Free Republic

ORLANDO, Fla. - While thousands of travelers queued up daily at Orlando International Airport, yanking off their shoes and shoving them through X-ray machines, a select few got to avoid the hassle during the latter part of 2006 — and passengers at four other airports nationally will soon join them. These travelers, who paid a $100 fee and underwent a background check to be part of a test program, bypassed the line and stepped into what may be a glimpse of the future — they inserted a biometric identification card into a kiosk that scanned their irises and their fingerprints...

... Windsor said he took an ax from a closet and hit her at least five times until the ax stuck in her head. He stopped because he couldn't remove the ax. The coroner's office could not remove the ax and when the body was X-rayed it was embedded down to near the victim's jaw, according to police. ...

December 5, 2006 A Loop 101 photo enforcement case that captured national attention and called into question the accuracy of Scottsdale’s freeway speed cameras won’t ever get its day in court. Scottsdale and the man accused of traveling a record 147 mph in a 2006 Hyundai Sonata family sedan reached a plea agreement less than a week before the case was to go to trial today. Lawrence Pargo, 27, of Goodyear, agreed to plead guilty to one count of criminal endangerment, one count of reckless driving and one count of excessive speeding at 102 mph in Scottsdale City Court, according...

BOOK REVIEW & DISCUSSION: Ain't Got No Cigarettes: Memories of Music Legend Roger Miller By Lyle E Style "It's an endless story about Roger. He was one of the cleverest people I've ever met in my life." (Waylon Jennings) This is my own review of Ain't Got No Cigarettes, the first Roger Miller book ever published. My review is based on reading the book (twice) and having several discussions with Lyle E Style, the author. He may stop by later to answer questions (as his schedule allows). This one is a must-read, folks. And for you radio personalities who...

A desperate motorist tried to escape a speeding fine by blowing up the roadside camera which snapped him, a court heard on Wednesday. Engineer Craig Moore, 28, took the drastic action because he feared he would lose his job as a result of the ticket. He returned to the roadside camera in the Manchester area and used explosive material, once used to make bombs and now common in the welding industry, to destroy the device. But the motorist didn't realise his actions were recorded by the camera itself. It is understood that pictures recovered from the camera hard disk show...

Move to speed up pay-as-you-drive By David Millward, Transport Correspondent (Filed: 07/08/2006) The country's first pay-as-you-drive road pricing scheme could be in operation within four years after the Transport Secretary urged Cabinet colleagues to find room for a Bill in the next parliamentary session. Douglas Alexander's pitch for a legislative slot is the strongest signal yet that a major overhaul of the way in which motorists are taxed will become a reality. Without the necessary powers, the 2010 deadline for a pilot study set by Alistair Darling, Mr Alexander's predecessor, could slip. The Department for Transport has been looking for...

Two-second penalties for both Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher set up a thrilling qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix on Saturday afternoon. With the two key championship contenders eliminated before the top-ten shootout, the honours for pole position fell right at the very end to McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, whose last-gasp lap of 1m 19.599s came just as Felipe Massa looked to have bagged the first Formula One pole of his career. Also, Hungarian Grand Prix stewards have cancelled American Scott Speed’s three fastest qualifying times as punishment for impeding another driver during Saturday’s session. The move means the Toro...

Kimi Raikkonen repeated his 2005 qualifying position for McLaren at Hockenheim on Saturday afternoon to beat Michael Schumacher. But with Felipe Massa third, Ferrari look very threatening despite too much oversteer in the final session, and everything will depend on fuel loads on Sunday.On paper, Ferrari look set for a strong run tomorrow, and as in Indianapolis, Fernando Alonso has a lot to do to safeguard his championship lead.

Honda F1 test driver Alan van der Merwe managed to reach a speed of 400.459 km/h on his first mile run down the flats. However, he wasn't able to match the speed on the return run, so the time itself cannot be counted as a land speed record. The average speed of the two runs was still a blistering 393.613 km/h.

With gasoline prices approaching an average of $3 a gallon and Middle East strife escalating, it might seem like a bad time to encourage drivers to burn even more fuel. But speed limits on stretches of freeways around the country are rising -- just in time for summer road trips. States around the country, including Texas and Michigan, have recently increased speed limits on hundreds of miles of interstate highways and freeways. Other states are expected to follow soon. Near Detroit, drivers long confronted by signs telling them to go no more than 55 miles per hour or 65 mph...

