WhiteBoard News for Friday, June 27, 2003

NOTE: The WhiteBoard News is going on hiatus for the first two week of July. We will return and send out the next broadcast on July 16.
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Oslo, Norway (Aftenposten):

Teenager Svein Tore Hauge must have one of Norway's strangest summer jobs. The 14-year-old will be earning money following cattle around with a pan, collecting cow flop for research. Newspaper VG is collecting odd summer jobs, but this one will be tough to top.

The job appears simple, but there are hidden difficulties. The teen doesn't just have to fill the containers with dung. The samples, to be used by Saerheim Plant Research, need to be in pristine condition - so Svein Tore has to get them before they hit the ground.

This part of the job adds an element of risk, as getting the goods when Bossy is busy is not so easy. Hauge has had to pay attention to detail and learn fast.

"You can see from the tail that something is coming," Hauge tells newspaper Jaerbladet when he sees it start to wave a bit to the side.

There are plenty of challenges. If Hauge is too early the annoyed cow can bolt, if late then he loses much of the sample to the ground. And even when he gets it right, the pan doesn't get it all, sometimes his arm gets it, sometimes his face.

The samples will chart milk production to grass intake, and also map the effect of white clover as fertilizer. Each cow gets a pill and its own pan.

Hauge tells Jaerbladet that there is no way to rush nature.

"I just have to wait until they do it. Once I sat an hour and a half with one, waiting. But there are 21 cows in the project, so I can go to the one that's ready to crap," Hauge said.

"Sometimes it just sprays in all directions. The consistency varies from cow to cow. It's important to note things like this, so that I can run away if I need to," Hauge explained to VG.

The teenager is satisfied with working on a farm, and has other chores as well. 

"Working outdoors is right for me, because I like fresh air. Not everyone could do this. It's not for city folks," Hauge told Jaerbladet.

Hauge's unusual summer job pays NOK 72 ($10) per hour. 
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Helsinki, Finland (Reuters):

An adulterous Finn pressed all the wrong buttons as he made love in a car -- unknowingly prompting his mobile phone to call home just in time for his wife to hear his mistress moan "I love you." 

The wife, doubly enraged after recognizing her own friend's voice, has been convicted of assault after going to her rival's flat and striking her in the face and later attacking her husband at home with an axe, though he fended off the blow. 

A court official told Reuters Thursday she received a 14-month suspended sentence for the attacks which did not result in serious injury. 

The woman told the court this week in Lahti, 60 miles north of Helsinki, that she was temporarily in shock and had only tried to scare her husband. 

They have since divorced, a regional paper reported. 
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Manchester, South Dakota (Ananova):

A camera specially designed to take pictures of the inside of a tornado has been destroyed - by a tornado.

National Geographic constructed the armoured device and placed it in the path of a storm near Manchester, South Dakota.

But it was blown away within seconds when the tornado hit. The remains were found stuck in mud more than 430 feet away.

All the device's glass ports were smashed and the cameras inside were ruined, National Geographic said.

The film was being sent back for processing just in case, but officials said they doubted it captured any images.
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Hanoi, Vietnam (Reuters):

A Vietnamese man who used cow fat and paint to pass off a lump of iron as valuable black bronze found buyers -- but was paid $64,000 in counterfeit bills. 

A justice official said 12 people involved in both frauds were arrested and were undergoing trial in southern An Giang province. 

Eight were accomplices of the accused metal fraudster, while three were involved in the alleged counterfeiting, the prosecutor said. 

State-run Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reported that Huynh Van Gat confessed he had painted a one kg iron lump with cow fat and black paint and tried to pass it off as black bronze and sought to sell it for one billion dong. Black bronze is used in making jewellery and ornamental objects like statues. 

A group of three business people from Ho Chi Minh City who were negotiating to buy the black bronze, which is valued on the market at around $1 million, bought a printer to produce 900 million Vietnamese dong to pay for the deal. 

Gat and his accomplices were arrested a few days later when local shops tipped off the police about the fake dong. 

The men told the police they didn't know the money was counterfeit and revealed where it came from -- leading to the arrest of the others. 

The justice official said the trial would last several days. 

Counterfeiting money carries a penalty ranging from three years in prison to death by firing squad in communist Vietnam. 
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Chow
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