Airports in San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore have been put on alert for potential terrorists who could be doing dry-runs testing to see what they can get onto an airplane. The July 20th bulletin was sent out following multiple incidents where passengers were caught with “wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances,” including block cheese. Since last September four questionable seizures have taken place, where a passenger (of either sex) managed to raise the attention of security guards for carrying odd combinations of parts that they had questionable reasons for. For some reason these incidents have gone unnoticed by national media and the bulletin warning potential danger is being treated as a normal occurrence.
The largest Sunni political group in Iraq has made a list of demands that if not met will cause the group to boycott the national government. The threat comes on the heels of the national government’s inability and in fact reluctance to unite and mend long-held tensions between Shiite and Sunni groups. A few hours after the announcement jubilation erupted when the Iraqi soccer team’s semifinal win in the Asian Cup was announced. Sadly the festivities didn’t last long when bombings and gunfire broke out in Baghdad, killing at least 55.
MySpace deleted 29,000 accounts today. Why? Because they all belonged to sex offenders. The social networking site announced last month that it only had 7,000 offenders with profiles, out of their 180 million. Obviously they underestimated. The chief security officer for the site was “pleased that we’ve successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead.” In other social networking news, Mark Zuckerberg, the man behind Facebook, is in court today for allegedly stealing the idea for his site, and some source code from ConnectU.com.
Digg.com has dropped Google for its ad-content and instead has chosen to go with a younger and more risk-taking outfit: Microsoft. Digg wants to increase its ad sales but tires of the same safe ads that Google is known for and has changed to Microsoft which will supply mostly small, contextually relevant text links. Google declined to comment. For once the little guy wins. Wait, when did Microsoft become the little guy?
MTA announced that in order to curb deficits they will be raising fare prices and tunnel tolls. This will effect all major transportation including subway, bus and commuter trains. Due to expected deficits MTA believes it will have to raise $300 million in revenue, around a 6.5% increase. No word yet on how much fares will go up but at least there is fair warning. Get it? That was a pun worthy of Sex and the City.
