The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced 23 new winners of the so-called "genius awards." The recipients were notified yesterday through a phone call "out of the blue" from the Foundation; all will receive $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached. The winners include David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme; writer Annette Gordon-Reed, whose book The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History; jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran; and theater director David Cromer, whose terrific Off-Broadway revival of Our Town won a slew of awards. "It robs me of my greatest excuse for everything—I’m broke," Cromer tells the Times. more ›

As flying out of Newark Liberty, Kennedy, and La Guardia airports continues to get more and more tedious, some passengers are turning towards smaller airfields where even at busy travel times like the day before Thanksgiving there are "no lines at the check-in counters, no lines to clear security and no lineup of idling planes on the runway," according to the Times. more ›

Speaking to Newsday from behind bars at a "private federal prison" in Queens, 20-year-old Steven Nobles says he "made a huge mistake" when, in a rush to catch his flight at MacArthur airport on Long Island last Thursday, he shoved a pipe bomb in his carry-on luggage. He must also be smacking his forehead for packing those fireworks, the 7-inch knife, the electrical circuit boards, and a dozen .22-caliber rounds used in a nailgun to drive nails into concrete. Nobles says we wants to write a letter to "all of New York" saying he's "sorry for what happened." Nevertheless, a judge denied bail and called Nobles "a danger to the community." He faces up to 20 years in prison, but his uncle Frank Henderson, who gave Nobles a job, says, "A terrorist would try to hide it. He didn't hide anything. He put it on the scanner. He hasn't grown up yet. I tried to keep him on the straight and narrow by giving him a trade. A kid is going to be a kid." more ›

An Army soldier was arrested at MacArthur airport on Long Island Saturday morning after she tried to bring a loaded revolver on a flight to San Antonio, Texas. The piece was not Army issue and 38-year-old Spc. Vonda Collier, who has been stationed for the past year at Camp Liberty near Baghdad, did not have a New York license to carry it. She was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon after it was found during a routine baggage check. Collier is on bereavement leave to attend her mother's funeral in Texas; police say she was visiting relatives on Long Island but her father tells Newsday she has no family here. And last Thursday a man was arrested at MacArthur for trying to bring a pipe bomb on the plane home to Vegas. He says he just wanted to "cause a giant smoke cloud, a flash of light and hopefully a loud noise." more ›

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has granted 25 more geniuses a cool half million dollars through their fellows program. The foundation's website states, "They include a neurobiologist, a saxophonist, a critical care physician, an urban farmer, an optical physicist, a sculptor, a geriatrician, a historian of medicine, and an inventor of musical instruments. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future. Each received a phone call from the MacArthur Foundation with news of $500,000 in no-strings-attached support over the next five years." more ›