Last week's PoliceOne report of two major fire and house explosions in Kansas City has yielded questions related to the volatility of Meth lab settings. Although PoliceOne is aware of no investigatory indication that the Kansas City situation has any relation to drug activity, the sudden and extreme explosions that disintegrated these structures conjures up images of the kind of explosive results that volatile Meth labs can have. With that in mind, we felt it an appropriate time to share some insights into how officers can determine whether they're faced with a Meth lab setting, and some do's and don'ts...

We'll make this quick. We know you're busy. An Associated Press poll has found an impatient nation. To get to the point without further ado, it's a nation that gets antsy after five minutes on hold on the phone and 15 minutes max in a line. So say people in the survey. The Department of Motor Vehicles, the U.S. version of the old Soviet bread line, is among the top spots where Americans hate to wait. But grocery stores are the worst. Almost one in four in the AP-Ipsos poll picked the grocery checkout as the line where their patience...

SAN ANTONIO — Speed limits would increase to 80 mph on two West Texas interstate highways under a proposal by the Texas Department of Transportation. The Texas Transportation Commission could take up the proposed change, which would apply to Interstate 10 and Interstate 20 in West Texas, when it meets in Austin next week. Some advocates for fuel conservation and safety have questioned the wisdom of boosting speed limits, but transportation officials said most drivers are already cruising at nearly 80 mph. Carlos Lopez, director of traffic operations for the department, said a survey of both interstates found that 85...

Ian Wright has a car that blows away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT in drag races, and whose 0-to-60 acceleration time ranks it among the fastest production autos in the world. In fact, it's second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million. The key difference? The Bugatti gets eight miles per gallon. Wright's car? It runs off an electric battery.

4/18/2006 - EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFPN) -- Three Air Force units have started accelerated testing of a LITENING-AT targeting pod. The 416th Flight Test Squadron here is working with the 85th Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and the 422nd OTES at Nellis AFB, Nev., to update the existing LITENING pod with several new capabilities for warfighters, including a video downlink transmitter currently used in the Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. "The transmitter, called the ROVER Module, was pulled out of the Predator and allows the video the pilot is looking at to be...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — To some towns it’s an important stream of revenue. To some drivers it’s highway robbery. Tim Gant, a guardrail inspector from Clarksburg, says his tiny West Tennessee town is a speed trap that artificially drives down speed limits so it can drive up collections from speeding tickets. Gant has persuaded state Rep. Chris Crider, R-Milan, to introduce a bill that would require blue speed limit signs for any municipality that gets more than half its revenue from traffic tickets. "Most folks around my speed-trap town refer to the problem as ‘legal highway robbery,“’ Gant said in...

Ferrari's Michael Schumacher said that Ferrari was ready for the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday. Giancarlo Fisichella has pole position for the Malaysian Grand Prix, with Jenson Button alongside him and the Williams of Nico Rosberg and Mark Webber behind them on the grid.

They knew it was dangerous. "We could have really been hurt," said one of the Atlanta college students after their experiment. It won't win an Oscar, but 'A Meditation on the Speed Limit,' a short film that was the brainchild of college student Andy Medlin, is quite a hit. Some strange scenes, including a car passing in the emergency lane, were the product of Georgia State students simply following the speed limit. "I was pretty sure that I was doing something stupid," said another. That may be true. But, young and brash, they had a plan. They wanted to go...

You fire up your computer and want to watch some clips of yesterday's game. You go to your favorite sports Web site, but pages are taking forever to load. Maybe you stick with it. More likely, however, you run out of patience and surf to another site to see if its video clips download any faster. Lo and behold, they do. The next time you're after some football highlights, the same thing happens. After a while, I bet you'd stop even trying your now ex-favorite sports site. We've all encountered slowdowns at our favorite Web sites, much like highway traffic...

WASHINGTON - Federal agents say they will speed up the removal of illegal immigrants caught near the northern U.S. border, extending a program already in effect along the Mexican border. The practice called "expedited removal" speeds up the pace of deportations and makes it less likely that illegal immigrants will slip into the country because immigrant detention centers lack bunk space. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the program part of a nationwide effort to "implement new tactics throughout the U.S. in order to gain control of our borders." Expedited removal has already cut the average length of detentions along...