Fireworks store has video of Faisal Shahzad

NEW YORK: A suspect in the failed Times Square car bombing was videotaped at a Pennsylvania store buying fireworks, but store officials said Wednesday they weren”t strong enough to cause a mass detonation.

Faisal Shahzad bought fireworks from the Phantom Fireworks showroom in this small northeastern Pennsylvania town on March 8, said William Weimer, the store”s vice president. Shahzad bought six to eight boxes, each containing 36 Silver Salute M88 fireworks, a consumer-grade product made mostly of paper and cardboard.

Even if used together, the firecrackers could not have caused an explosion, Weimer said.

“The M88 he used wouldn”t damage a watermelon. Thank goodness he used that,” said Bruce Zoldan, president of Ohio-based Phantom Fireworks. He said law enforcement authorities asked that the video not be made public.

Each M88 has an amount of pyrotechnic powder equal in size to less of a sixth of an aspirin. Fireworks purchased illegally can be up to 1,000 times more powerful, Zoldan said.

“There”s no doubt, had he bought this on the black market, that the outcome in New York would have been totally different,” Zoldan said.

Shahzad also purchased two fireworks shells designed to go off high in the air as well as two ground-based sparklers. The purchase totaled less than $100.

“It was a very unremarkable event,” Weimer said. “As our purchases go, it was a pretty modest purchase.”

Authorities in New York on Saturday found an SUV parked in Times Square that has been linked to Shahzad. Inside the car, authorities found cheap-looking alarm clocks connected to a 16-ounce can filled with M88 fireworks, which were apparently intended to detonate several gas cans, propane tanks and fertilizer.

Shahzad was charged Tuesday in the plot to blow up the SUV. Authorities say Shahzad is cooperating with investigators, but don”t yet know whether others were involved.

In Pennsylvania, Shahzad had to show his driver”s license and fill out an application to buy the fireworks, Zoldan said. On the form, “the individual put his last name first, and his first name last, probably intentionally,” Zoldan said.

Phantom Fireworks requires proof of age and out-of-state residence to enter the store”s showroom because of laws that prohibit Pennsylvanians from buying most fireworks. The store is off an interstate near the New York border.

Weimer said the fireworks Shahzad purchased could never have worked as he intended.

“If this fellow was intent on having firecrackers chain fuse and mass detonate, he was just barking up the wrong tree. That would never happen,” Weimer said.

Zoldan said law enforcement authorities have viewed surveillance video from the store and asked that it not be made public.

“We sell our product to celebrate America”s birthday and America”s freedom and this person was buying this product to destroy America”s freedom, and to destroy the security of people walking the streets,” Zoldan said. “We”re disappointed.”

Where Has Paris Hilton Disappeared

Where Has Paris Hilton Disappeared, Once a fixture on the red carpet and a staple of the daily news cycle, Paris Hilton has recently all but disappeared from the American consciousness.
Has the socialite who became famous simply for being famous ceded her throne to a new set of up-and-coming reality stars and party fixtures, or has she gone purposely dark in order to resurrect her brand like a phoenix rising from the ashes?
Paris Hilton broke onto the New York City socialite scene in 2001, more famous for her late-night partying than for the small modeling jobs she had started taking. But her fame factor really began to take off when she starred in the Fox reality television series “The Simple Life,” with her childhood best friend Nicole Richie, in 2003.
Dspite bad movie reviews, Hilton managed to make news. She was so pervasive that in 2004 New York Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove banned her from his page and in 2007 The Associated Press conducted an experiment to try not reporting on Hilton for a week. Grove was successful for two years. The AP made it through its weeklong blackout and then reported on Hilton’s arrest for driving with a suspended license nine days after the blackout began.
It is hard to believe that after years of honing her ability to exploit herself and her name, Hilton has simply let the media forget about her. Perhaps dipping below the radar is exactly what Hilton is looking to do in order to rebuild her brand.

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Where Has Paris Hilton Disappeared was first posted on December 6, 2009 at 11:08 am.

World’s Largest Floating Christmas Tree Lights up in Brazil

World’s Largest Floating Christmas Tree Lights up in Brazil, The lights are blazing from the world’s largest floating Christmas tree — a gigantic 85-metre high metal structure set on a lagoon in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
Despite the rain, some 100,000 people flocked around the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon on Saturday (December 5) night to watch the fireworks show which has become one of the city’s main tourist attractions over the past decade.
This year, the tree constructed by Brazil’s largest insurance company features images of Christmas wreaths flickering from its nearly three million lights.
With the mountain-top Christ the Redeemer statue looking down on it, the tree stands as a brightly flashing symbol of peace in one of the world’s most violent cities.
The Christmas tree, first erected in 1996, is Rio de Janeiro’s third biggest tourist event after the pre-lenten Carnival and New Year’s Eve on Copacabana and other beaches. More than a million people are expected to view the structure before the lights are turned off on January 6. The Guinness Book of Records lists it as the world’s largest floating Christmas tree.

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World’s Largest Floating Christmas Tree Lights up in Brazil was first posted on December 6, 2009 at 11:29 am.