"Stowaway sought mom, officials say" Associated Press April 28, 2014
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The 15-year-old Somali boy who survived a ride in the wheel well of a jetliner has not spoken publicly about his ordeal, but interviews with relatives, friends, and law enforcement officials reveal that he was frustrated about not being able to reunite with his mother in Africa.
The teenager had been arguing at home and, in an impulsive move, hopped a fence at San Jose International Airport last Sunday and clambered into the wheel well of a Hawaii-bound plane.
‘‘What people need to understand is that these young teens are coming from a country torn by a civil war with no basic education and suddenly put in these high schools or elementary schools where they have a cultural shock,’’ said Talha Nooh of the Muslim Community Association.
Related:
Somalia need still extreme, UN says
Two UN aides shot dead in Somalia
80 Somalis deported from Kenya
Somalis run from a fireball and explosion
That was a the photo the Globe gave me on April 11, page A3.
‘‘This whole thing should be looked at in the context of a teen who is emotionally attached to his mom and grandparents,’’ Nooh said. ‘‘The father is working 24 hours a day to take care of family here.’’
The boy’s mother is in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, and is asking for US help in being reunited with her son.
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Related:
"He was questioned by FBI and airport officials and has not spoken publicly about the ordeal that raised questions on airport security and revealed the personal family drama of a Somali immigrant trying to adjust to life in the United States. 15-year-old Yahya Abdi, who lives in Santa Clara with his father, stepmother, and siblings, has been unhappy in California and desperately missed his mother, according to those who know his family. His mother lives in a refugee camp in eastern Ethiopia."
Another orphan.
Also see: Martial Mother’s Day
FLASHBACK:
"Plane stowaway OK, but trip raises security concerns" | Associated Press April 22, 2014
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A 16-year-old boy scrambled over an airport fence, crossed a tarmac, and climbed into a jetliner’s wheel well, then flew for five freezing hours to Hawaii — a misadventure that stirred concern about possible weak spots in the security system that protects the nation’s airline fleet.
So what false flag is in the works?
The boy, who lives in Santa Clara, Calif., and attends a local high school, hopped out of the wheel well of a Boeing 767 on the Maui airport tarmac Sunday. Authorities found him wandering around the airport grounds with no identification. He was questioned by the FBI and taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he was found to be unharmed.
FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu said the teen did not remember the flight from San Jose. It was not immediately clear how the boy stayed alive in the unpressurized space, where temperatures at cruising altitude can fall well below zero and the air is too thin for humans to stay conscious. An FAA study of stowaways found that some went into a hibernation-like state.
Yeah, this story really stinks like some others.
Could they be planted stories so outrageous to suggest that the every day lies simply must be true?
Somehow, the boy managed to slip through multiple layers of security, including wide-ranging video surveillance, German shepherds, and Segway-riding police officers.
Yeah, somehow.
Security footage from the San Jose airport verified that the boy climbed a fence and crossed a runway to get to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 on Sunday morning, Simon said.
The airport, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is surrounded by fences, although many sections do not have barbed wire and could easily be scaled.
The boy climbed over during the night, ‘‘under the cover of darkness,’’ San Jose airport spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes said Monday.
Airport police were working with the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration to review security.
The boy was released to child protective services in Hawaii and not charged with a crime, Simon said.
Who does his family know?
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Just let me check my phone real quick before moving on to the next class of the day:
"Mobile payment systems fail to take off with consumers" by Brian X. Chen | New York Times April 28, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO — Millions of Americans use smartphones for tasks like hailing a taxi or checking in for a flight. But for buying something in a store? That mostly remains a tech entrepreneur’s dream.
For years now, the promise of a mobile wallet — in which paying in person can be as simple as hitting a button on a phone — has led to a host of US startups trying to cash in.
Those companies, though, have faced nearly as many hurdles as they have competitors, including the most basic ones: Many people are not aware of the new payment systems, others are confused by the many choices, and some see no benefit in the mobile option over using cash or credit cards.
The hurdles have left all the payment companies scrambling to find the code for a profitable business model. And now, a feeling is growing that mobile payments systems will not replace traditional wallets, at least anytime soon.
“There was the assumption that there was going to be some sort of spark that ignited the marketplace, and there was going to be a mobile payments revolution,” said Denée Carrington, a Forrester analyst who studies the mobile payments market. But people do not mind paying with cash or a credit card, she said.
“So this was never going to be a revolution,” she said. “It’s definitely more of an evolution.”
Despite the slow uptake of the technology by consumers, there is no shortage of ways to pay using a mobile phone. Startups like Square, Loop, LifeLock, and Clinkle offer apps that promise to let smartphone owners pay for products in stores with the tap of a button.
Endorsed on TV by Rudy Giuliani. Lifelock!
Bigger brands have stepped in, too, offering different types of mobile payments. Samsung Electronics last year agreed to include Visa’s software payWave on many Samsung phones.
And for years, Google has offered Google Wallet, which allows consumers to load their credit card information into a digital wallet so their phones can be tapped on some merchant terminals instead of using a credit card.
Apple hasn’t announced plans to get into mobile payments, but Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, has said that it is an area of interest.
None of the companies, though, have found the winning combination to transform mobile payments into everyday consumer behavior.
*************
Analysts say that before the public can be expected to know about and widely adopt mobile payments, some significant problems must be overcome.
As the digital payment world stands now, there are many different parties involved in making the payments work, and they come from different industries and have different interests. The disparate parties include banks, payment networks, retailers, wireless carriers, and the companies that make digital wallets themselves.
Merchants who want to accept mobile payments are unlikely to support all the possible types. So consumers who want to buy things with a phone must first find a business that supports the technology, and then figure out which smartphone technology the store accepts.
Square, a San Francisco startup that is one of the most prominent mobile payment companies, has struggled to get people to use its Square Wallet app for paying with a smartphone. The company has renamed the app several times to gain more attention.
Square’s big partnership with Starbucks, which the startup hoped would help it add users, instead led to losses at Square of at least $20 million last year, according to a person who was involved with the partnership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the number was private. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the loss.
Square declined to comment.
David Byttow, who was the lead engineer working on Square Wallet from mid-2012 to mid-2013, said getting a mainstream digital payment solution started was difficult and represented something of a Catch-22 situation. More people would most likely use a service if it were widely available, he said, but merchants are not interested in installing new payment software and hardware unless a large swath of shoppers are using the service.
But even if the payment process were widely available, companies still would need to persuade consumers that there was an advantage to making payments from a phone.
With hackers and the NSA out there running wild?
Aditya Khurjekar, a former Verizon Wireless executive who worked on mobile payments there, said he believed consumers do not find it bothersome to carry or use credit cards and cash.
“There isn’t a problem to solve,” Khurjekar said in an interview. Khurjekar, who now runs the Money Event, a business conference revolving around mobile wallets, said companies offering mobile payments needed to offer incentives that cash and credit cards cannot, like coupons and discounts.
“The mobile payments experience has to become the hook for some other commerce shopping experience,” he said.
Are you kids tired of getting hooked by $ale$men?
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Couldn't seem to find it so I guess I'll just check the app and see where it is. Maybe I left it at the bar?
