It is a familiar scene: 3 a.m. at Heathrow Airport, and a gathering of people are sprawled across plastic benches in various poses of contortion. To be in transit is to be disconnected, but for some of those sleeping here, rootlessness is not temporary. Each night, scores of London's homeless men and women take advantage of modern travel delays by posing as stranded passengers in order to sleep in a warm and safe place. They play a cat-and-mouse game with police, often donning floral shirts, fanny packs and other travel accessories to blend in. And their increasing creativity — and ability to disappear in Heathrow's swelling crowds of delayed passengers — has prompted the airport to try a new approach.
Last month, Heathrow commissioned a local homeless outreach organization, Broadway, to visit the airport once a week and survey its homeless population, while also trying try to coax them into temporary accommodation. They were not prepared for the scale of the problem they discovered: In the first four weeks alone, they conducted 100 interviews with homeless "passengers" — although some of those were repeat interviews, the number was far higher than anyone had expected.
When TIME joined the outreach worker and police officers this week, the homeless people contacted included a man sleeping under his coat, another conspicuously hiding behind an open newspaper, and a woman clutching a duty free bag who insisted she was waiting for a flight, only to whisper when police were out of earshot: "I can't afford electricity; it's warm here; please, let me stay."
These men and women may seem to embody the English tradition of the plucky Dickensian dodger, but it would be wrong to mistake their ingenuity for anything other than desperation, social workers say. Like those to whom the travel ads all around the airport appeal, Heathrow's homeless are also in search of escape: from debts, legal problems, family responsibilities. They often have mental health or substance abuse problems, and they often refuse help. During the day, some travel by public transport into London to beg, busk or take drugs, while others remain in the airport, sometimes scrounging food off sympathetic restaurant and cafe workers.
"When I came from Africa, I couldn't believe people could be homeless in Britain," says Broadway's Nigerian-born outreach worker Jeff Motunde. "But I discovered that homelessness is a way of life. It can be very difficult to convince people to receive help."
Ingenuity is a necessity for Heathrow's homeless to avoid detection by police. "I thought about disguising myself as a passenger, but I have a bit of what you might call 'a luggage issue,' 65-year-old Joseph explains from a bench in the airport's remote bus terminal, pointing at a shopping trolley of bulging plastic bags. "They are hardly Louis Vuitton."
"Rough sleepers," as homeless people are known in Britain, disguise themselves at all major airports, says Sandie Cox of Heathrow Travel Care, the social care organization overseeing the one-year pilot scheme. Indeed, Chicago's O'Hare airport instituted a homeless outreach in the 1990s. But while the problem may not be unique to Heathrow, several factors make it easier for rough sleepers to blend in. It is the busiest airport in Europe, has more delays than other major hubs, and while it doesn't serve Europe's low-cost carriers, it has still seen the effects of the democratization of air travel: gone are the days when you could identify a British air passenger by their suit and shiny shoes. Indeed, on Wednesday, the two scruffy passengers curled in the corner of a remote bathroom turned out to be holding tickets to LAX; they had chosen their spot because it was the only place they could find an outlet to charge their hand-held video game console.
Of the half-dozen homeless who agreed to follow up with social care on Wednesday, it is possible that none will check into Broadway's temporary accommodation, Motunde says. Many of Heathrow's homeless will likely stay at the airport until they are arrested, or become ill. Until then, they will drift for nights on end in an otherworldly limbo of gleaming corridors, somnambulant passengers, and nonsensical advertisements for a life beyond their reach
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Defense Department accidentally shipped ballistic missile components to Taiwan, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Four nose-cone fuses for intercontinental ballistic missiles were shipped instead of the helicopter batteries that Taiwan had requested, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said.
The fuses were shipped to Taiwan in fall 2006 and kept in a warehouse there. The Taiwanese military informed the United States last week about their presence on the island.
"There are no nuclear or fissile materials associated with these items," Wynne said. "The United States is making all appropriate notifications in the spirit of candor and openness in an effort to avoid any misunderstanding."
