3,000 meters (6,500 to 9,800 fee) in that area of the ocean," Jobim said.

Aircraft wreckage found on flight path of Air France 447!

If this is confirmed, then the worse happened...

BRASILIA, Brazil -- Brazilian military pilots spotted an airplane seat, a life jacket, metallic debris and signs of fuel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday as they hunted for a missing Air France passenger jet that carried 228 people. They found no signs of life.

The pilots spotted two areas of floating debris about 60 kilometers (35 miles) apart, about 410 miles (650 kilometers) beyond the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, roughly along Flight 447's path from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, said Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral.

"The locations where the objects were found are toward the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted," Amaral said. "That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis."

Amaral said authorities would not be able to confirm that the debris is from the plane until they can retrieve some of it from the ocean for identification. Brazilian military ships are not expected to arrive at the area until Wednesday.

The discovery came more than 24 hours after the jet went missing, with all feared dead.

Rescuers were still scanning a vast sweep of ocean extending from far off northeastern Brazil to waters off West Africa. The 4-year-old plane was last heard from at 0214 GMT Monday (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday). If no survivors are found, it would be the world's worst aviation disaster since 2001.

Stay tuned!