Travelers rejoice! In a week where many of us will be stuck in the annual American holiday ritual known as “stand-in-airport-security-lines-trying-to-get-to-Grandma’s-house,” remind yourself of this: Someday, and someday soon, you’ll be able to zip through security… using your cell phone! For some, that day is now.

It’s called paperless boarding. Here’s how it works: Instead of printing out a boarding pass, you download one to your cell phone or PDA. On the boarding pass, there’s a two dimensional bar code that’s encrypted with your name and flight information. You walk up to security. Transportation Security Administration agents use a handheld device to scan the bar code on your phone. And you’re done. (You still have to show ID). Right now, it’s only for domestic passengers who are traveling solo.

The program began about a year ago, when the TSA partnered with Continental Airlines at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport. Since then, upwards of 300,000 Continental passengers have used paperless boarding. The pilot program was so successful Continental expanded it to a total of eight airports.

Now other airlines and airports are getting into the act. So far, five airlines are using paperless boarding at fourteen different airports:

Alaska Airlines

- Seattle

American Airlines

- Chicago O’Hare, LAX, Orange County.

Continental Airlines

- Houston George Bush Intercontinental, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Newark Liberty International, Boston, Austin, San Antonio, Cleveland, LaGuardia Airport.

Delta Airlines

- LaGuardia Airport, and coming soon, Atlanta.

Northwest Airlines
-  Indianapolis Int’l Airport and Detroit Metro Airport

The TSA expects the program to be everywhere by the end of next year. Eventually, paperless boarding will even be used to track wait times, which, fingers crossed, will shorter… getting you to Grandma’s house that much faster.

To find out more on this new way to board, click here!

I considered buying solar panels for my house, until I saw the price tag. Apparently I’m not alone.

Duke Energy wants to change that with an out of the box pilot program that the utility hopes to launch in North Carolina, pending state regulatory approval.

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Here’s how it would work: You volunteer the roof of your home or business. Duke Energy installs solar panels free of charge. The utility pays you a small fee for “renting” your roof, but owns all the electricity the panels generate — which goes directly into the power grid.

Dave Scanzoni, Duke Energy’s communications director, says the program would allow the utility to study “distributive generation, which means instead of a major base load power plant, having many small, mini power plants that would be largely distributed in a wide service area.”

Another way to look at it: Many power consumers would become, in a sense, power generators.

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Jonathan’s Other Blogs: http://onthescene.blogs.foxnews.com/author/jonathanserrie/

By Anita McNaught, Baghdad Bureau

So you have a near-mutinous Parliament, seething with resentment and frustration, holding in their hands an International Agreement with the US that most of them, in one way or another, have ‘issues’ with.

What do you do?

You let them get it out of their system.

This was the stroke of genius at the weekend. The Word came down from the Presidency Council to let the lawmakers talk… Let them talk, and talk, as much as they wanted. Open the floodgates, let no holds be barred, no fulm be unfulminated.

So, Saturday morning, the long-suffering (but distinctly mischevious) Speaker of the House, Mahmoud Al Mashhedani invited his parliamentary colleagues to lay it all out for the world  - and their voting constituents - to hear.

Well, not quite all. Our old friend from the Sadr Party, Ahmed  Al-Massoudi, instantly decided to pick a fight over whether the Speaker had a quorum to proceed.

The Speaker’s enormous eyes narrowed.

“Please. Don’t waste our time…”, he snarled.

Then off the lawmakers went, making some fine arguments along the way.

Early on, former Mininster of Planning, Mehdi Al Hafedh, popped up. He looks like a tired mathematics teacher, but his quiet assurance silenced the room. He’d been looking into the US/Iraqi Agreement and he was worried.

There’s a lot of Iraqi money – more than $US 60 billion by his reckoning – from oil revenues piled up in international bank accounts, all under the protection of the United Nations under Resolution no. 1483. That means that money can’t be touched by any of Iraq’s many creditors, and can only be spent on reconstructing Iraq.

But when the UN Chapter VII Mandate comes off on December 31st, it’s potentially open season. Creditors dating back 20 years or more, to the Iran/Iraq war, to massacred minorities like the Kurds, to the Kuwaitis .. Russia, China for broken deals.. all could have claims for compensation.. and many of Iraq’s neighbours have not forgiven Saddam’s development debts either.

