Shears

Shears are a tool mentioned by Jeb on Twitter and are included in Beta 1.7. They are able to quickly remove wool blocks, and are the only reasonable way to get wool from sheep by right-clicking them Shears are also a legitimate way of obtaining placeable leaf blocks by left-clicking (which may be used for garden decoration like hedges).

Trivia

 * The tweet revealing Jeb's work on shears is written in Swedish "Pirate language", and actually says "Jag jobbar på shears nu", which translates to "I'm working on shears now".
 * At first the plan was to make shears defuse TNT. However, Jeb dropped this shortly after deciding to let one detonate TNT only with redstone or fire.
 * Shears are the only tool which both has a right-click action (shearing sheep) and helps destroy things on left-click.
 * Up to four wool blocks can be collected using shears on one sheep. Before, the maximum amount you could get from punching a sheep was three.