The aircraft might not be flying, but the certificate has gone on vacation

The Register - Sat, 09/12/2026 - 02:00
BORK!BORK!BORK! We still don't know what caused the air traffic control mayhem in the UK in early September, but one information board at Luton Airport appears to have gone out in sympathy. Spotted by Register reader Mark, the digital sign usually shows passenger information. Today, however, it looks like either the system clock is wrong or someone has forgotten to renew a server certificate. It's not the usual "DNS. It's always DNS," but not far off. For those blissfully unaware, the UK's air traffic control system has had a bad week. A glitch in National Air Traffic Services (NATS) resulted in thousands of flight cancellations and travel disruption for around 330,000 passengers. And it appears whoever is running this information board at Luton has done the computing equivalent of "anything you can do I can do better." Luton Airport is a base for the likes of Ryanair and easyJet. Its logo looks like someone was playing Tetris when they were asked to dream up the branding, and it celebrated 5.5 million passengers passing through over the summer. The airport was not spared the chaos, along with many others, but the good news is that our reader's flight departed on time, and a delicious, cold adult beverage was waiting at the destination. For others wondering what has become of their flight, it's good to see that the information boards are already in another time zone, or whoever is responsible for keeping the server certificate valid has taken a well-earned vacation. Nobody really needed that information anyhow, did they? ®

The Black Market for a Lifesaving Cat Drug

Mother Jones - Sat, 09/12/2026 - 00:01

In 2023, Marlena Arjo adopted a one-eyed kitten with a penchant for destruction. She named him Otto, and over the next eight months, Otto grew into his own little chaotic personality.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){prx("https:\/\/play.prx.org\/e?ge=prx_149_f151ce71-21b5-4ed7-a3f1-351e97567df4&uf=https%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.revealradio.org%2Frevealpodcast", "prx-1", "embed")});Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

“ He’s laying on houseplants, he’s tearing books out of the bookshelves, ripping the calendar off the wall…I wasn’t prepared for having a criminal in my home,” Arjo joked.

Within months, Otto got sick and stopped eating. Arjo rushed him to a vet and learned he had feline infectious peritonitis, better known as FIP, a disease that kills nearly all cats that contract it. 

The vet said there was nothing the clinic could do. But there was something Arjo could do.

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Arjo recalled the vet telling her. “But by the way, you can get drugs for this if you go to this Facebook group.”

This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Hyperfixed podcast, we tell the story of the cat drug black market, why it was even necessary, and how cat lovers fought for big changes to make the black market obsolete.

This is an update of a show that originally aired in January 2026.

Categories: Political News

Pages