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BRIDGEWATER, S.D. -- Behind the freezer doors at a meat plant mysteriously abandoned by its owner, the 44 tons of bison meat managed to hold its own for months, masked by the brutal chill of two South Dakota winters. Once the power was cut and spring thaw arrived, nature took over. And enough rotting meat to fill a high school gym did exactly what you'd expect: It stank. It stank at the bank. It smelled at the law office. It reeked at the cafe. Even the jewelry store wasn't immune. Everyone in this tiny town could smell it, everywhere they...

BRIDGEWATER, S.D. (AP) -- Behind the freezer doors at a meat plant mysteriously abandoned by its owner, the 44 tons of bison meat managed to hold its own for months, masked by the brutal chill of two South Dakota winters. Once the power was cut and spring thaw arrived, nature took over. And enough rotting meat to fill a high school gym did exactly what you'd expect: It stank. It stank at the bank. It smelled at the law office. It reeked at the cafe. Even the jewelry store wasn't immune. Everyone in this tiny town could smell it, everywhere...

For the second time this year a tourist at Yellowstone National Park has been attacked by a bison. a 55-year-old man from Norco, California, was taking pictures of a bull bison that was wandering in the Bridge Bay Campgrounds. The two were about 10 feet apart when the bison charged. a bull bison can stand six feet tall, weigh up to 2,000 pounds and run up to 30 miles an hour. During the next several weeks they are more dangerous than usual because it's their mating season.

FAIRPLAY — A 45-year-old Texas businessman who engineered the slaughter of 32 bison in South Park last winter was sentenced today to 10 days in the Park County jail for cruelty to animals. Park County District Court Judge Stephen Groome said he would have given Jeffrey Hawn a longer jail term if he could, but he was bound by a plea agreement between Hawn's lawyer and the district attorney's office. Groome said that the manner in which the animals were killed — sometimes riddled with as many as eight bullets — left him appalled. "What I find really disturbing is...

UNION, Ky. -- Archaeologists have dug up and will display evidence of an American Indian bison hunt that happened hundreds of years ago in northern Kentucky. Evidence at the site shows hunters killed and butchered the animals with stone tools,leaving the bones and tools behind. The bones were discovered in Big Bone Creek several years ago but left there. Staff members from the Cincinnati Museum Center and volunteers spent a week in August digging up the artifacts. Glenn Storrs, head curator for vertebrate paleontology at the center, got permission from the state to dig while the creek's water was low.Though...

A software CEO from Texas accused of allowing the killing of his neighbor's bison in South Park last winter is due in court. Forty-four-year-old Jeffrey Scott Hawn of Austin has been charged with 32 counts of animal cruelty, one count of theft of more than $20,000 and a one count of criminal mischief. Prosecutors allege that he "tortured, needlessly mutilated or needlessly killed" the bison, who belonged to another rancher.

A Park County rancher on Friday waived his right to a preliminary hearing and asked to enter a plea in the slaughter of 32 bison owned by his neighbor. It’s hard to find anyone here sympathetic to Hawn.

Texas businessman Jeff Hawn was charged May 8 in the March slaying of 32 bison near Hartsel and faces one count of class 3 felony theft, one count of class 3 felony criminal mischief and 32 counts of aggravated cruelty to animals, each a class 6 felony. Hawn turned himself in to the Park County Jail on May 12 and bonded out... Kobe Bryant's attorney The arrest warrant affidavit indicates that the bison had been killed over the course of a number of weeks. For instance, it states that on April 1 officers "retrieved a spent bullet from one of...

The man accused in the deaths of 32 bison who strayed off his Park County neighbor's property has hired a prominent Denver defense attorney. Pamela Mackey is representing Jeffery Scott Hawn, of Austin, Texas, who was charged last week with theft, criminal mischief and cruelty to animals. Mackey previously represented ... Kobe Bryant...

An arrest warrant has been issued for Austin, Texas, businessman Jeffrey Scott Hawn in connection with the shooting of 32 bison in Park County in March. The warrant says Hawn is wanted on one count of felony theft, one count of felony criminal mischief and 32 counts of aggravated cruelty to animals, a Class 6 felony. The bison were shot and killed on private ranches and state and federal lands about 15 miles southeast of Hartsel. At the time of the shootings, Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said his deputies had never seen anything like it. "There are just hundreds...

