breaking

UPDATED: Breaking: Circuit City Closing 155 Stores

UPDATED: Breaking: Circuit City Closing 155 Stores

According to anonymous insider tips, Circuit City is closing 155 stores and withdrawing from 12 markets. This will be officially announced tomorrow at 8am, says our source. A scan we received of a letter distributed to CC employees helps corroborate the story. The tipsters say that store employees were told this morning. No information was provided at that time about severance pay. Employees in certain departments, like car installation, and Firedog, will likely be out of a job within 48 hours. Warranties will still be honored. UPDATE 6: Here’s the complete official list of closing stores.

TSA To Stop Being So Crazy About Liquids

TSA To Stop Being So Crazy About Liquids

Soon you might be able to take your shampoo and booze on the plane once again without trouble. The head of the TSA told WSJ’s The Middle Seat Terminal blog, “I think realistically in one year we, the TSA and foreign colleagues, will be a position to relax liquids restrictions…We are within a year of having the ability to differentiate threat liquids through the screening process.” The rule relaxation is thanks to airports deploying new x-ray machines and scanners that should be able to tell the difference between a bottle of water and a bomb. Just don’t expect it to happen any time before 2009.

FDIC Sheds Qualifying Beneficary Coverage Rule

FDIC Sheds Qualifying Beneficary Coverage Rule

The FDIC is going to make two changes to their coverage. One affects beneficiaries and one affects trust accounts, according to a bank insider who participated in teleconference call the FDIC held banks this morning as a refresher course on FDIC coverage. The big news is that the “qualifying beneficiary” rule is gone. Here’s the specifics:

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Amazon.com seems to be back up. A bit slow, but functional. All in all, the site was down for 3 hours, which is very very long for a gigantic online retailer to be down these days. [Amazon]

Amazon.com Is Was Down!

Amazon.com Is Was Down!

Whoa Amazon is down. It just says, “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.” Then I tried again and the front page was there, but when I clicked through, same error message. It looks like it’s been this way since at least 1:30 PM, eastern. It was broken for several Consumerist writers who tested it out.

General Outage Hits GrandCentral

General Outage Hits GrandCentral

Google’s telephone service GrandCentral has been down all morning. The service’s first general outage affects all customers; any calls to GrandCentral numbers are immediately disconnected.

Massive North American Blackberry Outage

Blackberry smartphones are screwed up! There’s a massive outage going on in “the Americas” says RIM.

Exclusive: CompUSA's Tentative Liquidation Schedule

Exclusive: CompUSA's Tentative Liquidation Schedule

A CompUSA repair tech has leaked to The Consumerist what he says is their schedule for the liquidations happening now until they close everything down after the holiday season. This is in no way set in stone, he says, but it looks like this is how it’s going to go down starting this week. (He would also like everyone to know that no one his place steals porn from customers).

Ted Stevens Wants To Switch Between Phones "As I Ride My Motorcycle"

Ted Stevens Wants To Switch Between Phones "As I Ride My Motorcycle"

Carey has a hot new Ted Stevens bon mot, gleaned from his liveblogging of the Senate Commerce Committee Hearing On Number Portability, coming from the same crazy-old-man-stratosphere as his infamous “series of tubes” remark.

IDT Energy Scammer Spotted On Upper East Side

IDT Energy Scammer Spotted On Upper East Side

I work from home and was in the middle of a busy period when a young man came to my door saying that he worked for ConEd or that he was doing some work for ConEd — he definitely identified himself with ConEd. Anyways, he told me he that he was doing work in the building and that he needed to see my bill to check if I had a message on it indicating that I was one of the ones in the building who would be getting a discount next month. Well, chock it up to me being distracted or just plain gullible, but I never even thought for a second that it was a scam. He seemed like he was merely performing a check, not anything more. He then proceed to tell me that I was, in fact, one of the lucky ones, and that I’d be seeing a 7% discount starting next month (all the while making notations on my bill, supposedly indicating where the savings would come from).

Liveblogging Digg's $#@*!storm

Liveblogging Digg's $#@*!storm

2:28 Submitted this post to Digg.

Digg Goes Ape$#@*!

Digg Goes Ape$#@*!

A wide-scale user revolt is disrupting popular social news networking Digg. It’s a protest over Digg acquiescing to MPAA pressure and deleting a 15,000+ dugg story about a crack for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray DRM system.

Wiis At Target This Sunday

Wiis At Target This Sunday

At least 60 Wiis will be arriving and selling at Target stores this Sunday, according to an inside source.

BREAKING: JetBlue Cancels All NY Area Flights, Police Respond To Riotous Crowds

BREAKING: JetBlue Cancels All NY Area Flights, Police Respond To Riotous Crowds

Police are responding to crowd disruptions in the Newark International Airport following JetBlue’s announcement that it was canceling all flights in the New York Metro area.

JetBlue Getting Ass Kicked By Weather Today

JetBlue Getting Ass Kicked By Weather Today

A Winter Weather advisory seems to be kicking JetBlue’s ass, still reeling from last month’s flight cancellation debacle.

Michael Baroody Gets CPSC Nomination Nod, White House Confirms

Michael Baroody Gets CPSC Nomination Nod, White House Confirms

The White House broke its press blackout and confirmed that Bush intends to nominate Michael Baroody for chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, WSJ online reported today at 5:20 pm.

BREAKING: CompUSA Closing 128 Stores

BREAKING: CompUSA Closing 128 Stores

CompUSA is closing 128 of 229 stores, a source familiar with the proceedings tells The Consumerist.

EXCLUSIVE: CompUSA Closing 100 Stores

EXCLUSIVE: CompUSA Closing 100 Stores

CompUSA will close 100 stores this year, according to an industry insider speaking to us under conditions of anonymity.