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Ten days after the massive earthquake in Haiti, some 80,000 of the estimated 200,000 dead have been buried, two million residents now find themselves homeless, and hundreds of thousands of them are now trying to flee the capital city. Rescue crews are beginning to abandon hope of finding any further survivors in the rubble – the last person to be pulled out alive was on was rescued on Wednesday, the 20th. Aid agencies are still ramping up their efforts – the Red Cross alone has deployed what it calls its greatest deployment of emergency responders in its 91-year history. Collected here are some closer looks into recent events in Haiti, seen through the faces of the survivors and the recently-arrived security, rescue and care workers. (46 photos total)

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A Belgian emergency worker closes his eyes for a moment as he labors to free Rosemene Josiane, 28, who had been trapped in the rubble of her house for days after the earthquake January 15, 2010 in Port au Prince, Haiti. A group of B-FAST (Belgian First Aid and Support Team) members worked most of the day to free the woman, who had her legs pinned under concrete; in the end, the emergency workers had to anesthetize her and amputate one leg to free her. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images) #

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A California company has found that computer users consistently choose weak passwords, with the most common one being 123456.

The second-most common password is 12345, followed by 123456789. And the fourth most common password is “password.”

You can see where this is going.

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“Sikuli is a research project developed by User Interface Design Group at the MIT [...] Sikuli Script automates anything you see on the screen without internal API’s support. You can programmatically control a web page, a desktop application running on Windows/Linux/Mac OS X, or even an iphone application running in an emulator.“ [Project SIKULI homepage]

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Following an IE warning from the German government, Opera saw German downloads of its desktop browser more than double. And in Australia, where a similar warning was issued, its downloads leaped 37 per cent.

Meanwhile, Mozilla saw a “statistically significant rise” in the number of downloads originating from both Germany and France, the third nation to warn against the use of IE.

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Twenty-two executives and employees of companies in the military and law enforcement products industry have been indicted for engaging in schemes to bribe foreign government officials to obtain and retain business, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips for the District of Columbia; and Assistant Director Kevin Perkins of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. Twenty-one defendants were arrested in Las Vegas yesterday. One defendant was arrested in Miami. The indictments stem from an FBI undercover operation that focused on allegations of foreign bribery in the military and law enforcement products industry.

[..]

The indictments allege that the defendants engaged in a scheme to pay bribes to the minister of defense for a country in Africa. In fact, the scheme was part of the undercover operation, with no actual involvement from any minister of defense. As part of the undercover operation, the defendants allegedly agreed to pay a 20 percent “commission” to a sales agent who the defendants believed represented the minister of defense for a country in Africa in order to win a portion of a $15 million deal to outfit the country’s presidential guard. In reality, the “sales agent” was an undercover FBI agent.

The article doesn’t say which African country, but I have a suspicion. In related news:

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Chad Halpern, U.S. Ambassador to Bulungi since 1996, has been asked to return to Washington to face allegations that the West African nation does not exist.

“While nothing has been substantiated as of yet,” President Clinton told reporters at a press conference Monday, “it appears Ambassador Halpern may have made the country up.”

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“After dinner that night,” Clinton said, “Secretary Albright and I made the decision to look up Bulungi in an atlas. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate it. We also looked for it in a large dictionary, under several different spellings, but again, we were without success.”

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After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.

A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.

Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on – the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.

She remembers his words: “Where did you get it?”

Two thoughts came to her in a jumble: A terrorist was using her to sneak bomb-detonating materials on the plane. Or a drug dealer had made her an unwitting mule, planting coke or some other trouble in her bag while she wasn’t looking.

She’d left her carry-on by her feet as she handed her license and boarding pass to a security agent at the beginning of the line.

Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.

Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.

Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn’t.

Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile.

Just kidding, he said. He waved the baggie. It was his.

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Update: Ann Davis, the TSA spokeswoman, said this afternoon that the worker is no longer employed by the agency as of today. She said privacy laws prevented her from saying if he was fired or left on his own.

When Americans want to pull a public stunt they organize a flash mob to take off their pants. The Spanish do this.

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The Supreme Court has finally handed down the decision everyone knew was coming and no one much wanted to think about. In a 5-4 decision the High Court has struck down much of the campaign finance legislation of the past few decades, ruling specifically that neither states nor the Federal Government may restrict political speech of corporations, unions, and other interested parties even during the final days of an election.

In his dissent Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation.”

He’s not wrong.

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The FBI was so cavalier — and telecom companies so eager to help — that a verbal request or even one written on a Post-it note was enough for operators to hand over customer phone records, according to a damning report released on Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.