A South Korean couple was showered with cash and gifts by the government for boosting the country’s population. Sagong Hye-ran, who gave birth on 20 September, and her husband Kim Joon-yeong from Gyeonggi province also received gifts from President Yoon Suk Yeol after the city of Dongducheon gave them 15-million won in cash vouchers, redeemable at any store as part of its childbirth promotion package.
Kim and Sagong will also receive a one-time payment of 14-million won called the “first meeting voucher,” a monthly parental allowance totaling 85-million won and a children’s allowance of 47.5-million won spread over time, as well as 3.5-million won in postnatal care support, the Independent reports.
The attention and incentives the couple received were five times what ordinary nursing mothers get as Sagong gave birth to naturally conceived quintuplets — three boys and two girls.
Meanwhile, another baby born on a farm in Göttingen, northern Germany, received unusual attention from researchers and veterinarians for its intriguing physical features.
They were excited that the newly born Flumo was a rare hybrid offspring of a sheep and a goat as such a cross breed is difficult to produce naturally. Flumo offered them a chance to validate the results of their previous study of the first goat-sheep hybrid born in the same area 10 years ago.
Flumo has white fur with brown patches, just like the ram named Rune that had been living with a small flock of sheep in the paddock behind the farm house for years, reports blue News of Switzerland.
An analysis of Flumo’s blood showed it was a sheep and not a mix of sheep and goat, livestock researcher Clemens Falker-Gieske from the University of Göttingen told the German Press Agency.
“We are a little disappointed that Flumo is a sheep after all. It had been hoped that Flumo was a second goat-sheep hybrid that could be researched on,” Falker-Gieske said, according to blue News.