In a breach of the local code of ethics -- and possibly the law -- 32 are killed after straying onto a neighbor's land.FAIRPLAY, COLO. -- This is not a place where buffalo are welcome to roam. When 32 bison lumbered across a fence that separated their owners' vast, wind-swept expanse of land from a neighboring ranch in March, they ended up dead. Some fell where they were shot. Others scattered, galloping for miles before they succumbed in the snow. They were victims, contend the bison's owners, of a murder plot hatched by the neighbor, a Texan frustrated by what...

Bison bones bolster idea Ice Age seafarers first to Americas Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service Published: Monday, March 24, 2008 Head of a bison, part of a series of ancient bison bones found on Vancouver Island and nearby Orcas Island in Washington state. A series of discoveries of ancient bison bones on Vancouver Island and nearby Orcas Island in Washington state is fuelling excitement among researchers that the Pacific coast offered a food-rich ecosystem for Ice Age hunters some 14,000 years ago -- much earlier than the prevailing scientific theory pegs the arrival of humans to the New World. Fourteen...

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. - After an absence of more than a century, wild bison were returned to Colorado's Front Range on Saturday in full view of Denver's skyline. Sixteen buffalo from the National Bison Range in northwestern Montana were released in an enclosed 1,400-acre section of a wildlife refuge that formerly was the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where nerve gas and other chemical weapons were manufactured. "The release went very smoothly. We would say this was a tremendous success," said Matt Kales, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He said the animals were released in an area that had...

Bison poop has more to offer than a field-clearing smell. Genetic analysis of the feces has revealed there are two breeding populations of bison in Yellowstone National Park, according to a new study. The discovery has implications for how to manage the roughly 4,000 bison (called Bison bison by scientists), which were previously considered one giant breeding population within the park's boundaries... The poop itself doesn’t contain the DNA. When a bison chows down, the roughage scoots through the digestive tract before a less-recognizable chunk of it passes out of the gut. During the descent, cells lining the gut slough...

MALTA, Mont. — The animals certainly looked like bison, with the characteristic humps and beards. But just to make sure, a pick-up truck slowly rolled up to them, and a bison wrangler shot a drug-filled dart into one of several calves. A few minutes later the anesthetized animal was on the ground, grunting and squirming. Several men warily moved in to hobble the animal and take blood samples. This bison wrangling was being done to test the genetics of a herd of 39 animals that is being used by the American Prairie Foundation as seed stock to re-create a large-scale...

Source: University of Washington Released: Mon 07-Aug-2006, 15:10 ET Ancient Bison Teeth Provide Window on Past Great Plains Climate, Vegetation Scientists have devised a way to use the fossil teeth of ancient bison as a tool to reconstruct historic climate and vegetation changes in America's breadbasket, the Great Plains.The third molar from a bison jawbone grows to 3 inches in length and has several times more surface area than a quarter. Newswise — A University of Washington researcher has devised a way to use the fossil teeth of ancient bison as a tool to reconstruct historic climate and vegetation changes...

CALGARY — The document reads like a doomsday scenario for Canada's largest free roaming herd of bison. Offer bounties to encourage hunting. Set up hunt camps. Radio-collar "Judas" animals to more easily track herds. Use corral-traps to corner about 4,500 wild animals. Shoot them from the ground and the air. Get rid of the remains so the carcasses -- many infected with bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis -- won't spread diseases. All of this would happen in Wood Buffalo National Park, an area larger than Switzerland, that straddles the boundaries of Alberta and the Northwest Territories, under the stewardship of the...

Mat Schulz goes hunting for the endangered bison in a primeval corner of Poland. For most people, Poland is connected with images of factories, coalmines and shipyards. But between the industrial landscapes there are mountains, lakes and sea. Most surprisingly, on the border with Belarus, Poland also has mainland Europe's last primeval forest - 8000 years old and 1250 square kilometres in size. The Bialowieza Forest still exists because Polish and Lithuanian royalty used it for hunting from the 14th century. When, in the 19th century, the land became part of Russia, the tsar reserved it for the same purpose....

GARDINER, Mont. - Montana's first bison hunt in 15 years opened at sunrise Tuesday, with a 17-year-old boy bagging the first buffalo within 90 minutes. The hunt, aimed at thinning out the bison population near Yellowstone National Park, came after years of protests from animal rights activists. State and federal officials say the hunt will help manage a population that has grown to an estimated 4,900 animals, more than some fear the area can support. Some ranchers are also worried some diseased bison could spread illness to cattle. George Clement, a teenager who took the day off from school, killed...

