"HELEN, Ga. - A former Marine killed a bear with a single blow — by tossing a log at its head.

The bear had snatched the family's cooler from their campsite in a national forest in northern Georgia. The 300-pound black bear was taking its loot back into the woods when Chris Everhart's 6-year-old son threw a shovel at it.

Everhart says the bear started charging, so he grabbed the first thing he could find, which happened to be a log from the family's firewood.

Everhart lobbed the chunk of wood, hitting the bear in the head and killing it.

"(I) threw it at it and it happened to hit the bear in the head," Everhart said. "I thought it just knocked it out but it actually ended up killing the bear."

The close call earned Everhart bragging rights — and a ticket. Park authorities say he didn't properly secure his campsite."

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19374624

www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=464921...

Russia lays claim to the North Pole - and all its gas, oil, and diamonds
Last updated at 15:38pm on 28th June 2007

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is trying to Annex the North Pole

His audacious argument that an underwater Russian ridge is linked to the North Pole is likely to lead to an international outcry.

Some commentators have already observed it is further evidence of growing Russian assertiveness under its authoritarian president.

The Russian media trumpeted the findings of a Moscow scientific mission to the region which boasts "sensational" geological discoveries enabling the Kremlin to make the territorial claim.

Populist newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda - a cheerleader for Putin - printed a map of the North Pole showing a "new addition" to Russia, a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

The six-week mission on a nuclear ice-breaker claimed that the underwater Lomonsov ridge is geologically linked to the Siberian continental platform - and similar in structure.

The detailed findings are likely to be put to the United Nations in a bid to bring it under the Kremlin noose, and provide the bonanza of an estimated 10 billion tonnes of gas and oil deposits as well as significant sources of diamonds, gold, tin, manganese, nickel, lead and platinum.

Under current international law, the countries ringing the Arctic - Russia, Canada, the US, Norway, Denmark (Greenland) - are limited to a 200 mile economic zone around their coastlines.

Currently, a UN convention stipulates that none of these countries can claim jurisdiction of the Arctic seabed because the geological structure does not match that of the surrounding continental shelves.

The region is administered by the International Seabed Authority - the authority now being challenged by Moscow.

A previous attempt to claim the oil and gas resources beyond its 200 miles zone five years ago was rejected - but this time Moscow intends to make a far more serious submission to the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

The head of the government-funded expedition Valery Kaminsky, director of the All-Russian Oceanic Scientific Research Institute, said he has key photographic evidence to prove the geological claims. "These are very interesting facts for the world community," he said.

Yuri Deryabin, head of the Institute of North European Countries, said: "I estimate Russia's chances to gets its piece of the Arctic pie highly enough - but the main battle is just starting." He acknowledged the negotiations would be "complicated".

The claim is likely to provoke an outcry from green groups but there is also Russian opposition.

Sergei Priamikov, of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said the notion was "strange" and warned other countries could make counter claims.

Canada "could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia", he observed drily.

A diplomatic source said that Russia was "seeking to secure its grip on oil and gas supplies for decades to come. Putin wants a strong Russia, and Western dependence for oil and gas supplies is a key part of his strategy. He no longer cares if his strategy upsets the West".