Whale not machine-gunned after all

No machine gun used on whale (Yay!)"The rifle used was a large-caliber, breech-loading rifle specifically designed to kill whales," Hicks e-mailed. "Its design and use was mandated by the International Whaling Commission's scientific committee to ensure the quickest possible kill. Rather different than a native dude with an AK-47, don't ya think?"

Yes, rather. And, in fact, I then found an AP bulletin correcting the story and blaming the mistake on information from the National Marine Fisheries Service. Unfortunately, mention of the incident increased exponentially online, so that if you now type "machine gun whale" in a search engine you get more than 1.5 million "hits." (Hits, in this case, being an ironic term.)