An investigation is under way, he added.
Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, said, "In an organization as large as DOD, the largest and most complex in the world, there will be mistakes. But they cannot be tolerated in the arena in strategic systems, whether they are nuclear or only associated equipment, as was in this case."
Henry said the parts were 1960s technology, designed for use with Minuteman ballistic missiles.
Officials said China, which considers Taiwan to be a renegade province, has been notified about the mistake.
The Chinese government did not immediately issue a response to the news.
Wynne said the missile components were first shipped from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming to Hill Air Force Base in Utah in 2005.
On arrival at Hill, they should have been placed in the classified storage section, Wynne said, but instead were moved to a storage area for unclassified items.
He said stocks at the Utah base should be checked quarterly and a key part of the investigation will be determining how those checks did not turn up the missile parts before they were shipped to Taiwan.
It is the second nuclear-related mistake involving the Air Force in less than a year. In August, a B-52 bomber mistakenly carried six nuclear warheads from North Dakota to Louisiana. A six-week investigation uncovered a "lackadaisical" attention to detail in day-to-day operations at the air bases involved.
The Air Force said it relieved four officers, including three colonels, and other personnel lost their certification to handle sensitive weaponry.
Actually, this news story is more interesting than I initially suspected. I've been talking to a lot of Chinese about this issue, and not a single one of them believes this is an accident. Not one.
They're not conspiracy theorists or anything, but this all goes down to the mega-issue that is Taiwan.
Robbers don't usually leave phone numbers behind, but on Monday, at a Northwest Side muffler shop, a man asked employees to give him a call when their boss came back to open a safe, an employee said Tuesday.
When the 18-year-old returned a few hours later, plainclothes Chicago police officers shot and wounded him in the leg, police said. Ruben Zarate of the 5100 of West Schubert Avenue was charged Tuesday with attempted armed robbery and aggravated assault of a police officer, the Cook County state's attorney's office said.
The incident started about 8 a.m., when the masked man, armed with a revolver, came in to Velasquez Mufflers For Less at 2600 N. Laramie Ave. and began demanding money, said Jose Sida, 37, a mechanic.
Employees told him they had little money and couldn't open the safe, so the man left two phone numbers for them to call when the owner returned with the combination, Sida said.
"He said, 'You guys better call me because otherwise I'm going to come back to shoot you,'" Sida said.
Instead, an employee called Chicago police.
Officers dressed in plainclothes came to the shop and told employees to call the man, Sida said. The man returned about noon, wearing the same mask and black clothing and officers told the employees to get to the back of the shop, Sida said.
A police source said the teen pulled a gun from his hooded sweat shirt and at least one officer opened fire. Zarate's injury was not thought to be life-threatening, the source said.
Mark Payne, a spokesman for the Independent Police Review Authority, said the man was treated at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center for a gunshot wound. He said his agency was investigating the police-involved shooting but said that the inquiry would take six months to complete and that he could not release any details.
Sida said the teen's idea to leave his phone numbers was "stupid," but said employees were just following police instructions to call him back.
Employees now are worried the man's friends may return to get back at the shop employees for calling police.
"We followed police instructions, otherwise he would have come back for sure [to rob us]," Sida said.
Oh Agentcel, you and your obsession with Super Smash Bros. Brawl. We should try to get a game on later tonight once I get off school! Because you have that game and are able to play it, unlike that Night Lord sucker.
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Do we need an emergency Gnome attack response team? Because if they take over South America what’s stopping them from getting us next!
First: This is from the sun. Never take the sun seriously, okay?
Secondly: It's a midget in a hat for Christ's sake!
U.S. says missile parts mistakenly sent to Taiwan
The only reason it's news is that the fuses are missile parts. By themselves they're useless pieces of scrap from the 60s.
Gigantic novelty helmets!
They're not conspiracy theorists or anything, but this all goes down to the mega-issue that is Taiwan.
It's for the good of humanity.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Poor fool he doesn't know ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!