HELENA, Mont. - A hunter who drew one of two dozen coveted licenses to take part in one of Montana's first bison hunts in 15 years is a convicted felon who legally can't carry a gun. The state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks acknowledged that it has no authority to strip the man of the license. However, officials have alerted the man's probation officer. "Obviously as a convicted felon (on probation), he cannot possess or use a firearm," said agency spokeswoman Mel Frost. "If he does use a firearm, it is not violating Fish, Wildlife and Parks rules. It...

A mother has filed a complaint to the Patient Commission after finding her newborn baby had the name armband of another woman.No one at Haukeland University Hospital can explain how the error occurred despite numerous and strict routines concerning the identification of newborn infants, newspaper VG reports.A DNA test determined that the woman was the biological mother to the child she had had home for several weeks and that no exchange of babies had taken place at the maternity ward.The hospital was baffled by the error, as each newborn is tagged on both the foot and arm but in this...

Norway's most controversial refugee has lodged a threat against the country that has hosted him and his family for the past 14 years. Mullah Krekar calls his possible deportation "an offense" that shouldn't go unpunished. Mullah Krekar continues to fight deportation back to Iraq, and calls any such order "an offense" that should be punished.Oslo newspaper Aftenposten reported Tuesday that Krekar, in an interview with Arab TV station Al-Jazeera, vowed he will never go along with a deportation order issued by Norwegian authorities. Cabinet Minister Erna Solberg initially ordered him sent out of the country in February 2003, calling Krekar...

The latest round of opinion polls hints that the national elections on Sep. 12 will contain considerable excitement in terms of producing a majority government.The red-green coalition of the Labor (Ap), Socialist Left (SV) and Center (Sp) parties remain vastly more popular than the tripartite center-right governing alliance, but the prospects of a clear left-leaning parliamentary majority are not so clear.In the latest poll by AC Nielsen for the Newspapers' News Agency (ANB), SV fell back fully three percent points from June measurements, to 12.8 percent, just marginally better than their 2001 showing. In compensation, Labor advanced 1.2 percent points...

A new government could spell the end of many telephone sales approaches, but humanitarian organizations will in any event be allowed to try to raise funds.The Socialist Left Party (SV) has proposed strict regulation of telemarketing, and potential coalition partner Labor is willing to consider tougher measures, newspaper Bergens Tidende reports.Current Minister of Children and Family Affairs Laila Dåvøy, a Christian Democrat, agrees that something should be done."I see that this has become a big problem for many people and this is particularly because the right to deny approaches has not worked properly. Even if the telephone subscriber has registered...

Armed police were forced to respond when a drunken national guardsman was seen bearing a weapon.The soldier had his AG3 rifle confiscated and was left to sleep his bender off in the drunk tank after being arrested in downtown Bodø, newspaper Avisa Nordland reports.Bodø police were notified of a drunken armed man roaming the downtown area on Monday evening after the suspect dropped one of the two bags he was carrying and his AG3 rifle fell out.Police found the guardsman waiting for a southbound train to depart, with his weapon stowed in the baggage rack above his seat, en route...

The Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue (NSSR) demands that measures be taken to prepare foreign tourists better for the demands of braving Norway's natural elements.German fishing tourists and inexperienced foreigners in kayaks were surprised and imperiled by Monday's storm conditions in northwestern Norway - despite warnings several days in advance."Greater responsibility must be imposed on boat hire companies, both in relation to weather information, safety equipment on board and the boats themselves," NSSR information chief Ingvar Johnsen said.On Monday 40 foreign kayakers got into trouble in the Geiranger fjord when the wind suddenly turned. Two capsized, but the paddlers were...

The front-running Labor Party slipped a bit and the political right surged forward as Norway's national election draws nearer.Labor fell back 2.7 percent points to a still dominant 30.7 percent showing in the latest political party survey from MMI, carried out for NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) and newspaper Dagbladet.Labor allies in the likely 'red-green' alliance, the Socialist Left Party (SV) and the Center Party (Sp), ended up contributing the same: SV down 1.2 points to 13.1 and Sp up 1.2 to 7.9.The red-green coalition would still have a parliamentary majority of 90 seats if this poll reflected an election.The Conservative Party...

