Lost & found: Mermaid gets her headCOPENHAGEN: A hooded man dropped off the head of the famed little mermaid statue at a television station today, three days after it was sawed off of her body.The drop-off was filmed by the same freelance cameraman who got a call before Tuesday dawn to come to the Harbourside park to see what had been done to the statue.His footage, aired on TV2, shows a man in a hood walking toward the building, putting the bronze head on the ground and disappearing behind a parked car. No arrests have been made. Police said they were examining the head for fingerprints and other clues. The statue which is based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale, draws about a million visitors per year. It is cherished by Danes who see the mermaid as a national symbol comparable to Paris's Eiffel Tower or London's Big Ben.Lonely voyageSINGAPORE: Most sailors would cringe at the prospect of being adrift alone for 70 days. Guy Delage is looking forward to it. Delage, a 46-year-old French mathematician and veteran sailboat racer, left Singapore yesterday on a scientific expedition in which he will drift about seven meters (22 feet) below the surface of the Indian Ocean in an engine-less solo submarine.The best whiskyLONDON: Salt is claimed to help blended whisky develop the unmistakable aroma of a true Scottish malt. The new scientist, London, reports that Gordon Steele, director of the Scotch Whisky Research Institute, Edinburgh, has developed a process to intensify the rate at which whisky matures. The high-cost aroma of true malt highland whisky is the result of years of storage in oak barrels. As the spirit matures, resin and other ingredients from the wood find their way into the whisky, later accounting for much of its distinctive flavour.
