In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

The most sensitive parts of the 93-page Standard Operating Procedures manual were apparently redacted in a way that computer savvy individuals easily overcame.

The document shows sample CIA, Congressional and law enforcement credentials which experts say would make it easy for terrorists to duplicate.

Line Piece!

I think chilling is the best word to describe it.  The woman who is being attacked is very distraught about having to kill the intruder.  Note how the 911 operator helps her through it.  That’s the difference between Oklahoma, and say, Indiana, where they’d rather you just get killed.

Christian K. Hughes, 37 — nicknamed “The Paper Boy” — drove through an open White House gate in January 1987 because an officer assumed he was a deliveryman. At the North Porch, Hughes gave a second unsuspecting officer a pair of handcuffs, asked to see the chief of staff, then drove past additional posts before he was stopped.

In November 1994, celebrity-chaser Stephan O. Winick, 29, joined actor Harrison Ford’s entourage in an elevator as the group was escorted through metal detectors to meet Clinton at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles.

The report also mentions a success by the agency in preventing an intrusion. In 2002, the Secret Service repeatedly interviewed and put under 24-hour surveillance Dion Rich, self-avowed “world’s greatest gate-crasher,” after he said he had sneaked into the first post-9/11 Super Bowl and bragged he would attend the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, where the Secret Service was in charge of security.

The government told its people on Monday that it was knocking two noughts off the nominal value of banknotes.

Under the new system, an old 1,000 North Korean won note will now be worth just 10 won.

North Koreans are thought to have until Sunday to change their old notes into the new currency.

But there appears to be a limit on how much can be exchanged – one report says each adult can cash in only 100,000 won.

At the time of the announcement one US dollar was worth 135 North Korea won at official exchange rates.

That means each adult can exchange about US$740-worth (£445) of won.

Many residents are reported to have reacted with anger and panic because any cash held above that figure will be worthless – effectively wiping out people’s savings.

***

Writing in the Korean Herald, based in the South, North Korean expert Rudiger Frank said the currency reform was a political move as much as an economic one.

He said officials want to destroy the newly-emerging middle class, many of whom have made money trading in the free markets.

“The currency reforms are part of [a] campaign to return to the North Korean version of orthodox socialism,” wrote Mr Frank, who is based in Vienna.

“[The aim is] to eradicate the dangerous effects of the few years of reform.”

Members of President Obama’s own political party are charging that the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership are not doing enough to help the unemployed and are threatening to organize a march on Washington of jobless Americans.

“Obviously there’s something that’s not getting through to them,” said Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Illinois. “And we’re going to let the White House and everybody who’s concerned know that we have got people in our districts who are depending on us to deliver for them.”

In a chamber where relationship-building is seen as critical, some GOP senators question whether Franken’s handling of the amendment could damage his ability to work across the aisle. Soon after Tennessee GOP Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander co-wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper defending their votes against the Franken measure, the Minnesota Democrat confronted each senator separately to dispute their column — and grew particularly angry in a tense exchange with Corker.

People familiar with the Corker exchange say it was heated and ended abruptly — a sharp departure from the norm on the usually clubby Senate floor.

***

But some of his new Republican colleagues argue that the amendment is being grossly mischaracterized — and has spawned attacks like the satirical website RepublicansforRape.org — and now question whether Franken is doing a good job of separating his past from his current line of work.

“I don’t know what his motivation was for taking us on, but I would hope that we won’t see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired amendments in the future coming from him,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 4 in the Senate Republican leadership. “I think hopefully he’ll settle down and do kind of the serious work of legislating that’s important to Minnesota.”

If you took all of the Sesame Seeds from the top of all of the Big Macs sold in one year, the seeds would weigh more than two 747 Jumbo Jets.

In related news, I’m hungry.

Source: The Best Modern Marvels Ever.  (Fast Food Tech)

Ninth-graders were taken from their classroom last week, chained together and driven blindfolded across Valley View Road into Round Lake Park, where the blindfolds were removed and the students unchained. Once free, the students were chased back to the school by angry men who wanted to put the chains back on. Talk about a learning experience.

The blindfold and the chains were part of a simulation of the Underground Railroad, and the angry men were actors from Crossroads Panorama. The simulation was designed to do more than just teach the students; it’s meant to give them a taste of the struggle slaves went through to find freedom.

***

“Some kids got really emotional right away and felt that cultural empathy. I think they were very open to it,” Caldwell said. Ninth-graders are at different maturity levels, she said, but “even some of those kids that I’ve seen be a little less mature seemed to be touched by it and seemed to be impacted.”

Hoary
Function: adjective

1: gray or white with or as if with age
2: extremely old

Example: American innocence is a hoary theme in the classic American literature. The late R.W.B. Lewis devoted an influential work of literary criticism to the theme in The American Adam.