British authorities say they disrupted a well-advanced "major terrorist plot" to blow up passenger flights between the United Kingdom and the United States using liquid explosives, prompting a full-scale security clampdown at U.S. and British airports and a cascade of delays in transatlantic flights.

Britain Claims To Thwart Airline Terror Plot, Raising Security Alerts

Not to suggest a conspiracy theory, but the busts changed the news agenda overnight away from the major crisis with the oil pipeline in the United States that will most likely result in gas shortages and prices at the pump over $3 a gallon, and the new multi-million dollar FEMA awards to big Katrina contracters.

BP oil was told by employees and contractors in a February 2004 survey that its pipeline network probably was not being adequately monitored for corrosion, according to a company report.

BP Oil Warned of Pipelines Corrosion in 2004

The four giant construction firms that received controversial no-bid contracts to house Hurricane Katrina evacuees last September will be earning up to $250 million apiece to do similar work after future disasters, according to a new FEMA policy.

Katrina Contractors Win FEMA Work

Not to mention it's a red hot August in much of the U.S. due to global warming - and we are on the verge of the mid-term election season and the Republicans are worried.