On the terrorism front, New York police, alerted by Times Square street vendors, discover a smoking SUV packed with explosives -- a violation of many city ordinances, including the ban on smoking. Fortunately, the car bomb is disarmed, and a suspect is later captured at Kennedy Airport by sharp-eyed Transportation Security Administration workers trained to spot suspicious behavior.
Ha, ha! Just kidding, of course. The suspect is captured by U.S. Customs agents at the last minute after boarding a Dubai-bound plane filled with passengers who, like the suspect, all had been carefully screened by the TSA to make sure they were not carrying more than three ounces of shampoo. In other air-travel news, the boards of directors of United and Continental approve a merger that will create one of the world's largest airlines, with a combined total of 700 planes, 88,000 employees, and nearly two dozen packets of peanuts.