The Labor Party believes Norway needs more Vinmonopolet--the state alcohol outlets."Every municipality in the country, apart from the very smallest, should have their own "pol" stores," Labor Party social policy spokesman Bjarne Håkon Hanssen told newspaper Bergens Tidende.At the beginning of 2005 there were 195 of the state monopoly outlets, in the country's 436 municipalities.Hanssen believes this measure would be the best way of preventing wine from being sold in grocery stores.Deputy Health and Care Services Minister Kristin Ravnanger said that it would not be particularly profitable for Vinmonopolet to increase their number of stores, something that the monopoly itself...

Two simultaneous accidents were too much for the ambulance service at Blefjell Hospital Kongsberg, but a resourceful bystander helped out with a delivery van.An unlucky motocross driver took a nasty spill during training at Basserudåsen last Thursday, and a call to emergency services only resulted in learning that another accident was occupying the available ambulance, NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) reports.Although Torgeir Lande could not tell how badly hurt the motocross driver was, he could see that the man's arm was dislocated, as was a finger, and one foot was badly injured.Lande said the victim was in great pain and decided the...

Staff at Vardø police station in northern Norway are exasperated for an unusual reason - they have too little to do.Vardø, an urban municipality with around 2,400 residents, lost its status as a separate police district during a recent reform, stripping it of responsibility for key tasks, newspaper VG reports.At the same time, crime in Vardø has been significantly reduced, leaving the remaining officers with a lot of empty time on their hands. A lack of funds for overtime pay means that evening duty is scarce, and so potential crimes are not being detected."At the present time we have too...

Police in Øksnes and Bø in Vesterålen, high up on Norway's northwest coast, have such equipment shortages that they have to call a taxi to respond to emergency calls.Area police have had their fleet of vehicles trimmed from two to one due to budget cuts, and have repeatedly had to ring a taxi when needing another car to respond to a call, NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) reports.The mayor is so exasperated that he is considering donating a kick-sled to the force for the winter."If we are to have mobile police in the municipality then we are going to have to pool...

Rumors abound concerning the placement of around 20 wolves along the Swedish border, from Elverum to Halden."For now they are only rumors but they will be investigated. If there is something to them we will crack down on it, as we will if there is any illegal hunting," Knut Normann Mælen of the Hedmark police told newspaper Østlendingen.Last weekend police received tips about an organized wolf hunt in Våler but an investigation of the area turned up no suspicious behavior."Recently we have been getting reports of people in the forest with weapons and we want to find out exactly what...

Speeding and driving dangerously was bad enough, but a flimsy excuse was more than traffic police could stand.Acting district leader of UP, Norway's highway patrol, Tor Ødegård, was shocked by the excuse he was given after stopping a man who was doing 113 kph (70 mph) in an 80 kph (50 mph) zone."The man complained that his windshield wipers weren't working and the only way he could get the rain to glance off the windshield was to maintain high speed," Ødegård told Trondheim newspaper Adresseavisen.Ødegård noticed the car was driving much faster than others."In the end he got stuck behind...

Norway has the least amount of police per capita in the Nordic region, and it would take 1,600 new jobs to reach Swedish levels, according to calculations by the Federation of Police Unions (PF).Sweden has one police officer for every 381 residents, Denmark one for 396. According to a new PF report Norway is a distant last with the needs of 438 citizens covered per officer.The real difference between Norway's police workload and that of their Swedish colleagues is even greater, with Norwegian officers using 685 man-years on evictions and similar cases, while Sweden has a separate entity for such...

Nearly wiped out in the 1800s, the purebreds' newer enemy is a century of inbreeding QUITAQUE - Pushing a button that activates a feed dispenser on a trailer behind his pickup, Danny Swepston summoned a sound that nearly disappeared from the plains 131 years ago: The thunder of bison hooves. "Here they come now out of those mesquite trees," said Swepston, who as a wildlife leader for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is responsible for these bison. A stampede it wasn't. Fewer than 60 of the fur-covered, humpbacked animals make up the last purebred examples of the Great Southern...

SAN DIEGO – For the first time in a while, voting in San Diego seemed to go smoothly. During Tuesday's balloting, there was no question of whether people remembered to fill in a bubble when writing in a name. There were no computer glitches to frustrate workers.The troubleshooters whom the San Diego County Registrar of Voters had standing by didn't have much to do."We have a whole troubleshooting hotline where people are sitting very quiet," said Registrar Mikel Haas, about a hour before voting concluded.Even a power outage in Mira Mesa didn't stop the vote scanners, which have back-up batteries....

