JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A teenage girl's sense of style got her in trouble at the airport.
Vanessa Gibbs, 17, claims the Transportation Security Administration stopped her at the security gate because of the design of a gun on her handbag.
Gibbs said she had no problem going through security at Jacksonville International Airport, but rather, when she headed home from Virginia.
"It's my style, it's camouflage, it has an old western gun on it," Gibbs said.
But her preference for the pistol style didn't sit well with TSA agents at the Norfolk airport.
Gibbs said she was headed back home to Jacksonville from a holiday trip when an agent flagged her purse as a security risk.
"She was like, 'This is a federal offense because it's in the shape of a gun,'" Gibbs said. "I'm like, 'But it's a design on a purse. How is it a federal offense?'"
After agents figured out the gun was a fake, Gibbs said, TSA told her to check the bag or turn it over.
By the time security wrapped up the inspection, the pregnant teen missed her flight, and Southwest Airlines sent her to Orlando instead, worrying her mother, who was already waiting for her to arrive at JIA.
"Oh, it's terrifying. I was so upset," said Tami Gibbs, the teen's mom. "I was on the phone all the way to Orlando trying to figure out what was going on with her. It was terrifying. I don't ever want to go through it again."
Vanessa and her mom said it's hard to believe anyone could mistake the design on the purse for a real gun because it's just a few inches in size and it's hollow, not to mention Vanessa has taken it on planes before.
"I carried this from Jacksonville to Norfolk, and I've carried it from Norfolk to Jacksonville," Vanessa said. "Never once has anyone said anything about it until now."
TSA isn't budging on the handbag, arguing the phony gun could be considered a "replica weapon." The TSA says "replica weapons have prohibited since 2002."
It's a rule that Vanessa feels can't be applied to a purse.
"Common sense," she said. "It's a purse, not a weapon."
A TSA official at JIA said it's not that uncommon for passengers to wear something that could be considered a gun replica, but the official encourages everyone to check the prohibited items list, which can be found online or at the airport before going through security.
http://www.news4jax.com/news/Teen-stopped-at-airport-for-design-on-purse/-/475880/4858586/-/qijcv5/-/index.html
85-year-old says she was strip searched at JFK
An 85-year-old woman said Saturday that she was injured and humiliated when she was strip searched at an airport after she asked to be patted down instead of going through a body scanner, allegations that transportation security officials denied.
Lenore Zimmerman said she was taken to a private room and made to take off her pants and other clothes after she asked to forgo the screening because she worried it would interfere with her defibrillator. She missed her flight and had to take one 2 1/2 hours later, she said.
"I'm hunched over. I'm in a wheelchair. I weigh under 110 pounds (50 kilograms)," she said from her winter home at a seniors community in Coconut Creek, Florida. "Do I look like a terrorist?"
But the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement Saturday that no strip search was conducted.
"While we regret that the passenger feels she had an unpleasant screening experience, TSA does not include strip searches as part of our security protocols and one was not conducted in this case," the statement read.
Zimmerman was dropped off by her son at Kennedy Airport for a 1 p.m. flight Tuesday to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on JetBlue, she said. She arrived at the ticket counter around 12:20 p.m. and headed for security in a wheelchair, her small, metal walker in her lap.
She's been traveling to Florida for at least a decade and has never had a problem being patted down until now, she said. "I worry about my heart, so I don't want to go through those things," she said, referring to the advanced image technology screening machines now in place at the airport.
As a result, she said, she was taken into the private screening room by a female agent and made to strip.
"Private screening was requested by the passenger, it was granted and lasted approximately 11 minutes," the TSA statement read. "TSA screening procedures are conducted in a manner designed to treat all passengers with dignity, respect and courtesy and that occurred in this instance."
The private screening was not recorded.
A review of closed-circuit television at the airport showed that proper procedures before and after the screening were followed, Jonathan Allen, a TSA spokesman, said in a statement.
Zimmerman, who spends half the year in Long Beach, New York, said she banged her shin during the process and it bled "like a pig," partly because she is on blood-thinning medication. She said an emergency medical technician patched her up, but she was told to see a doctor when she arrived in Florida to make sure the wound didn't get infected. There are no records indicating medical attention was called on her behalf.
"I don't know what triggered this. I don't know why they singled me out," she said.
Her son Bruce Zimmerman said he'd like to see someone fired and screeners re-trained after his mother's ordeal.
"My mother is a little old woman. She's not disruptive or uncooperative," he said Saturday. "I don't understand how this happened."
He said she's had an increasingly difficult time traveling, especially since her husband died a few years ago. She has two grandchildren, and her older son, a doctor, died in 2007.
Meanwhile, Lenore Zimmerman said she was healing, planned to go to the grocery store on Saturday and take it easy. She does not plan to head back to an airport until April when she returns to New York.
"Thank goodness," she said. "It will give me some time to brace myself for the return flight."
http://wtop.com/?nid=209&sid=2656083
Sebelius: Health Care 'Really Is an Issue of National Security'
In South Carolina earlier today, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said "that America’s health is a matter of national security and that she’s optimistic the Supreme Court will uphold the nation’s health care reform law," the Associated Press reports.
During a visit to the South Carolina coast, Sebelius spoke with a black nurses group and then was to attend a conference on improving access to health care.
The nation’s health “really is an issue of national security,” she told the nurses group, adding that a healthy, productive work force “is an essential part of our prosperity.”http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sebelius-health-care-really-issue-national-security_610874.html
Does WiFi damage sperm?
A new study suggests that wireless signals could harm a man's fertility
posted on December 1, 2011, at 6:30 AM
Laptop WiFi signals send off radiation that may be killing off sperm, according to a new study. Photo: Tetra Images/Corbis
Men could be jeopardizing their future children every time they rest a WiFi-equipped laptop on their lap. New research, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, suggests that prolonged exposure to wireless internet signals may have the nasty side effect of killing sperm. Here's what scientists found:
How was the test conducted?
Researchers placed semen samples from 29 healthy men under a laptop connected to the Internet via WiFi, then hit download. To make sure that any changes weren't the result of the heat generated by the computer, they also put a control group of sperm samples under a laptop that was on, but not wirelessly connected.
And what happened?
After four hours, 25 percent of the sperm exposed to WiFi stopped moving, and 9 percent showed DNA damage. In contrast, the control group had 14 percent stop moving, with only 3 percent of cells showing evidence of DNA damage.
Why did WiFi kill the semen?
The culprit is likely electromagnetic radiation from the WiFi signal, although we should be "cautious to infer" a direct link, says one fertility expert. While the experiment was "well conducted," sperm that's already been ejaculated is "particularly sensitive to many factors" because "they don't have the protection of other cells" once outside the body.
So what should men do?
For now, it's best to exercise caution and keep computers off the lap — last year, similar research demonstrated that the hot underside of laptops also killed off sperm cells. "So between the heat and the radiation from today's electronic devices," says Frederik Joelving at Reuters, "testicles would seem to be hard-pressed."
http://theweek.com/article/index/221943/does-wifi-damage-sperm
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