NYPD Gives All-Clear after Times Square Scare
A cooler full of water bottles left in front of a building in New York City's Times Square caused the latest in a string of terrorism-related false alarms Friday.
New York police temporarily closed the streets surrounding the suspicious package, found near the site of last week's failed car bombing, before the NYPD bomb squad determined it wasn't a threat.
The disruption to Times Square's normally bustling vehicle and pedestrian traffic lasted around an hour.
Special Section: Terrorism in the U.S.
The package was found at 46th Street and Broadway around 1:15 p.m. in front of the Marriott Marquis Hotel. Police cordoned off the square with yellow tape, while yelling "Get back, get back" at onlookers and guiding bomb-sniffing dogs through the area.
No evacuations were ordered from buildings, but workers were told to stay indoors as the police responded.
The bomb squad x-rayed the soft-sided cooler and made a visual inspection before determining it posed no threat.
On an average day, police get 90 to 100 reports of a suspicious package. Since the failed car bomb attack Saturday on Times Square, that figure has risen about 30 percent.
One earlier Friday was reported near the area where the car bomb was discovered, but turned out to be someone's lunch.
Tensions have been high following Faisal Shahzad's alleged attempt to detonate an explosives-laden SUV last Saturday, sparking several false alarms this week.
Late Wednesday, a U-Haul truck was ditched near the toll plaza on New York City's Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. A bridge authority officer smelled gasoline and saw a man running from the vehicle, prompting NYPD's bomb squad and other emergency responders to rush to the scene. Nothing dangerous was found in the truck.
According to CBS station WCBS-TV, the driver was waved to the side of the road by Port Authority officials for a routine search and may have fled because the truck was stolen.
Thursday morning, portions of Seattle-Tacoma airport were evacuated after an employee noticed smoke coming from a passenger's bag. Authorities detonated the bag and found the smoke was caused by a faulty battery charger, but not before hundreds of passengers were cleared from the baggage area and four flights were delayed.
Late Thursday morning a Greyhound bus on its way from Bangor, Maine, to New York City stopped in Portsmouth, N.H., after someone called 911 to report an explosive device found aboard. The bomb scare shut down Portsmouth's city center as passengers were let off the bus one at a time under the watch of a sharpshooter.
The bomb scare began when a passenger overheard a man speaking a foreign language on a cell phone, police said. The passenger then heard someone say - in English - that there was a bomb on board and decided to call police, authorities said.
No explosives were found, but two other passengers were arrested for their behavior after leaving the bus - one charged with resisting arrest for refusing to follow orders, the other charged with obstructing government administration for allegedly giving police a fake name.
Later Thursday, an Emirates airlines flight leaving New York was temporarily delayed after two passengers were falsely matched with the government no-fly list. The passengers were eventually cleared, allowing the Dubai-bound flight to depart from John F. Kennedy International airport soon after.
The episode conjured memories of Shahzad's arrest, which also came aboard an Emirates airlines flight heading to Dubai. Shahzad managed to board the plane Monday despite being added to the no-fly list earlier in the day, prompting changes to the policy, which call for airlines to update their no-fly databases every two hours instead of every 24 hours.