Etc...

That's a lot of tacos

Barry Bonds could end up feeding the nation during this World Series.

Taco Bell is promising free tacos for the entire country if Bonds, or any other player, hits a target floating in a cove behind the right-field fence at Pacific Bell Park.

The 15-foot diameter target will remain in place through Game 5. Any home run that touches it during the three games scheduled at the park entitles everyone in the United States to a free taco coupon.

The company says it would pick a window of time on one day when people can redeem the coupons.

Of the 27 home runs to land in McCovey Cove since the park opened, Bonds has hit 21 of them for the San Francisco Giants. His team faces the Anaheim Angels on Tuesday in Game 3.

Taco Bell sponsored a similar promotion last year, offering free tacos to the country if the Mir space station hit the company's 40-foot-by-40-foot target in the South Pacific.

Mir finished the day 0-1.

Insect lovers, rejoice.

Fans of all manner of creepy crawlies – from cockroaches to butterflies – can now visit a collection of household pests at Kansas State University's new insect zoo.

The collection of more than 1,000 living insects is cared for by a full-time keeper and housed at the school's Horticulture Gardens.

The zoo, which was dedicated Friday, includes a replica of a home kitchen. Visitors are encouraged to peer through Plexiglas panels that enclose cockroach-filled cabinet drawers and flies on the drain board.

"We want to deliver valuable and environmentally sensitive information to the public, and tell them, 'Don't just call the exterminator and start spraying,"' said department of entomology chairman Sonny Ramaswamy. "There are ways to use simple cleanliness techniques to take care of these things."

Cockroaches flourish at the new zoo, including several exotic species that are featured in a walk-through display simulating an underground environment of a tropical rain forest.

The new zoo consolidates a succession of live insect exhibits that have been scattered about the campus ever since the school first opened in 1863, Ramaswamy said.

"We've always had bugs at K-State," Ramaswamy said.

Two English farmers bought a ram at auction for $156,000 – nearly double the previous UK record and about the same price as a Ferrari, The Times newspaper reported.

The Swaledale ram was sold in the town of Kirkby Stephen, in the far northwest of England, the paper said.

The farmers paid for the animal using money given to them as compensation for the foot-and-mouth epidemic which paralyzed rural Britain early last year.