["International hamburger chain"? Hmmm... ??]
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) --A customer in an international hamburger chain
outlet in western Sweden lost his appetite when he discovered the restaurant's
toilet seats were being washed in its dishwasher alongside the kitchen utensils.
The man noticed on a visit to the bathroom in the restaurant in Arvika, Sweden,
that all the toilet seats had been removed.
When he asked staff about the missing seats, an employee took them out of a
dishwasher where they had been cleaned together with trays and kitchen utensils,
the Swedish TT news agency reported Thursday, quoting the regional newspaper Nya
Wermlands-Tidningen.
The employee tried to reassure the customer by saying that the freshly washed
toilet seat would be warm and pleasant to sit on.
A senior representative of the restaurant chain said the incident was a mistake
and not standard company procedure. Arvika's environmental and health inspector
later visited the restaurant.
ALL ABOARD THE COW TRAIN
The
Svensk Biogas company
of Linkoping, Sweden, has built a
locomotive that runs on cows and cow
manure.
The $1.25 million engine, which replaces an old Fiat diesel-powered locomotive
along a local commuter line,
is billed as the most environmentally friendly train in the world.
Engineers at Svensk Biogas produce
the train's methane fuel much the same way that marshes and swamps
generate the gas naturally, by fermentation. Workers collect heaps of manure
and organic waste, mix it into slurry,
kill off unwanted strains of bacteria with steam, and then introduce new
bacteria to digest the sludge. As a by-product of digestion, the bacteria pump
out methane, which the company pipes off and purifies.
Until recently, only cow manure and
other farm waste fueled this process.
This summer, however, Svensk found a way to use the whole heifer. Now the
company chops up the cows and
converts their guts, fat, and bones into an organic sludge, which then gets
processed as before.
It takes about
30 cows to power the train along its 75-mile route from Linkoping to Vastervik,
one of the countryside's most beautiful stretches of rail. Linkoping is
especially green-minded:
The town's fleet of 65 biogas-fueled buses was the first in the world, and
many of the taxis, garbage trucks,
and personal cars there also run on cow-derived methane.
The B-17 and Scandinavian Airlines
A noteworthy combat veteran is
Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby, which flew 24 combat missions out of England
before being forced to land in Sweden in late 1944. Sweden, which was
neutral, interned the crew. About the same time, a deal was made between the
Swedish and US Governments to allow about 300 American crewmen to return in
exchange for nine B-17F and G that had landed intact in Sweden. Seven of
these were converted by
SAAB Aircraft
into airliners that could take 14 passengers. Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby
became SE-BAP, flying for SILA, an airline that eventually became a part of
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). In December 1945 it was one of two B-17s
sold to the Danish Air Lines (DDL), and flew as OY-DFA Stig Viking to
June 1947. Transferred in March 1948 to Danish Army Air Corps as DAF 672,
and in December 1949 to the
Danish Navy. Then from October 1952 to the Royal
Danish Air Force as ESK-721, and finally retired a year later. In all
its service time in the Danish military, her nickname was Store Bjørn.
After two years in storage, she was sold as F-BGSP to IGN,
Institut Geographique National, a French
aerial mapping company based in
Creil outside
Paris. Last flown in July 1961, the remains of the plane were donated to the
U.S Air Force in 1972. A restoration was undertaken between 1978-1988 at
Dover Air Force Base,
Delaware
and the plane can be seen today at the
National Museum of the United States Air Force in
Dayton,
Ohio.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A drunken elk is terrorizing children at a school
in southern Sweden.
"That could be the problem. We could be dealing with a boozy elk," Jan
Caiman, a police officer in Molndal, told the national news agency TT.
The elk was probably eating fermented apples in a garden and had become
inebriated, Caiman said.
Elk can weigh as much as 500 kilos (1,100 lb) and personnel at the school
described the erratic male as "completely mad."
"The children are really scared," the receptionist at the school near
Molndal in southern Sweden told the Gothenburg Post.
Caiman said police had contacted hunters and that if the elk did not calm
down, it could be shot.