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According to tweeting travelers, many backscatter and millimeter-wave AIT scanning machines at airports are not in use at all, making opting out impossible. We've asked DHS/TSA for comment, but you can help us confirm. Not every airport in the country even has the "Advanced Imaging Technology" scanners installed. (A post at FlyerTalk.com has an up-to-date list of airports with the machines, as well as specific terminals.

A top Pakistani Taliban commander took credit for yesterday's failed car bomb attack in New York City. Qari Hussain Mehsud, the top bomb maker for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, said he takes "fully responsibility for the recent attack in the USA." Qari Hussain made the claim on an audiotape accompanied by images that was released on a YouTube website that calls itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel. The tape has yet to be verified, but US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal believe it is legitimate. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel on YouTube was created...

Robert Ott, the CEO of the Claim Jumper restaurant chain does not believe ordinary citizens have the right to protect themselves and their families under the rights conferred by the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. This is the letter sent to Robert Ott by T. Mark Graham (AKA Gunplumber) owner of Arizona Response Systems, a small firearms manufacturing company. Read the letter at the link and forward to friends and family.

Total NSA Unemploment Claims Hit Another Record Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/07/2010 12:58 -0500 Total Non-Seasonally adjusted insurance claims (consisting of Initial, Continuing and EUC claims) hit another record of 11,268,100. Make of this data what you will. We are confident the objective, mainstream media will find a way to spin this favorably (it can only go down from here... of course, unless it doesn't). And a long term chart, compliments of CreditTrader

Link only due to copyright issue

Daily Egyptian > News Administrator accused of lying about military service retires Brian Feldt Published: Friday, February 13, 2009 Updated: Friday, February 13, 2009 James Scales, the university’s director of Career Services who was accused this month of lying about his military service, will retire effective March 1, university spokesman Rod Sievers said Friday. Sievers said Scales will immediately utilize his vacation days and not return to work. According to a university statement, Scales cited health and personal reasons. Scales hung up the phone when asked for comment from the DAILY EGYPTIAN. “I have enjoyed my association with the university...

Thousands of claim forms sent to Madoff customers By Grant McCool Mon Jan 5, 2:09 pm ET NEW YORK (Reuters) – More than 8,000 forms have been mailed to customers of accused swindler Bernard Madoff so they can make claims by March or July for any money they may have lost, the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's firm said on Monday. The claims, to be made through the non-profit Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) and a court-appointed trustee, are just one avenue for investors who believe they were duped in Madoff's purported $50 billion fraud. Some investors have filed...

Biden revises claim he was ‘shot at’ in Iraq By Susan Crabtree Posted: 08/08/07 06:57 PM [ET] Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) — whose garrulous ways have led to a number of verbal gaffes over the years — has revised a dramatic comment that he was “shot at” in the Green Zone during a trip to Iraq. Biden made the brief comment during the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate two weeks ago, as he was emphasizing how difficult it would be to redeploy U.S. citizens and troops out of Iraq if the U.S. decided to withdraw in six months. “Let’s start telling the...

BAGHDAD — As Congress gears up to debate the Bush administration's latest request for an additional $108 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war's costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military. "America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they...

Midwest News S.D. Court Says Insurance Does Not Cover Lawsuit on Wife Stealing October 30, 2007 South Dakota's public policy prevents insurance from covering damages in lawsuits against those accused of stealing another's spouse, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The high court's unanimous decision said an Aberdeen doctor cannot make an insurance company protect him against a lawsuit that alleges he stole another man's wife. South Dakota public policy does not allow people to shift financial responsibility to insurance companies for their own intentional actions, the Supreme Court said. Alienation of affections is conduct that should not be encouraged...

Russia's Arctic Claim Backed By Rocks, Officials Say Richard A. Lovett for National Geographic News September 21, 2007 Rock samples retrieved last month from beneath the Arctic Ocean indicate that the North Pole is part of Mother Russia, the Russian government announced yesterday. The Russians contend that the Lomonosov Ridge, an undersea structure running across the Arctic Ocean beneath the pole, is a geological extension of the Russian region of Siberia. Under international law, Russia could lay claim to the potentially oil-rich seabed under the Arctic ice if it can prove that the ridge is part of the country's continental...

