Random House rushed out a new edition

NBC News said one man had been released but another man from Detroit raised suspicion because airport screeners in the United States found watches and cell phones taped together in his luggage.

ABC News cited officials as saying that a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle, a box cutter and three large knives were also found in the luggage and that the man was carrying $7,000 in cash.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the suspicious items were located in checked luggage associated with two passengers on United Flight 908 from Chicago O'Hare to Amsterdam on Sunday night.

"The items were not deemed to be dangerous in and of themselves and as we share information with our international partners, Dutch authorities were notified of the suspicious items," the department said in a statement. It said the matter was still under investigation.

A U.S. law enforcement official said the men did not have banned items in their carry-on luggage and that federal air marshals were on the flight.
ow'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.

In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.

Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays, and sales rose further. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January, spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. That same month, IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. Now Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air more than two to one.