| Stun gun found on JetBlue plane and Storm halts flights in Chicago |
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Federal officials are trying to determine how a stun gun resembling a cell phone was brought on a JetBlue flight on July 8.Bryan Travers, a spokesperson for the Newark division of the FBI, said in a statement that the device did not appear to be part of any plot or attack. A cleaning crew discovered the stun gun in a seatback pocket on Flight 1179, which had flown from Boston and arrived at 10:20 p.m. at Newark Liberty Airport.Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman told the Newark Star-Ledger that it is unclear who the stun gun belonged to or how it was brought on the flight, which was nearly at capacity with 96 passengers out of 100 seats.I'm sure it couldn't have gotten by that crackerjack TSA crew. They're so busy groping seniors in wheelchairs and little children, there's no way it could have gotten by them!I would have expected this on some of the other airlines but not Jetblue. But I guess you just never know. [Read the full article] SYUKEYEVO, Russia — Russia said there was little hope of finding any more people alive on Monday after an overloaded tourist boat sank in the Volga River, killing as many as 128 people in Russia's worst river accident in three decades.Eighty people were rescued on Sunday after the Bulgaria, a double-decker river cruiser built in 1955, sank 2 miles from shore in a broad stretch of the river in Tatarstan.Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Dmitry Medvedev that there was little hope of finding more survivors as divers brought up dozens of bodies from the vessel.As many as 60 of the passengers may have been children, Russian media reported, and survivors said some 30 children had gathered in a room near the stern of the ship to play just minutes before it sank."Practically no children made it out. There were many children on the boat, very many," survivor Natalya Makarova said on state television. [Read the full article] Researchers at the University of Sheffield in England have developed a bomb-proof bag that can be used in the cargo hold of an aircraft.A team of international engineers has been busy blowing up baggage in an effort to perfect a flexible, bomb-proof cargo container for airplanes.The goal is to replace the large, expensive cases currently used by some airlines and prevent or minimize the damage that might result from an explosion in an aircraft cargo hold.“Israel puts one [hard container] on each El Al flight where high risk luggage is stored,” said Jeff Price, an associate professor and aviation security expert at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. “But the argument against their use is weight. If you increase the weight of the plane, you must decrease it somewhere else. In the eyes of the airlines, then passengers, cargo or mail – i.e. [Read the full article] 
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