Doctors in a coastal town in northwestern Peru have rescued the innards of a 38-year-old man by removing 17 metal objects -among them nails, a watch clasp and a knife- that he ate.

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Kent Couch, a 48-year-old petrol station owner in the US, flew a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons more than 200 miles (322 kilometers) across the Oregon desert on Saturday, landing in a field in Idaho.

Couch covered about 235 miles (378 kilometres) in about nine hours after lifting off at dawn from his petrol station in Bend, Oregon riding in a green lawn chair rigged with more than 150 giant party balloons.

He eventually used a BB gun, a type of air gun designed to shoot pellets, to shoot some of the balloons to reduce his altitude, landing in the tiny farming community of Cambridge, Idaho. The "balloon chair pilot" as he has been dubbed by friends, kissed his wife, children and the family dog, a Chihuahua named Isabella, before taking off in his chair.

Couch got a push from the ground crew so he could clear light poles and soared over across US Highway 20 into a bright blue sky. "I would say the best thing is just the peace, serenity of the trip. It's just so quiet", Couch said before embarking on his trip. "I'd do this every weekend if I had the time and the money and the people. So it's just a fun trip. Mostly it's just about having a good time while I'm floating around up there", he added.

Couch's wife, Susan, said called him crazy, telling reporters: "I just want to make sure he's safe and nothing happens up there". This was Couch's third balloon flight. He said the idea occurred to him after watching a television show about the 1982 lawn chair flight over Los Angeles of truck driver Larry Walters, who gained folk hero fame but was fined 1,500 US dollars for violating air traffic rules.

In 2006, Couch had to parachute out after popping too many balloons. Last year he flew 193 miles (311 kilometers) to the sagebrush of northeastern Oregon, short of his goal.

Each of the 150 balloons could lift four pounds (1.81 kilograms), with the chair weighing about 400 pounds (181 kilograms), and Couch and his parachute adding another 200 pounds (91 kilograms). Couch estimated the rig cost about six-thousand US dollars, mostly for helium. Costs were defrayed by corporate sponsors



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New York hotelier and real estate magnate Leona Helmsley left millions to her beloved dog, Trouble, but she has left billions for the care of dogs in general, The New York Times said on Tuesday.

Helmsley left instructions that an entire charitable trust valued at $5 billion to $8 billion and amounting to virtually all of her estate, be used for the care and welfare of dogs, the newspaper said, citing two people who had seen the document and described it on condition of anonymity.

The two people who had seen the document said Helmsley signed it in 2003 to establish goals for the trust that would disburse assets after her death.

The first goal was to help indigent people and the second to provide for the care and welfare of dogs, the newspaper said. But a year later, she deleted the first goal. But all the money may not go to the dogs, the article said. It said the mission statement also has a provision that Helmsley's trustees may use their discretion in distributing the funds, and some lawyers say the statement may not mean much, given that it was not incorporated into her will or the trust documents.

Helmsley, who was known as "the Queen of Mean" because of the way she dealt with her employees, had a soft spot for her dog. But a New York court last month lowered the dog's inheritance to $2 million from $12 million on grounds that Helmsley was mentally unfit when she made her will.

A spokesman for the executors of Helmsley's estate told the Times they did not want to comment on the statement because they were still working to determine the trust's direction.

Helmsley died in August 2007 at age 87. She amassed a fortune in real estate and hotels with her husband, Harry Helmsley, who died in 1997. Famously quoted as having said "only the little people pay taxes", Helmsley spent 18 months in federal prison for evading $1.7 million in taxes in 1989.
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