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Scott Spraggins, a Connecticut state trooper and former U.S. Marine, recently returned from a Christmas vist to the African nation of Ghana, tells of a harrowing encounter with armed intruders invading their quarters in Accra. Here is the headline and lead from today's Hartford Courant:

Menacing Eyes, Shotgun In The Dark

Connecticut Trooper Prevails In Ferocious Fight To Defend Family In Ghana
December 31, 2006
By TRACY GORDON FOX, Courant Staff Writer

"Trooper Scott Spraggins opened his eyes to the African darkness, awakened by a strange scraping noise. It was different from the crickets and the whir of central air conditioning in the gated, elegant home where he and his family had been staying during their trip this month to Ghana"......( Spraggins lunged at a man with a shotgun and a viscious fight broke out eventually involving the troopers wife and mother, all were injured but the 3 intruders were routed)......"Scott and Angelica Spraggins, 39, and his mother, Lyla Mills, 63, now back home in Newtown, recalled how they fought with the three armed intruders. Scott Spraggins slashed one of the bandits in the abdomen and blinded another in one eye."


Trooper Spraggins and Family (Hartford Courant photo)
To top off an amazing year there's this....honestly folks you couldn't make this stuff up....
(Martina).....Navratilova defended the “right” of sheep to be gay. She said: “How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?” She said gay men and lesbians would be “deeply offended” by the social implications of the tests.

The experiments in question are being conduceted Oregon State University (excerpt below)
Experiments that claim to ‘cure’ homosexual rams spark anger
SCIENTISTS are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of “gay” sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.

The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.

It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the “straightening” procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.

From Timesonline (UK) via Drudge
Now these experiments could be described as "ewegenics".Here's more about this sort of word play; Ewephemisms.