What am I reading today?

My daily news read the past 24 hours has left me scratching my head more often than not (I think just getting my haircut at Ft. Belvoir has something to do with it as well). I feel like I'm reading The Onion, but nope, it's real news. Wanted to share some news snippets with you:

From Reuters: "After a three-year hunt involving cutting edge technology and police on three continents, it was dogged detective work and a Thai transvestite that finally led officers to Canadian pedophile suspect Christopher Neil."

Now I don't want to bring light to the situation, since this guy has done some horrible things that will undoubtedly impact those he has victimized...I guess case in point, it was his Thai transvestite companion that ended up being key:

"His companion at the time of his arrest was a 25-year-old "katoey" -- the Thai word for transvestite or transsexual -- a friendship that proved key to the manhunt. ...Transvestites in Pattaya said they had seen him with a 25-year-old cross-dresser called Ohm.
But the pair had already fled the eastern seaboard town, dubbed "The Old Whore of Asia" since the days of the Vietnam War, when American GIs would come in their thousands in search of euphemistically phrased "R&R"."

Link to the article

This next article, while not surprising, is still a little disturbing, in a totally different way:

From AP: "The Air Force is planning to fire at least five officers for violations of nuclear security rules that allowed armed missiles to be mistakenly loaded on a B-52 bomber and flown over the central part of the United States, officials said Thursday. ...The B-52 flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles mounted under one wing. A total of 36 hours passed before the missiles were properly secured, officials have said. ...The officials declined to say what procedures were not followed. But the mishandling in August would have required not one mistake — but a series of lapses by a number of people in order for armed weapons — as opposed to unarmed ones — to be inadvertently taken out of a storage bunker, mounted on the B-52, misidentified on a flight manifest and flown across the country for three hours without anyone noticing."

Let me highlight a few things: Five officers? Nobody noticed it was armed versus unarmed? Do they put them right next to each other? 36 hours passed before missiles were secured...well, that's because they weren't real, but if they were real, how long would they have taken? Series of lapses...can you imagine how many people routinely signed off on this particular training flight? You'd think the movies were exaggerating when people are sleeping on the job, but I guess they're not too far from the truth!

"The weapons involved were the Advanced Cruise Missile, a "stealth" weapon developed in the 1980s with the ability to evade detection by Soviet radars."

I guess they were so stealthy that we didn't even notice.

Linky

Ok, here's my last one. Anyone who's been following the ALCS and saw last night's Red Sox-Indians game knows how amazingly Josh Beckett pitched last night. An AP writer says, despite Kenny Lofton throwing a fit and his ex-girlfriend singing the national anthem, he still concentrated and threw a knockout game. I would think that would fuel the rage. Beckett's quote definitely supports that. I love it when us guys say we're (expletive) over somebody...are we, really?

From AP: "The Indians insisted it wasn't intentional, but the club invited country singer Danielle Peck, an ex-girlfriend of Beckett's, to sing the national anthem and "God Bless America" on the night her former beau took the mound. Peck was a fill-in for another singer, but her appearance didn't seem to break Beckett's concentration. "I don't get paid to make those (expletive) decisions," Beckett barked. "She's a friend of mine, that doesn't bother me at all. Thanks for flying one of my friends to the game so she could watch it for free.""

Link

Ah, another day of transvestites, misplaced nukes, and (expletive) ex-girlfriends. Hey, it definitely beats listening about the Hollywood trash trio - Spears, Lohan, and Hilton!