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An air traffic controller at New York’s Kennedy Airport was suspended for allowing his young son to radio instructions to several pilots. The few quick exchanges between the elementary-school-aged child and jets waiting to take off from JFK, one of the nation’s busiest airports, appeared to delight pilots at the time.

Naturally, it was recorded:

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In a world-first, McDonald’s has signed a deal with Weight Watchers to promote some of its meals, such as Chicken McNuggets, as ideal for dieters.

Three meals marked with the Weight Watchers logo will go on sale in New Zealand today and are expected in Australian outlets later this year, as part of a six-year push by the fast-food giant to change its image.

The move comes three years after McDonald’s paid $330,000 to put the Heart Foundation’s tick on seven meals, including burgers and nuggets.

In the new deal, McDonald’s will use the Weight Watchers logo on its menu boards and tray mats. Weight Watchers will promote McDonald’s to dieters.

How’s that for a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” deal? The more people Weight Watchers sends to McD, the more people will require Weight Watchers services!

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WMR has learned from sources who worked in senior positions for the telecommunications company Qwest that its former chairman and CEO, Joseph Nacchio, was threatened with retaliation after he refused to participate in an unconstitutional and illegal National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping program after he met with NSA officials on February 27, 2001, some six months before the 9/11 attacks. Nacchio refused to turn over customer records without a court order — something NSA did not possess at the time it made its request.

After Nacchio refused NSA’s request on the grounds that it was illegal, sources close to Nacchio reported his legal problems with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission began in earnest. First, Qwest lost out on several lucrative federal government contracts and second, Nacchio was indicted and convicted in 2007 of 19 counts of insider stock trading. Nacchio was sentenced to six years in the Schuykill federal prison camp in Minersville, Pennsylvania, where he is now assigned prisoner number 33973-013.

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Pakistani security forces declared victory on Tuesday after a weeks-long offensive in the northwest, retaking control of Bajaur tribal area and seizing a Taliban and Al Qaeda cave network that was a final militant holdout.

More hiding places remain for militants in the vast range of mountainous territory along the Afghan-Pakistani border. But at a press conference held in the rugged mountain village of Damadola, Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, commander of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, stressed the strategic importance of reclaiming the militant stronghold. “We have concluded operations up to the Afghan border. We think the Bajaur operations have now more or less ended as dedicated military operations,” Khan said.

“If a potential employer doesn’t ‘get’ this, I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.”

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A college atheist group is offering students pornography in exchange for Bibles.

Atheist Agenda calls the exchange “Smut for Smut,” prompting prayers and protests from Christian students at the University of Texas San Antonio campus.

Student Monica Cornado says it’s offensive to compare pornography to “the Word of God.”

University officials say the atheist group has the right to conduct the swap.

UTSA spokesman David Gabler says, “As long as students are not violating laws or violating the Constitution, they have the freedom of speech and assembly.”

They’re just waiting for an Opportunity to shame us all…

Maybe if they had more team Spirit….

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The video was shot by a single Steadicam, but it took more than 60 takes, over the course of two days, to get it right. Many of those takes lasted about 30 seconds, Sadowsky said, getting no further than the spot in the video where the car tire rolls down a ramp.

“The most fiddly stuff, you always want to put that at the front, because you don’t want to be resetting the whole thing.”

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An Eyewitness News investigation talks to a police officer who reveals the pressure they are under to make quotas.

When Officer Adil Polanco dreamed of becoming a cop, it was out of a desire to help people not, he says, to harass them.

“I’m not going to keep arresting innocent people, I’m not going to keep searching people for no reason, I’m not going to keep writing people for no reason, I’m tired of this,” said Adil Polanco, an NYPD Officer.

Officer Polanco says One Police Plaza’s obsession with keeping crime stats down has gotten out of control. He claims Precinct Commanders relentlessly pressure cops on the street to make more arrests, and give out more summonses, all to show headquarters they have a tight grip on their neighborhoods.

“Our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them?” said Officer Polanco.

Eyewitness News asked, “Why do it?”

“They have to meet a quota. One arrest and twenty summonses,” said Officer Polanco.

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Wie denkt, na zich te hebben opgegeven bij het ‘bel-me-niet’-register, dat hij niet meer wordt lastiggevallen, komt van een koude kermis thuis. Dat schrijft het AD.

