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You can almost touch the planes as they roar over Point Shirley in Winthrop on their way to Logan Airport. The passengers were checked for explosives before they got on, however, a growing concern is what could happen away from the airport: Terrorist firing a shoulder launched-missile just outside the airport's property. The light weight weapons are becoming and more available on the black market, as many as 150,000 are believed to be in circulation and can easily bring down a plane. But now American Airlines is flying with new defensive technology on some of its New York to Los...

Bloggers are raising questions about Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's qualifications to be U.S. president, because of the secrecy over his birth certificate and the requirement presidents be "natural-born" U.S. citizens. Jim Geraghty, reporting on the Campaign Spot, cited the "unlikely" but still circulating rumor that Obama was born not within the United States, but elsewhere, possibly Kenya.

A couple of years ago, I debated a professor from American University named John Doolittle who, prompted by me, admitted that Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wisconsin (1908-1957), may have exposed some real communists working in the federal government. “But I saw the Edward R. Murrow broadcasts,” Dr. Doolittle added. “He was a bad man.”

Letter to the FAA Gentlemen: I was asked to make a written statement concerning certain events that occurred yesterday. First of all, I would like to thank that very nice FAA man who took my student pilot's license and told me I wouldn't need it any more. I guess that means that you're giving me my full-fledged pilot's license. You should watch that fellow though, after I told him all of this he seemed quite nervous and his hand was shaking. Anyway, here is what happened. The weather had been kind of bad since last week, when I soloed. But...

The high-tech hunt for a missing adventurer AS The Economist went to press, Steve Fossett, a famed and fearless aviator who went missing over the Nevada desert on September 3rd, had not been found. But it was not for want of trying. Mr Fossett has been the subject of one of the most intensive civilian manhunts in history—and also, fittingly, one of the most technological. Besides the usual panoply of search-and-rescue aircraft deployed by America's Civil Air Patrol, which wound down its search on September 17th, a different sort of search effort is being conducted online, using satellite photographs. These...

For a moment on Sunday, rescuers in Nevada searching for the aviator Steve Fossett thought they might have found what they were looking for. Reporters were summoned to Minden-Tahoe airport and a helicopter was scrambled to check out a possible sighting of the wreckage of a single-engine aircraft. But 30 minutes later the helicopter crew reported back that the wreck was not Mr Fossett's plane but the debris from an old US navy crash. "Once again you had your hopes raised and dashed just as we have," civil air patrol major Cynthia Ryan told reporters. "This search is big, it...

Jim Hurd II crouched among the petunias and wispy pennisetum grasses at the TWA Flight 800 memorial Monday, trying to fix broken lights for Tuesday night's prayer service. Since his son, Jamie Hurd III, died on the flight on July 17, 1996, Hurd, 62, travels to Smith Point Beach each July on the anniversary of the crash from his home in Severn, Md. During much of the rest of the year, he urges airline industry groups to outfit airplanes with a device that would have prevented the explosion that killed his son. Yet 11 years after the center fuel tank...

The Alliance for Climate Protection, which is part of Al Gore’s Live Earth campaign, tells people that by using compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs, they can save energy, save money and live longer. But they fail to mention that the bulbs are made in communist China and are potentially hazardous to human health.

New York, July 1: Recently discovered, never-before-seen film footage of Adolf Hitler, which reveals a charismatic side of the Nazi leader, is all set to air on television. The rare footage was discovered in a home in New York City`s Staten Island. The film, which shows the leader of the Nazi Party at a Richard Wagner music festival, will be aired on the PBS television series "The History Detectives." The 16-mm film reel was originally discovered in 1945 by an American GI in Bayreuth, Germany. He sent the reel to his brother in the US, who stored it in his...

Nearly 11 years after a fuel tank exploded on TWA Flight 800, killing 230 people off the South Shore of Long Island, a congressional committee voted yesterday to force the Federal Aviation Administration to act to prevent similar explosions. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee added language to the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act that would require the federal government to make so-called inerting systems standard equipment on commercial airlines. If passed by the full Congress, the FAA would have to require the installation of the safety equipment on the nation's commercial fleet to begin by the end of the...

