Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Welcome to your Friday edition of Snippets and Soundbites! Be sure to check out the monthly print edition on page 38 of each issue of ec.

• If you're anything like us, you forget more than you remember. Not so for a California woman with a so-called "super-memory." MRI scans performed on Los Angeles teacher Jill Price, 43, helped doctors to identify two abnormally large areas in the the woman's brain, which they think could be the reason for her way better than average memory. The two areas are the caudate nuclei—typically used for memory when forming automatic habits—and a part of the temporal lobe that stores facts, dates and events. Doctors think the two areas of the brain may be working together in a way that's been unknown up until now. Read more here.

• The set of octuplets (that's 8 babies!) born to a Southern California mother this week are reportedly doing well. It has been reported that two of the newborns did need help breathing, but are now well enough to have the breathing tubes removed. The babies, two girls and six boys, were born 9 1/2 weeks early and weighed between 1 pound 8 ounces and 3 pounds 4 ounces (which is what ec's editor weighed when she was born). The parents have not been identified, and it isn't known if the mother had undergone fertility treatments. The eighth baby was actually a surprise. Doctors (and the parents) were expecting only seven babies. This is only the second set of live octuplets born in the U.S. The first were born in Houston in 1998. The world's first set of octuplets were born in Mexico City in 1967, but all eight died within hours. Read more about the newest octuplets here.

• A Iowa woman's failure to return an overdue library book led to more than fines. The woman was arrested recently on a fifth-degree theft charge because she had failed to return The Freedom Writers Diary, a book she'd checked out of the nearby Jesup, Iowa, library in April of last year. Since then, the library has repeatedly tried to contact her and a police officer even visited her home last September. The book is valued at $13.95, and the woman was released from jail after posting a $250 bond.

• In other news, blood apparently is thicker than water. A 24-year-old Michigan man apparently broke into a gas station and called 911 on himself. He said he wanted to go to jail so he could be with his brother who was already incarcerated. Read more here.