Blog Heap of Links for the day 2 May 2009

"In startling revelations, convicted terrorist Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri admitted that Al Qaeda used public telephones, pre-paid calling cards, search engines and Hotmail. al-Marri 'used a "10-code" to protect the [phone] numbers — subtracting the actual digits in the phone numbers from 10 to arrive at a coded number.' The real story behind all this is that the terrorists weren't using sophisticated methods to avoid detection or monitoring — which tells us just how crappy SIGINT really is right now.

One day after a disastrous appearance on the Today Show where Vice President Biden advised not to fly or take the subway, his office announced that he's leaving the country.

Special forces on a Portuguese warship seized explosives from suspected Somali pirates after thwarting an attack on an oil tanker, but later freed the 19 assailants.

A small plane crashed into a storage yard full of portable potties Friday afternoon near Thun Field just minutes after taking off from the field. Pilot Clifford Howell of Lake Bay told investigators at about 150 feet in the air, his engine quit. He banked and tried to make it back to the runway, but came up short.

[video — full 1 minute commercial]

Today is Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) around the world. Started by industry distributors in 2002 and supported by major comics publishers, the event has grown into a major promotional event for the industry. All visitors to participating comics establishments will, naturally enough, get a free comic book. DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, and other companies publish special FCBD issues.

Judge has ruled that much of the fortune accumulated by late Bartlesville oilman Charles Foster Doornbos should be returned to his four daughters.

Maine's senate passed a bill on Thursday that could make the northeastern U.S. state the fifth in the country to allow gay marriage, but the lower chamber and governor have yet to approve it.

Google and 47 other international corporations have been sued in a US District Court for trademark infringement over their use of the word "Android." To Google, Android is the name of its open-source, Linux-based operating system for phones and mobile devices that it introduced in November of 2007. To Erich Specht, a software developer and internet applications service provider in the Village of Palatine, Illinois, Android is the part of the name of his company, Android Data, for which he was granted a trademark in October of 2002 by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).