WASHINGTON
Report shows explosives can get past airport security
Government investigators smuggled liquid explosives and detonators past airport security, exposing a dangerous hole in the nation’s ability to keep these forbidden items off of airplanes, according to a report made public yesterday.
The investigators learned about the components to make an improvised explosive device on the Internet and purchased the parts at local stores, said the report by the Government Accountability Office. These covert tests were conducted at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at 19 airports in March, May and June of this year.
In August 2006, the TSA changed its screening policies after officials foiled a plot to use liquid explosives to blow up commercial airlines headed toward the U.S.
RALEIGH, N.C.
Obama can’t find records from time in state Senate
Barack Obama, who’s been scolding Hillary Rodham Clinton for not hastening the release of records from her time as first lady, says he can’t step up and produce his own records from his days in the Illinois state Senate.
He says he hasn’t got any.
“I don’t have – I don’t maintain – a file of eight years of work in the state Senate because I didn’t have the resources available to maintain those kinds of records,” he said at a recent campaign stop in Iowa. He said he wasn’t sure where any cache of records might have gone, adding, “It could have been thrown out. I haven’t been in the state Senate now for quite some time.”
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.
Illegal gambling ring busted in casino poker room
An illegal sports gambling ring run out of a high-stakes poker room in an Atlantic City casino was busted yesterday, authorities said, and 18 people were arrested, including four with mob ties.
Since March 2006, the ring took in $22 million in bets on college and professional football and basketball in the poker room of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, said New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram.
The off-the-books exchanges of cash and casino chips were unraveled only when an informant told authorities what to look for using the casino’s eye-in-the-sky surveillance cameras, Milgram said.
The suspected ringleader of the operation, Andrew Micali, 32, of Ventnor, is an associate of Philadelphia mob boss Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, according to a New Jersey law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the criminal complaints do not mention any reputed mob ties.
LAS VEGAS
O.J.’s suspected heist results in multiple charges
O.J. Simpson must face trial on kidnapping, armed robbery and other charges stemming from a suspected sports memorabilia heist, a justice of the peace ruled yesterday.
Defense attorneys had argued during a preliminary hearing that the case was based on the accounts of con artists and crooks, and they asked for the charges to be dropped.
Justice of the Peace Joe M. Bonaventure ruled all charges in the 12-count complaint would remain against Simpson and co-defendants Clarence “C.J.” Stewart and Charles “Charlie” Ehrlich.
– Compiled from Daily wire reports