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After Confusion, Justice Department Restores
Federal Amber Alert Website
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After being taken down, because of the government
shutdown, the federal website dealing with alerts
about abducted children AmberAlert.gov was
restored Monday morning. The website for the
Office of Justice Programs (a federal website),
which hosts Amber Alert information, has been
"shut down" due to funding issues. This website
is informational only. The Amber Alerts
themselves have not been affected. Amber Alerts
are issued jurisdictionally, by county or state
(not the federal government), and therefore the
system itself was not affected by the shutdown.
The decision to restore the website was made
because there was a public safety concern that
the program itself was down and not just the
website. Amber stands for America's Missing
Broadcast Emergency Response. The program was
named after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman who in 1996
was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas.
Her case remains unsolved.
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In Other News

• A flight to Las Vegas, had an unusual passenger
  last week a 9-year-old boy traveling on his own,
  apparently without a ticket. The boy went through
  security with all other passengers, the
  Transportation Security Administration said in a
  statement, but officials are still trying to
  figure out how he did it -- and how he then got
  on the flight. Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for
  Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, said
  the crew of Delta Flight 1651 "became suspicious
  of the child's circumstances" during the flight
  from Minneapolis to Las Vegas. Crew members got
  in touch with authorities in Las Vegas and turned
  the boy over to Child Protective Services, Hogan
  said in a statement. Airport officials reviewed
  security footage and don't think the child had a
  ticket. The boy, a runaway from the Twin Cities,
  spent a good amount of time at the airport before
  boarding the plane.