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Vitisak Payalaw and his crew were working on an oil rig 135 miles off the southern coast of Thailand on Friday when they spotted something unexpectedly bobbing in the gentle waves. It was a dog. The animal was fighting his way through the moving water, heading for the oil rig. As he approached the structure, Payalaw, an offshore planner for Chevron Thailand Exploration and Production, held out a pole after the animal had splashed his way to the platform below the rig’s deck. As a video Payalaw posted to his Facebook account shows, the pup was soaked, shivering and too...

A dog discovered some 220km (135 miles) off the coast of Thailand has been rescued by a team of oil rig workers after the exhausted pooch was spotted paddling near a drilling platform. The brown aspin swam towards the workers when they called out to him last Friday afternoon. He was then pulled to safety. It is not clear how the dog became stranded so far out at sea. Some reports suggest he may have fallen from a fishing trawler.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has no plans to reverse Clinton-era rule changes on women in combat that led to the death of one female soldier and the capture of two others during this year’s Iraq war, a Pentagon spokeswoman told Human Events. Asked whether Rumsfeld supports changing the combat rules to stop putting servicewomen into units where they face “substantial risk of capture,” Maj. Sandra Burr, the Defense Secretary’s spokeswoman for personnel matters, replied that Rumsfeld wants to keep the rules as they are. “There are no plans to change the rules,” said Burr. The spokeswoman gave Rumsfeld’s view...