TSA keeps the change at airport checkpoints

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has collected — and kept — more than $1 million in the past three years from airline passengers who forgot coins at checkpoints. Passengers must take change out of their pockets and drop it in plastic bins that go through X-ray machines, but tens of thousands of people each year forget to reclaim it. The TSA has been keeping change since October 2004 when it lobbied Congress to let the agency use the money to defray security costs. The cash leader: Los Angeles International Airport, where passengers left behind $89,375 from Sept. 30, 2004 to Oct. 1, 2007, according to TSA reports.

Bra-vo!

Clever climber rescued

An injured U.S. hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday. Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said he helped lift Jessica Bruinsma, 24, of Colorado, to safety Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain. "She's a very smart girl, and she acted very resourcefully," Rasp said. "She kept her shirt and jacket for warmth but thought the sports bra could work as a signal."

Shredded

Elvis photo destroyed

The original photo of the famous National Enquirer picture of Elvis Presley lying in his open casket in 1977 was shredded during a six-year anthrax-decontamination effort on the tabloid's former Boca Raton, Fla., headquarters, according to a federal lawsuit. The photo, valued at $1 million, is the center of a dispute between Boca Raton developer David Rustine, who bought the contaminated building in 2003, and John Y. Mason, whose company, Sabre, was hired to decontaminate it. The Enquirer had paid one of Presley's cousins $18,000 to secretly take the snapshot.

Passages

Dody Goodman, 93, a comedian and character actress who gained fame as the resident zany on Jack Paar's late-night show and as the ditsy matriarch on the soap opera "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," died Sunday in New Jersey.

Fyodor Uglov, 103, the world's oldest practicing surgeon, died in St. Petersburg.

Wilbur Hardee, 89, who founded Hardee's restaurant chain in 1960, died Friday in Greenville, N.C.

Bryan Baptiste, 52, the mayor of Kauai, died Sunday at his Hawaiian home of a heart attack.

Revius Ortique Jr., 84, a former civil-rights attorney who became the first black justice on the Louisiana Supreme Court, died Sunday in Baton Rouge of complications from a stroke.

Frank Powers, 67, the millionaire endorsed by Republican leaders as their candidate for the New York congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Vito Fossella, died in his sleep Sunday at home of natural causes.

Today in History

1807: A grand jury in Richmond, Va., indicted former Vice President Aaron Burr on charges of treason and high misdemeanor (he was later acquitted).

1983: The space shuttle Challenger — carrying America's first woman in space, Sally Ride — landed safely in California.

2007: Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's cousin known as "Chemical Ali," and two other ex-officials were sentenced to hang for slaughtering up to 180,000 Kurds two decades earlier.

Today's Birthdays

Actress Michele Lee, 66. Musician Mick Fleetwood, 61. Actress Danielle Spencer, 43. Actress Sherry Stringfield, 41. Actress-producer Mindy Kaling, 29. Actress Minka Kelly (TV: "Friday Night Lights"), 28. Singer Solange Knowles, 22.

Seattle Times news services