Residents of a small southwest Nebraska town have a question for state officials: You’re not doing anything with that old electric chair, are you? The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled last year that the state’s use of the electric chair was unconstitutional because it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Some people in McCook—population just under 8,000—think “Old Sparky’’ could be a tourist attraction and have offered to take it off the state’s hands.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says that the information could mislead the public and its release could prompt some airports and others not to report incidents, but the proposal is drawing sharp criticism from bird safety experts and public records advocates.

critics want stricter standards for deciding who goes on the watch list. The list is based on "nominations" from intelligence and security agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, which use a "reasonable suspicion" standard to decide whether a person's suspected links to terrorism are strong enough to put him in the database. "No one wants to be the person who was too cautious about nominating names … so every name ends up on the list when only a handful should be,"