Randy Turtles Shut Down JFK Runway

(NEWSER) - Mating season came to a speedy end for some turtles who strayed onto a runway at New York's JFK airport yesterday, the New York Post reports. After a pilot told air control he had run over some turtles on his way to take-off, wildlife workers shut down the runway for 35 minutes and moved the remaining 78 diamondback turtles back to the wild. The resulting delays slowed air traffic to a crawl for 90 minutes. More»

From the US to Bhutan, a tour of white-knuckle airports

(NEWSER) - The scenery is spectacular, but lofty mountaintops, stiff trade winds, and abbreviated tarmacs make for teeth-clenching landings at the world’s most harrowing runways, per Travel and Leisure:

• Paro Airport, Bhutan: Surrounded by 16,000-foot-high Himalayan peaks, what could possibly go wrong?
• Barra Airport, Scotland: Hold on tight. The roughness of your sandy landing is determined by the outgoing tide.

'Slippery little beast' eventually caught

(NEWSER) - Passengers on an Air China flight out of Kennedy Airport were probably perturbed at yesterday’s four-hour delay, but at least there was good reason for it: A monkey had worked its way out of its crate in the cargo hold of the Boeing 747. The Beijing-bound flight was held while Port Authority officers and an airport worker caught the “slippery little beast,” a source tells the New York Post . He was en route to China for medical research. More»

China's capital seeks to clean up bathrooms

(NEWSER) - The Chinese government is implementing new rules to spruce up its capital city's notoriously dirty public bathrooms. The weirdest of the bunch: a toilet in Beijing can be home to a maximum of two flies, reports the BBC . It's not clear how rigidly the measures will be enforced, but the idea apparently is to make restrooms in tourist areas a little less unpleasant. More»

Under awards: 'Eight life sentences ...'

(NEWSER) - In the alumni magazine for Harvard University you can find class notes on the lives of Supreme Court justices, titans of industry, Nobel laureates, and … serial killers. The recent issue of the mag features an "update" from former student Ted Kaczynski, class of 1962—otherwise known as the Unabomber, reports the Daily Mail . More»