Any of Iraq’s assets could be seized as security. The Mininster of Defense worried this weekend that Iraq’s navy can’t keep Iraq’s oil shipments safe from pirates.. or its army stop Turkey from invading. That could be the LEAST of his worries.

Where in this Agreement, asked Al Hafedh, were the guarantees that Iraq’s badly-needed savings wouldn’t be grabbed? There was little that explicitly guaranteed American protection. This was a recipe for disaster.

“Our days of special treatment are over”, he mused. “International relations are getting more complex and unpredictable every day. We cannot rely on continued American support ”.

The Prime Minister had so far been deaf to all entreaties to amend the agreement, he explained. So Al-Hafedh pleaded for an extension to the UN mandate, to give Iraq time to work out how to protect itself.

His views were echoed and endorsed by another eminent speaker, Adnan Pachachi, former Iraqi Foreign Mininster and one of the architects of the present UAE.

But by then, the fun had really begun.

Click here to read more of Anita McNaught’s ‘On the Scene’ blogs!

Keep Reading …

By David Mac Dougall, Baghdad Bureau

Check out more info on Fallujah’s KFC in the video below:

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By Adam Shapiro, FOX Business Network correspondent

It all boils down to one simple question: do you believe them?

The numbers count, but nothing is more important than the faith of consumers, investors and citizens to believe statements from Citigroup and the US government about the most recent bailout to save the financial system, western civilization and “Big Nick’s” on New York’s upper west side (which serves the best burgers north of “Times Square” and to my knowledge has not asked for a bailout).  Trust me, Big Nicks is a part of this, but regarding CITI and Uncle Sam, do you believe them? Standing outside CITI Group headquarters on a cold New York day and listening to all of the experts - remember it was the experts who got us in to this mess - my answer to the question is no, and I hope to be proven wrong.

The 306 billion dollar FDIC insurance plan to save CITI covers a pool of trading account assets, which CITI says totals 458 billion.  (See slide 17 from the CITI Town Hall Presentation given Nov. 17)

Here is the problem: the same trading account assets are 520 billion at JP Morgan Chase and 429 billion at Bank of America.  So, will they now knock on the bailout door? What is different about those trading assets at CITI compared to the assets at JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America? Do you believe the FDIC, FEDERAL RESERVE and US TREASURY - which issued a joint press release saying, “With these transactions, the U.S. government is taking the actions necessary to strengthen the financial system and protect U.S. taxpayers and the U.S. economy”? What do they know that we don’t about those assets at other banks? Or, do you think they will have to step in to help JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America?

CITI insists that its future losses will not exceed 29 billion dollars and that the FDIC will not have to spend one penny to save them.  Really?  Do you believe them? Just last week CITI said, “CITI has a very strong capital and liquidity position….”  Really? Then why did CITI just get an additional $20 billion from the US Treasury?  Did CITI fail to understand its own exposure, or did they simply forget to include the $29 billion in potential future losses from the nifty Nov. 17 town hall pep talk that CEO Vikram Pandit gave CITI employees. It was at this time he notified them that CITI was cutting 50,000 jobs. Great way to motivate the troops.  Seriously, can you believe this stuff is happening?

Finally, this deal does not address the $1.2 trillion off balance sheet assets that CITI insists pose no threat.  (Add loads of sarcasm here) REALLY? We’ve heard that before, and remember 667 billion of that off-book asset are mortgage backed securities. CITI CFO Gary Crittenden says “CITI has enormous capacity to absorb credit losses.” Those off balance sheet assets “are likely not to have a significant impact on CITI over time.” But FOX Business anchor Alexis Glick asked Crittenden what guarantees CITI could give us that those 1.2 trillion wont impact CITI’s balance sheet, and that was a question he did not answer.  So, do you believe them?

Which brings me to Big Nick’s on New York’s Upper West Side. I am really hungry, and a Big Nick’s burger right now would be a lot easier to swallow than what the FDIC, Federal Reserve US Treasury and CITI are serving the American public.

Visit FOX Business Network for the latest news and exclusive coverage on the CITI bailout.