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Last March, Sally Harpold, an Indiana grandmother of triplets, bought two boxes of cold medication in less than a week. Together, the two boxes contained 3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine, putting her in violation of the state’s methamphetamine-fighting law, which forbids the purchase of more than three grams by one person in a seven-day period.

Police came to Harpold’s home, arrested and handcuffed her, and booked her in a Vermillion County jail. No one believes Harpold was making meth or aiding anyone who was. But local authorities aren’t apologizing for her arrest.

The best way to fight the War On Drugs is to arrest grandmothers who buy cough medicine for their grand-kids, right?

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Nobody tell the TSA, but last month someone tried to assassinate a Saudi prince by exploding a bomb stuffed in his rectum. He pretended to be a repentant militant, when in fact he was a Trojan horse:

The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.

Other news articles are here, and here are two blog posts.

For years, I have made the joke about Richard Reid: “Just be glad that he wasn’t the underwear bomber.” Now, sadly, we have an example of one.

Next up for each traveller: mandatory rectal exams before each flight.

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The Transport Ministry has clarified the terms of a new law that restricts the use of cellphones in cars, saying that from November it will be illegal to use a mobile phone as a satellite navigation aid while driving.

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“You can use a mobile phone held in a cradle while driving, but only to make, receive or terminate a phone call. You cannot use them in any other way, such as reading a GPS map, reading email or consulting an electronic diary.”

The restriction does not apply to navigation systems that do not have a mobile phone function, he says.

So what if you mount both a phone and a satnav device directly next to each other, and have both run the same satnav software – you’re allowed to look at only one of them? How does that even make sense?

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The Children’s Minister has ordered a review of the case of two police officers told they had broken the law by caring for each other’s children.

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The NSW Department of Education is using asset-tracking software, RFID tags, and BIOS-embedded filtering smarts to roll out 240,000 netbook computers into what CIO Stephen Wilson calls “the most hostile environment you can roll computers into” – the local high school.

I guess the 98% of students who are not thieves and hackers will be pleased to be treated as if they are…