Rudy Giuliani drew outrage and indignation from Sept. 11 first-responders yesterday by saying he spent as much time - or more - exposed to the site's dangers as workers who dug through the debris for the missing and the dead. Speaking to reporters at a Cincinnati Reds ballgame he caught between fund-raisers, the GOP front-runner said he helped 9/11 families and defended himself against critics of how he managed the attack's aftermath. "This is not a mayor or a governor or a President who's sitting in an ivory tower," Giuliani said. "I was at Ground Zero as often, if not...

Canada raised the stakes in the battle to claim ownership of the Arctic by sending Stephen Harper, prime minister, on a three-day trek to the region, just days after the Russians planted a flag on the seabed at the North Pole. The US, Norway and Denmark are also competing alongside Russia and Canada to secure rights to the natural resources of the Arctic.

A day laborer's claim that he was hired under false pretenses, kidnapped and abandoned in Tijuana was false, an investigator for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in a statement Wednesday. Jose Felix Gutierrez left for Mexico on his own May 9 but told his sister he and others had been kidnapped, handcuffed and forcibly removed from the country, said a statement by Detective Jesse Venegas. Gutierrez had been upset over the death of a fellow day laborer in a traffic accident last month at a popular informal day-labor pickup place at Arrow Route and Grove Avenue in Rancho...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration and Kansas' governor started Tuesday pointing fingers at each other over the response to last week's devastating tornado. By lunchtime, both sides had backed down. With President Bush set to travel to now-razed Greensburg, Kan., on Wednesday to view the destruction wrought by Friday's 205 mph twister, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said she planned to talk with him about her contention that National Guard deployments to Iraq hampered the disaster response. "I don't think there is any question if you are missing trucks, Humvees and helicopters that the response is going to be slower," she...

Company 'settles over anti-English legal claim' Last Updated: 2:08am BST 02/05/2007 A nationalist political party which sued a hospitality company for anti-English discrimination has been paid £5,200 in an out of court settlement, it was claimed yesterday. The English Democrats Party took legal action against Royal Armouries International, which provides corporate hospitality at the Royal Armouries museum, after a booking for a conference room in Leeds was cancelled. The party, which campaigns for an English Parliament, said RAI initially claimed the room was double-booked but later said it was concerned about potential damage to its reputation. The English Democrats said...

Rockets slammed into Jewish towns while Palestinians attempted kidnapping TEL AVIV – A massive Hamas rocket attack earlier this week was coordinated directly with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and members of his Fatah party, according to Hamas sources speaking to WND. In the first rocket attack it claimed responsibility for in five months, Hamas Tuesday fired 39 Qassam rockets and 79 mortars from the Gaza Strip aimed at nearby Jewish communities. The projectiles were meant to serve as a diversion as the group attempted to storm an Israeli military base on the Gaza border to kidnap Israeli soldiers. The...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) fought back Wednesday against an allegation that he was educated at a radical Islamic school as a child in Indonesia, determined to avoid being tripped up by unsubstantiated charges like those that undermined John Kerry in 2004. Interviews by The Associated Press at the elementary school in Jakarta found that it's a public and secular institution that has been open to students of all faiths since before the White House hopeful attended in the late 1960s. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, moved to Indonesia at age 6 to live with...

WASHINGTON A company that claimed it developed a way to harvest stem cells from days-old human embryos without harming the embryos was accused at a Senate hearing Wednesday of misrepresenting its work. Advanced Cell Technology Inc. of Alameda, Calif., drew fire from Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa., authors of a bill vetoed by President Bush that would have expanded embryonic stem cell research through government funding. Supporters of such research say it could lead to treatments and cures for a wide variety of ailments, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries. Bush and abortion foes,...

China deaths spark cover-up claim Bilis destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes The number of people killed in a storm that hit southern China last week has risen to more than 500 - more than double the original estimate. Tropical Storm Bilis hit on 14 July, causing massive flooding and forcing three million people from their homes. The government of Hunan province has accused local officials of deliberately playing down the death toll. Meanwhile, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake has hit Yunan province, in the south-west, killing at least 18 people. Some of the victims were crushed in their homes and...