A leading researcher on terrorism believes Norway and Sweden are the two safest countries in Europe. That may further boost tourism, which already is setting records in Norway this summer.The number of cruiseships coming to Norway, for example, is the highest ever, and it's probably no coincidence. Increasing numbers of foreign tourists are heading to Scandinavia because of terrorism fears elsewhere.Now Magnus Ranstorp, who is Swedish himself but considered one of the world's foremost experts on terrorism, has ranked those European countries believed to be most vulnerable to terrorist attack.Ranstorp, a professor at St Andrews University in Scotland, was asked...

An Iraqi refugee with residence permission in Norway married his own mother, in a desperate attempt to bring the rest of his family to the country. It worked, inititally, but now both he and his mother face two years in prison.The bizarre story, reported in newspaper Romerikes Blad, started to unfold last winter when local police began investigating the case, several years after the man first came to Norway as an asylum seeker.The man in question initially had been granted permanent residence permission in Norway for humanitarian reasons.He settled in Lillestrøm, northeast of Oslo, and then quickly filed an application...

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! ALL QUIET ON THE ANDYITE FRONT IN DUMMIELAND THE NIGHT OF THE 4th! ANDYITES OUT CELEBRATING THE 4th! OR WERE THEY? MUCH LOCK, DELETE, BAN, IN DUMMIELAND APPARENTLY WENT ON! ALAS NO ONE WATCHING THE ANT FARM LAST NIGHT! NO SCREEN CAPTURES! OR PERHAPS NOT!

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! DETERIORATION OF DUMMIELAND HOT TOPIC ON MALLOY! HEAD WARDEN "SKINNER" TO ADDRESS THE EROSION? TO PINPOINT THE PROBLEM? GREATAUNTOFTRIPLETS AN UNCLE? COMPARISON OF 2001 MEMBERS OF democraticunderground WITH 2005 DUMMIES SHOWS DISTURBING TREND! NEARLY ALL THE GOOD ONES GONE!

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! DYSFUNCTION! DISSONANCE! DISCOMBOBULATION! IN DUMMIELAND!

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! A HOT SUMMER! ANDYITES FEELING THE HEAT? SOME ALREADY ABSCONDED FROM THE KITCHEN?

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! HYPODENSE OR HYPOVASCULAR? OR PERHAPS HYPOTHERMIA? ANDYITES GETTING MEDICAL JARGON ALL MIXED UP! POSTING OF ORIGINAL DIAGNOSIS WOULD CLEAR UP! DIAGNOSIS THAT THE DUMMIE "FLYARM" HAD IN HER HANDS MAY 2nd! HAD RIGHT THERE IN HER OWN HANDS! HER VERY OWN HANDS!

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! A NEW DAY DAWNS! A NEW BEGINNING FOR THE ANDYITES? OR MORE OF THE SAME AS THE PAST 61 DAYS?

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! ANDYITES TRYING THE "SYMPATHY" ANGLE! AGAIN! WON'T WORK!

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! WHAT A WEEK IT WAS! WHITHER THIS COMING WEEK? WILL THREE SIMPLE QUESTIONS GET ANSWERED THIS WEEK?

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! ANDYITES IN DUMMIELAND TO GET NEW SPOKESMAN? THE OTHERS HAVING FLOPPED? THE OTHERS FAILING TO ANSWER 3 SIMPLE QUESTIONS?

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! DOCUMENTS PROMISED BY DIRTY BEN STILL NOT POSTED! TWO DAYS LATE, AND COUNTING! RED ROUND ONE IN HOSPITAL, BUT DIRTY BEN AMBULATORY!

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! DIRTY BEN FALLS DOWN ON PROMISE! PROMISED TO RELEASE DOCUMENT YESTERDAY! DIDN'T DO IT! IMPERIAL RED ROUND ONE OSTENSIBLY IN HOSPITAL, BUT NO EXCUSE FOR DIRTY BEN, NOT OSTENSIBLY IN HOSPITAL!

DUMMIE ALERT! DUMMIE ALERT! TODAY'S THE DAY! TODAY'S THE DAY DIRTY BEN PROMISED TO RELEASE REPORT! BUT STILL DOESN'T ANSWER ANY OF 3 SIMPLE QUESTIONS! EVEN IF REAL! THE DUMMIE "MoPAUL" TO BE NEW SPOKESMAN FOR ANDYITES, ALL OTHERS HAVING FAILED?