Het is volgens de krant gebleken dat verkopers aan de deur de lijst met adresgegevens van het register gebruiken.

Translation: the Dutch do-not-call register is being used by door-to-door salesmen to compile lists of places to visit.

I gave up my land line a long time ago, because sales calls were about 75% of my call volume, so I never had a need to register, but these bloodsuckers don’t seem to learn.

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The massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile may have changed the entire Earth’s rotation and shortened the length of days on our planet, a NASA scientist said Monday.

The quake, the seventh strongest earthquake in recorded history, hit Chile Saturday and should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 milliseconds, according to research scientist Richard Gross at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

“Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth’s axis,” NASA officials said in a Monday update.

The computer model used by Gross and his colleagues to determine the effects of the Chile earthquake effect also found that it should have moved Earth’s figure axis by about 3 inches (8 cm or 27 milliarcseconds).

Drat, now my next few days are going to be dominated by attempts to use “milliarcseconds” in regular conversation…

This!

(you also wouldn’t believe how many advertising networks have contacted me asking me if I want to “monetize” my apps…)

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Microsoft told Windows XP users today not to press the F1 key when prompted by a Web site, as part of its reaction to an unpatched vulnerability that hackers could exploit to hijack PCs running Internet Explorer (IE).

No word on the “any” key.

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Three days after one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded struck the South American nation of Chile, the massive extent of the damage is becoming clearer, and the number of known victims has climbed to 723 deaths so far, many thousands still missing, and nearly 2 million displaced. World governments made immediate pledges of aid after Chilean President Michelle Bachelet requested mobile bridges, field hospitals, satellite phones, electrical generators, disaster assessment teams, water purification systems, field kitchens and restaurants, UN officials said. Collected here are recent photos from areas in Chile damaged by Saturday’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami. (37 photos total)

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A woman climbs over the debris of her destroyed house in Dichato, Chile, Monday, March 1, 2010. (AP Photo/ Natacha Pisarenko) #

25
A boat left stranded inland after a tsunami in the Chilean city of Dichato, some 30 km from Concepcion, on March 1, 2010. (CLAUDIO SANTANA/AFP/Getty Images) #

(meanwhile, Apple has approved my free iPhone map of Conceptíon – if you know somebody in the area who could use it, tell them!)

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Everyone is going nuts because we just sued HTC for violating several hundred of our patents, including our patent for the 12-box keypad (1-9 plus * and #) which we introduced on the iPhone and are now seeing copied everywhere, and our patent on the “audible tone to indicate an incoming call on a telephonic communication device,” which also is just showing up everywhere.

Naturally there’s a risk when you start suing people that people will view you as a kind of bully, but we’re trying to make clear that we are just attempting to defend our rights and protect the innovation and invention that we’ve spent years innovating on inside our incredibly innovative invention labs. Gizmodo says the patents we’ve got are “incredible!” and that HTC had no idea we were going to sue them. AllThingsD provides complete copies of court documents which I recommend you go read, from front to back, right away. TechCrunch says that the suit is actually an attack on Google and Android, which is true. It’s war, people.

Quite. Here is a breakdown of all the claims.

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German justice officials investigating child abuse within Roman Catholic establishments have raided a convent. They were looking for evidence of abuse in a Benedictine convent in the town of Ettal, located in the state of Bavaria. Twenty former students of the convent’s boarding school have accused priests there of abusing them.

It’s a big issue in the Netherlands as well – lots of people are suddenly coming out with stories of abuse, sometimes up to 50 years ago.

Most of the abuse can no longer be prosecuted, it’s too long ago. However…. there’s also a law in the Netherlands that allows prosecution for “membership of a criminal organization”. I wonder if the cover up policies used by the church fall under this statute.

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The European Commission began a new push Tuesday to allow farmers in Europe to grow more biotech crops, clearing a genetically modified potato for cultivation despite persistent public opposition to the technology.

[..]

The commissioner “only needed weeks in his new position to show such flagrant support for industry interests ahead of his own portfolio,” said Martin Häusling, a German member of the European Parliament for the Greens.

Opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of European consumers are apprehensive about such technology.

Politicians listening to lobbyists instead of voters seems to be a world-wide problem these days…