Events

United and Continental have officially voted to merge, which won't suck for Chicago: The new United's operations headquarters will be located in Chicago's Willis Tower, which was formerly known as the Sears Tower. United will move forward with plans to place its crucial nerve center and 2,800 staffers in the skyscraper starting in October. The combined airline would have revenues of $29 billion, based on 2009 results, and hold an unrestricted cash balance of about $7.4 billion. The carriers said in a...

By 2013, the EU will stop confiscating your lunch: Liquids, gels and aerosols will instead be run through a new generation of explosives scanners able to screen them for harmful materials. Getting these machines up and running will be very expensive, and the technology is not yet foolproof. But nothing in aviation security is foolproof, and anything is better than the chaotic confiscation policies now in place. Why are the Europeans always one step ahead of us? ... The 3-ounce container rule is silly...

I haven't had a lot of time to go through all the Shanghai photos. These two caught my eye, though. First, the Urban Planning Museum in People's Square: And, just because I thought it looked cool, Terminal 2 at Pudong International Airport:

The video doesn't do the experience justice. I have to say, moving on land at 430 km/h on a public conveyance was a lot of fun. That's better than twice the cruising speed of the Cessna airplanes I fly (195 km/h). More photos later today.

With Labour trailing behind both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, the Prime Minister today committed what may be the worst gaffe by a politician in modern British history: And then – the journey into the car – the microphone left on… "You should never have put me with that woman, whose idea was that, it's just ridiculous ... she's just a bigoted woman." When the broadcasters catch up with her Mrs Duffy takes a while to understand what happened, but when she does, the nation sees the shock on...

Every time I think our legislature has a bunch of crazies in it, I remind myself it could be a lot worse: The speaker of Ukraine's parliament huddled under umbrellas as eggs rained down and smoke bombs filled the chamber with an acrid cloud. Then the lawmakers attacked each other, punching and brawling in the aisles. The chaos erupted Tuesday as parliament approved a treaty allowing Russia to extend the lease on a naval base in a Ukrainian port on the Black Sea until 2042 — a move bitterly opposed by...

Via reader MB, one of the best beers in the world has been sold to a pair of beer-loving entrepreneurs: Fritz Maytag, the washing machine heir who launched the microbrewery movement, has sold Anchor Brewing Co. in San Francisco to a pair of Bay Area entrepreneurs who plan to preserve and expand the iconic brand. No terms were disclosed for the sale of the 70-person Mariposa Street brewery and distillery that traces its roots to the Gold Rush, when local brewers produced a heady elixir known as steam...

There is, fortunately, nothing like a Full English Breakfast, like this one I had a few months ago in London: Via reader EB, Times writer Cole Morton traveled around the country wondering why people still eat them: Here, then, is proof that English bloodymindedness endures. Never mind anti-obesity campaigns, free fruit or the knowledge that the big plate of fatty crap is killing us, some people will just pile on more. We’re addicted to salt and still eating for the hearty, manual labour of old, when...

I'm back in the US, and mostly sure it's Monday evening. Beyond that I'm still recovering from my 14-hour flight yesterday. I'm also waiting for a new hard disk from Dell for my laptop, as the old one died. Fortunately, I back it up religiously. While I get my creativity back, enjoy someone else's: WW2 As Seen On Facebook.

The Internet experience at Pudong International Airport differs markedly from the experience at our hotel. I've noticed a pattern, whereby unencrypted data, like The Daily Parker, seems to move about an order of magnitude faster than encrypted data, like the HTTPS connection I've got going with my mail server. The interesting part is that both sites are going through the same router back in Chicago. So, either the Web terminal I'm using has a particularly hard time with secure websites, or something is...