3 Held Over Radioactive Material

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The three men were arrested in the western Ternopil region last Thursday when they tried to sell a container of radioactive material for $10m, the SBU said in a statement.

The men – identified as a member of the Ternopil regional parliament and two businessmen – believed they were selling 3 672kg of radioactive plutonium-239, the statement said.

The material “could have been used for terrorist purposes for the creation of a dirty bomb”, the SBU said, referring to a kind of weapon combining radioactive material with conventional explosives.

Authorities were seeking to determine what substance was in the container, but the SBU said its radioactivity level was 250 times greater than normal background radiation.

The SBU said the substance had been produced on Russian territory in the Soviet era and could have been transferred to Ukraine from a neighbouring state, without providing further details.

The men have been charged with illegal handling of radioactive material and face from eight to 15 years in prison.

Source

FAA Says Computer Problem Causing Massive Flight Delays

Travelers are facing mass flight delays today as the result of a computer problem at the Federal Aviation Administration.

The Federal Aviation Administration said that one of its two systems that process flight plans is down on Tuesday, Aug. 26. All flight plans are now being handled out of Salt Lake City.

The FAA has two systems that process flight plans one located in Atlanta and the other one in Salt Lake City. But the Atlanta system went down at 1:30pm today, and all flight plans are now being handled out of Salt Lake City.

As a result, delays could pile up at airports across the country. Delays up to 90 minutes are already surfacing at several airports.

According to the FAA, about 6,500 airplanes are in FAA system, though the aviation agency has not said how many were in the sky and how many were on the ground when the problem occurred.

Boston is the currently affected by the problem, while New York City area airports are not feeling its effects. Still, with such a heavy volume of air traffic typically converging on the East Coast, delays could spread depending on how much time it takes to iron out the problem.

Source

Japanese Customs Blunder – Plants Marijuana In Travelers Luggage – Loses Track of It

A shocked airline passenger has returned a million yen’s worth of cannabis that customs staff planted in his bag in a bungled sniffer dog exercise.

Japan Today reports that the passenger discovered a small metal box containing the cannabis tucked in a side compartment of his suitcase when he got to his hotel. Read more