UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

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Foul air hits Southern California

SAN CLARITA, Calif., Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Fish and relatives, they say, begin to smell after three days and in Southern California's case Monday, officials were leaning toward the fish.

The Los Angeles Times reported experts suspect a massive fish die-off in the Salton Sea -- actually a lake -- was the source of the foul odor that wafted from Santa Clarita to Riverside, and Ventura County to Palm Springs.

Kathy Gray in Santa Clarita said it smelled like a broken sewer pipe. Chris Tatum thought something was burning.

"It reeks," he said. "It smells like rotten mush."

It was so bad people were tying up emergency lines and health officials started checking for a toxic spill or sewage plant leak, the Times said.

Officials said they believe thunderstorms and 40 mph winds Sunday churned up the waters of the Salton Sea and sent the dead-fish odor up to 100 miles west overnight, the Times said.

"It's very unusual that any odor would be this widespread, from the Coachella to Los Angeles County," said Sam Atwood, spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. "We're talking well over 100 miles. I can't recall ever confirming an odor traveling that distance."

Bill Meister, president of the Sea and Desert Interpretive Association, agreed the stiff winds could have done the trick.

"Because the lake is so shallow, and there is 100 years worth of decayed material at the bottom, you'd get that rotten egg smell."

Andrew Schlange, general manager of the Salton Sea Authority, extreme heat the past several days could have killed off fish that sank to the bottom where they decomposed with other organic material, then when the storms churned up the water, up came the odor.

40-year-old trash to be recycled

HEDEN, Sweden, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Officials in a Swedish city said a 40-year-old landfill will be unearthed and sorted for recycling prior to the building of a heating plant on the site.

Heden officials said the landfill needs to be removed before Karlstads Energi can build a planned heating plant on the site and officials want the trash to be sorted for recycling once it is unearthed, The Local.se reported Tuesday.

"Heden is an old rubbish tip and when we dig it up it will smell a bit. Not so much that the public will be disturbed, but we who are working here will notice," Per Ajaxson of Karlstads Energi said.

Officials said they expect to find discarded electronics, wood, clothing and newspapers in the landfill. They said those materials were not sorted for recycling in the 1970s and 1980s.

Olympian puts final block on Lego tower

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- An Olympic rowing champion in the Czech Republic placed the final block on the world's largest Lego tower in the country's capital.

Miroslava Knapkova, 32, who won a gold medal in this year's Olympic Games in London, placed the final Lego block on the 106-foot-tall Lego tower in Prague, the British newspaper The Sun reported Tuesday.

"I used to play with Lego as a small girl, when my father brought it home from abroad for me," Knapkova said.

The tower was constructed to mark Lego's 80th anniversary. The previous record holder, which measured 105 feet tall, was constructed in Britain earlier in the summer, Metro.co.uk reported.

CollinsDictionary.com adds amazeballs

NEW YORK, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- New York-based publisher HarperCollins said words being added to CollinsDictionary.com include amazeballs, bridezilla, lollage and fanboy.

The publisher said it put the call out July 17 for submissions for the online dictionary and 86 new words and senses have now been added to the tome.

The new entries include amazeballs, "an expression of enthusiastic approval;" bridezilla, "a woman whose behavior in planning the details of her wedding is regarded as intolerable;" lollage, "the practice of using the text messaging abbreviation LOL;" and fanboy, "an ardent or obsessive admirer, especially a young man."

Other new entries now searchable on the website include helicopter parent, geekism, liveblog, FaceTIme, cyberstalking and Bing.