UK filtration and advanced materials group Porvair is among a number of companies working to prevent accidents like the one that killed 230 passengers aboard TWA flight 800 in a fireball off Long Island. The Boeing 747 en route to Paris from New York exploded 12 minutes after takeoff from JFK International airport on 17 July, 1996. The cause was the subject of intense debate for years, but investigators concluded vapours ignited in a fuel tank. Nearly eleven years later, Boeing has given initial approval ('qualification') for one of Porvair’s filter designs to prevent similar explosions in aircraft fuel tanks,...

The Summit County Medical Examiner's Office has today positively identified the remains found Saturday in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park as those of Jessie Marie Davis, the missing 26-year-old pregnant woman from Canton. Fetal remains were also recovered. The cause and manner of death are listed as pending while routine studies and investigations are performed.

13-Year-Old Girl Had Feet Chopped Off On Superman Ride; 8 More Rides Shut Down Six Flags and another company shut down eight more thrill rides Friday around the country, including a ride at a North Carolina amusement park, after a teenage girl had her feet chopped off at the ankle on a Superman Tower of Power. State inspectors, meanwhile, returned to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, where the accident happened, to examine the ride, which lifts passengers 177 feet straight up, then drops them nearly the same distance at speeds reaching 54 mph. It was unclear at what point during the...

HOUSTON -- Seven astronauts aboard NASA's shuttle Atlantis cast off from the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday, leaving the orbital laboratory with a more balanced look after installing new starboard solar wings. "We'll see you back on planet Earth," Atlantis commander Rick Sturckow told the space station's Expedition 15 crew as the shuttle departed. Atlantis undocked from the space station at 10:42 a.m. EDT (1442 GMT) as both spacecraft passed 213 miles (342 kilometers) above the Coral Sea off the coast of Australia. Sturckow and his STS-117 crew arrived at the ISS on June 10 and performed four spacewalks to...

Durham — One day after he announced he would resign next month, Mike Nifong was served with a judge's order that suspends him from carrying out any duties of the district attorney. Durham County Sheriff Worth Hill went to Nifong's house with a deputy to serve the order Tuesday morning. "We took his keys and his badge that gave him access to the building," Hill said. "We'll make arrangements to help him get his personal belongings later." Acting on a civil complaint filed earlier this year by Durham resident Elizabeth Brewer, Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson filed the...

A widely publicized non-prescription diet drug named alli, which is believed to cause weight loss by blocking fat absorption, finally hit the drugstores nationwide this weekend, according to an announcement made June 12 by GlaxoSmithKline, the marketer of the diet drug. Alli, made by Roche of 60 mg orlistat, the active chemical that has been used for years for a prescription version known as xenical, obtained FDA approval in the February of 2007 for marketing in the United States as an over-the counter weight loss drug . The drug is indicated for those who are overweight, but not obese adults...

A blood thinner can restore affected tissue, research shows, and keep more of a patient's fingers and toes from being amputated. Frostbite patients were able to keep more fingers and toes when their treatment included a drug that dissolves blood clots, according to a study published Monday. Surgeons at the University of Utah health center treated frostbite patients with the clot-busting drug called tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA. Six patients who received tPA kept 90% of affected fingers and toes, and 12 patients treated before the center began using tPA had 41% of their frostbitten digits amputated. The research appears...

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that a passenger in a vehicle has the same right as a driver to challenge the constitutionality of a traffic stop. The court decided that when police stop a vehicle, passengers are "seized" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and -- like drivers -- can dispute the legality of a search. The ruling overturned a California Supreme Court decision in the case of Bruce Edward Brendlin, who was arrested on parole violation and drug charges after a November 2001 traffic stop in Yuba City, Calif. Brendlin, who subsequently was sentenced to four years...