Lottery tickets to carry abduction information

Lottery tickets to carryabduction information
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginians who play the lottery can now help rescue a kidnapped child.
West Virginia has become the latest state to put "Amber Alert" information about child abductions on lottery tickets and video lottery terminals, Gov. Bob Wise said Wednesday. Similar actions have been taken in Florida, New York and Nebraska.
Highway signs, TV and radio stations throughout the state and marquees of private businesses also will display descriptions of a kidnapped child and the suspected abductor when the system is triggered.
"We're trying to close off the state, in effect, by making West Virginians as aware as possible of an abduction," Wise said.
Amber Alert is named for a 9-year-old Texas girl kidnapped and murdered in 1996. In other states, it has been credited with helping rescue abducted children.
Body of British touristfound near Great Wall
BADALING, China -- A foreigner was attacked and killed near a popular tourist area of the Great Wall of China north of Beijing, Chinese police and government officials said today. The British Embassy confirmed that a body was found last week and said one of its citizens was missing.
"A foreigner was killed near the Great Wall and he has an English passport," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said at a briefing in Beijing. She said authorities were investigating.
Any attack on a foreign tourist -- especially near such a high-profile attraction as the Great Wall -- would rattle the Chinese government, which places great value on being able to call the country safe for foreigners and its own citizens alike. China has also spent millions to showcase its attractions to the world in recent years.
An officer who answered the phone at the Yanqing Public Security Bureau, a police station near the Great Wall's well-traveled Badaling site, said a foreign tourist had been "attacked and is possibly dead." He would not give his name.
Britain's Press Association and The Times of London, on its Web site, identified the tourist as Tom Dawson, 24, a graphic artist from West London. Both said he was at the beginning of an eight-month tour around Asia. Dawson's throat was slashed and he suffered severe head wounds, the Times said.
Hundreds desert townsas volcano rumbles
SALEM, Montserrat -- Neighborhoods at the base of Montserrat's rumbling Soufriere Hills volcano stood deserted as residents confronted the familiar quandary of rebuilding their lives.
The volcano's lava dome has grown to dangerous levels, reaching its highest point in recent times -- 1,640 feet high and nearly a mile wide. Scientists say that dome could crumble and cascade in pyroclastic flows, destroying homes along the volcano's north side.
By the time evacuation sirens sounded Wednesday to signal the area's indefinite closure, only goats and chickens roamed the streets.
"In the past two weeks we've seen constant activity. It's been like a freight train," said scientist Peter Dunkley of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. "If the dome collapses to the north, it could be a mess."
The volcano awoke in 1995, causing numerous evacuations and more than half the population to flee this British Caribbean territory. Two major eruptions in 1997 killed 19 people and buried much of the south, including the capital, Plymouth.
For two weeks, the Soufriere has coughed clouds of gray ash that cover buildings, cars and trees across the island, which is between Antigua and Guadeloupe. Many people wear surgical masks over their mouths and noses.
Cloning oldest tree
LAS VEGAS -- A nonprofit group has snipped some cuttings to clone what is believed to be the world's oldest tree, a bristlecone pine they say has grown for 4,767 years on a wind-swept mountain in eastern California.
With the guidance of a U.S. Forest Service ranger, representatives from Michigan-based Champion Tree Project International hiked Tuesday to the tree, at an elevation of 10,400 feet in the White Mountains on the California-Nevada border.
"It has lived at least a millennium longer than any other known tree," Forest Service official Larry Payne said Wednesday from Washington, D.C.
The tree was dubbed Methuselah after scientist Edmund Schulman found it and age-dated it by a core sample in the 1950s. Although the name is biblical, the tree is believed to predate Christ by almost 3,000 years.
"It's healthy," said David Milarch, co-founder with his son of the tree project. "It's gnarly from almost 5,000 years of harsh weather. But they got plenty of good material."
Associated Press