Loch Ness monster eludes Brit during 12-day
dive
LONDON “”mdash; Lloyd Scott has just spent 12 days at the bottom
of Loch Ness, but he reported no sightings of the lake’s
legendary monster.
In what has been billed as the world’s first underwater
marathon, the British man walked 26 miles along the loch bottom
wearing a 1940s diving suit, complete with a 40-pound metal
helmet.
The experience ““ despite frequent rest breaks ““ was
“very cold and very lonely,” Scott, 41, said on finally
emerging Thursday at Lochend, near Inverness.
“You don’t know what’s underfoot ““
sometimes it’s mud, silt, rocks or nothing. The air line also
kept getting caught, and I also had to deal with a buildup of
carbon dioxide in the helmet,” he said.
It was the first time that Scott, who is known for wearing the
suit in land marathons, has used it for its proper purpose.
“It’s definitely been far more difficult doing it under
water,” he said.
For decades, people have reported seeing a sea monster in the
picturesque lake; the existence of such a creature has never been
proven.
Sorry, counterfeiters: The new $20 bill has
colors
NASHVILLE, Tenn. “”mdash; The new $20 bill introduced Thursday
gives Old Hickory a touch of color.
“The new bills will be safer, smarter and more
secure,” said Annita Moore, assistant manager of the
Nashville branch of the Federal Reserve. “We’re staying
ahead of the counterfeiters.”
The background on the new $20 bill is green, peach and blue.
It’s the first and only bill to depart from the traditional
green-and-black color scheme of all American paper currency.
The new bills will start appearing at banks in a few weeks; the
old bills will be gradually withdrawn from circulation.
The image of Jackson, the nation’s 17th president who was
known as “Old Hickory,” appears slightly larger because
the border around his portrait has been removed. But his head is
the same size on both the new and old bills.
The $20 bill is the most counterfeited bill domestically.
Commercially available digital equipment has made counterfeiting
easier, cheaper and harder for the U.S. Secret Service to
detect.
Would you like some toast to go with your
shoes?
STOCKHOLM, Sweden “”mdash; As shoe collections go, the one found
by a pair of Swedish hikers definitely had no place in any
closet.
A Swedish couple hunting on a remote mountain Sunday in
Sweden’s far northern province of Jaemtland found 70 pairs of
shoes, all filled with butter.
“If we knew who had done this, we could make them clean
this mess up,” Alf Kjaellstroem, a province spokesman told
The Associated Press Thursday. “It’s not going to be
pretty when the butter starts to rot. And we have to wait for the
snow so we can get up there with the snowmobile.”
He said there were 140 shoes of all kinds ““ sneakers,
children’s shoes, high heels, boots and tap shoes ““
each stuffed with half a kilo (1.1 pound) of butter and spread out
in the landscape.
The find was similar to one done by artist Yu Xiuzhen in
1996.
His exhibit “Shoes With Butter,” was laid out in the
Tibetan mountains surrounding Lhasa, China.
Move over, Smokey: Goats eat to prevent forest
fires
PHOENIX “”mdash; While forest officials looked for a way to stave
off devastating wildfires this spring, hundreds of goats on the
Navajo Reservation weren’t getting enough to eat.
Thus a symbiotic relationship was born.
The Prescott National Forest has been using about 650 goats to
eat chaparral and other brush as part of a six-month pilot project
to provide a fire buffer around forest area homes.
“We’d been talking about (using goats) for a long
time. What we’re finding is that goats are a precision
application,” he added.
The project, which ends later this month, was also beneficial
for the goats from the Navajo Reservation, where hundreds have been
going hungry this year because vegetation is scarce.
“˜”˜The drought hit the reservation pretty hard; there
wasn’t much for them to eat,” said Jay Begay,
one of the goat herders who answered the call for the pilot
project.
“˜”˜A lot of the owners want to keep their goats here
longer. When they come down to look at their goats, they’re
surprised by how much weight they’ve gained,” he
said.
From Daily Bruin wire services.