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Once is Weird; Twice is a Persistent Trend

“We don’t know what kind of smuggling scheme is going on here,” Time magazine says, “but we think they’re doing it wrong.” The magazine says people “keep finding millions in gold bars” in airliner restrooms. Officials in India say maintenance workers found two duffel bags with 24 gold bars, weighing 53 pounds and worth US$1.2 million, in a lav cabinet on a plane that had arrived from Bangkok. A few weeks before, a ground crew in Bangladesh servicing an airliner that had arrived from Dubai found 280 gold bars had been flushed down the toilet; that haul was worth US$1.9 million. And that’s it: two cases. Still, “This is the best thing to happen to airplane bathrooms,” Time says, “since the invention of the mile-high club.” (RC/Time) ...I’m so old I can actually remember when Time published serious news.