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.