Vote delays passport requirement
The House voted overwhelmingly Friday to delay for 17 months new rules requiring passports for U.S. land and sea travelers entering the U.S. from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. The State Department has been flooded with passport applications since new rules requiring passports for air travelers went into effect in January.
5 U.S. soldiers die in Baghdad
Five American soldiers died in Iraq, the U.S. military announced Friday, a day after extremists fired shells into Baghdad’s Green Zone during a visit by the State Department’s No. 2 official. The prime minister imposed an indefinite curfew on Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and gateway to the Persian Gulf, after bombers leveled a Sunni shrine just outside the city.
State worker data stolen
A disk carrying the Social Security numbers and other personal information on all 64,000 Ohio state employees was stolen from a state worker’s car last weekend, Gov. Ted Strickland said Friday. Strickland said it takes special equipment to access the information on the disk, so he doesn’t believe the workers’ privacy is in jeopardy. The employee is being investigated, but there is no reason to believe there was a security breach, he said.
World’s longest land tunnel opens
With a ceremony that went off like a classic Swiss timepiece, officials Friday inaugurated the world’s longest overland tunnel, a 21-mile-long rail link under the Alps meant to ease highway traffic jams in the mountainous country. The tunnel, which took eight years to build and cost $3.5 billion, will trim the time trains need to cross between Germany and Italy from three and a half hours to just under two.
SURVEY SAYS
Guy gab fest
Thanks to the Ari Fleischers of the world, men continue to top women when it comes to gabbing on cell phones — but the ladies are closing in, according to AT&T’s Father’s Day poll released Thursday.
Men have reported using significantly more cell phone minutes than women ever since the annual survey began six years ago. In 2002, when there was the largest gap, men averaged 589 minutes per month and women only 394.
This year, however, the poll of 1,000 adults found women logging an average of 453 wireless minutes monthly, just five minutes shy of the male average of 458.
While women use cell phones more than men to talk with friends and family, men use their phones more for business, the survey found. Some of the poll’s other findings:
45% of wireless subscribers use the text-messaging feature.
44% use the camera feature.
17% play games on their phones.
11% access wireless e-mail through their phones.
