Reported by the UK’s Sunday Telegraph and syndicated to The Age and the Washington Times we learn how Kidnappers use pigeons to collect ransoms:

Iraqi police say they have recorded repeated instances of kidnappers leaving homing pigeons on the doorsteps of their victims’ homes, with instructions for the families to attach cash to the birds’ legs. The pigeons then deliver the ransom to the gangs’ hide-outs.
[…]
One family attached $10,000 in $1,000 notes to the legs of five homing pigeons, which they found in a cage left on their doorstep.

[…]
"I opened it and found a cage with five pigeons inside it and a note. It said to tie a $1,000 bill to each of the pigeons’ legs and release them at 8 o’clock the next morning, or I would find my son’s body in the city morgue," he said.

Hmmm, $1,000 notes? Funny that the U.S. Treasury does not know about such notes.

Why care? It’s a typical urban legend story anyway.

But unlike the Washington Times story published yesterday and The Age story published on the 6th, the story on the Telegraph’s site speaks of $100 notes but is marked "Last Updated: 12:52am BST 05/08/2007" (August 5 in U.S. notation).

Why do the papers who published the Telegraph story after the Telegraph have an incorrect version?

Likely answer: The Telegraph corrected the error but didn’t bother to update the "Last Updated" tag.

Lesson: Dates displayed on websites are sometimes as real as $1,000 notes … and stories from the Telegraph.