Minneapolis

Campus makes stink about tree poaching

For years, poachers have been raiding the University of Minnesota campus for Christmas trees.

Last year, a handful of trees were lost and several other 18-foot trees were permanently disfigured when their tops were lopped off. But there is a surprise for thieves this year: The university is spraying anything that could pass as a holiday tree with a skunk scent.

The plan is to spray 400 to 500 trees as a precaution. But officials are a little worried about how the campus will smell come spring. “We don’t know,” grounds superintendent Les Potts told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

But he is convinced the measure is necessary. “We’ll probably still lose some trees, but I have some satisfaction in knowing that it’s not going to work out the way the thief thinks it will.”

Washington

20 prisoners released from Guantanamo

The U.S. government released 20 more prisoners from its high-security jail for terrorist suspects in Cuba, the Pentagon said Monday.

After these prisoners were returned Friday to their home countries, the U.S. military brought some 20 new suspects to the facility from an undisclosed location, officials said.

The Sunday transfer means the prison on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba still has some 660 people suspected of taking part in terrorist activity — many believed to be al-Qaida and Taliban figures captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan two years ago.

The 20 freed “either no longer posed a threat to U.S. security or no longer required detention,” the Pentagon reported Monday.