t might be interesting

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ From foreign press The Federal Reserve is going to release 30 million newly designed $100 bills. The new design, which is a Liberty Bell that changes its color, 3-D images that move when the bill is tilted, and a hidden message on the collar of Benjamin Franklin, is believed to help reduce counterfeiting. The release date has been postponed two times already, all times due to printing problems. In 2010 the release was pushed back to 2011, in 2011 it was pushed back again to October 8 of 2013. A third delay may occur, should yet another printing problem not be fixed as soon as possible. It has turned out that the Federal Reserve has recently rejected to accept 30 million of new $100 bills produced at a factory in Washington D.C. The main reason for that, as explained in a memo by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, was that batches were produced with too much ink and the lines were not as crisp as they should be. The defective bills are expected to be disposed, and new ones to be printed. Since the cost of production of each bill is estimated at 12.6 cents, the replacement will cost about $3.78 million. However, a representative of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing told reporters that the Federal Reserve is still planning to release the new currency and no delay is being considered. xxxxxxx Russia in the first half of the year has reduced the volume of investments in U.S. government securities by 26.4 billion dollars. As reported on Thursday by the U.S. Treasury Department, in January the figure was at 164.4 billion dollars, and in June - 138 billion. In the list of major holders of U.S. treasuries Russia is in 11th place. The leader for the past years has been China, which by the end of June slightly reduced its portfolio to 1.276 trillion dollars. xxxxxxx An animal described as an African lion at a Chinese zoo was exposed as a fraud--when the creature started barking in front of visitors. Chinese media reports said the zoo had replaced its genuine lion with a Tibetan mastiff dog. A zoo official in Henan province said the dog--owned by one of the workers--was put in the cage when the real lion was sent away to a breeding centre. Outraged visitors to the zoo said they had been cheated. But when they got to the cage marked "African lion"--which had a sign describing the range and characteristics of the animal--they were shocked to hear the creature bark. The woman visitor, surnamed Liu, was quoted as saying,"The zoo is absolutely trying to cheat us. They are trying to disguise dogs as lions." Other species were also apparently mislabelled; there was a white fox in a leopard's den and another dog being passed off as a wolf.