The State Department has issued a worldwide travel alert that Al-Qaeda is planning an attack in the Middle East or North Africa in the month of August.

The press release, which has not yet appeared on the State Department website [Update: Here's the alert] but is reprinted by Business Insider in full, warns,

"The Department of State alerts U.S. citizens to the continued potential for terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula. Current information suggests that al-Qa'ida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August. This Travel Alert expires on August 31, 2013."

D.C. Metro staff and passengers had to come to the rescue when a woman started giving birth in L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station yesterday, the Washington Post reports.

Shavonnte Taylor, 23, was on her way to an appointment with her obstetrician when she started having contractions two weeks before her baby was due. She tried to continue her journey but the baby had different ideas.

Luckily Autumn Manka, a licensed emergency medical technician, was passing by. She lay Taylor down on the floor as more passengers, DC Metro staff, and two Metro Transit Police officers came to help. Within minutes the baby was born next to a broken escalator near the Seventh Street and Maryland Avenue exit.

Inevitably, the kid got his own hashtag, #metrobaby. Several Twitter users posted a snarky headline from today's Express, while others suggested naming the baby L'Enfant. "L'Enfant" of course, is French for "the infant."

His real name is Amir Mason. He weighs 8 pounds, 5 ounces and is doing fine.

If you care about gay rights, you might want to rethink your drink.

Gay rights groups are boycotting Russian vodka after the country cracked down on gay activists and pride parades, the BBC reports. In addition, new legislation makes it illegal to teach "non-traditional values" (ie. gay-friendly values) to children.

On June 29, a gay pride parade in St. Petersburg was attacked by thugs and several marchers were badly beaten. Police then rounded up the marchers (not the thugs) and arrested them. You can see photos from this and related events in this shocking photo essay from Buzzfeed.

The boycott started in the U.S. a few days ago and has since spread to other countries. Gay bars have pulled Russian vodka from their shelves and an online petition is calling for Manchester to "untwin" from its sister city St. Petersburg. Protesters have dumped vodka on the street in front of the Russian consulate in New York City and taken to Twitter with hashtags such as #dumpstoli and #dumprussianvodka.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia almost two decades ago but there's been a severe backlash against the LGBT community in recent years.

One major vodka brand, Stolichnaya, has come out with a public statement in support of gay rights and says it shouldn't be targeted by the boycott. They say that while they use Russian ingredients, they are in fact a Latvian company.

There's an ongoing discussion in the LGBT about expanding the boycott to include other Russian products and also the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Police in New York and Seattle were called in to investigate when a man ditched his luggage in order to avoid overweight baggage fees, NBC reports.

The unidentified traveler was going to take Delta Air Lines Flight 1452 from Seattle to JFK when he was told his baggage was overweight and he would have to pay $1,400 in fees. The man decided that whatever he was lugging across the continent wasn't worth that much money and left it behind. When the abandoned bags were spotted it sparked a security alert and the check-in area was closed for two hours.

The passenger, blissfully unaware, flew to JFK only to find police waiting for him. He was questioned and released after police decided that he hadn't intended on causing a panic.

It's unclear how many bags this guy had or where he was going, but a look at Delta's overweight fees show that he was probably carrying his prize antique brick collection to display at the London Brick Fair this summer. No, that doesn't really exist.

Worried about getting slapped with extra fees? Check out our guide to packing your luggage efficiently. Or you can simply wear 70 items of clothing to avoid overweight baggage fees.

Archaeologists from the University of Leicester in England have discovered a strange coffin at the same site where they discovered the remains of King Richard III earlier this year.

The team was digging in the foundations of the Franciscan friary of the Grey Friars, where Richard was buried in 1485 after being killed at the Battle of Bosworth. They were hoping to find other historic burials and especially wanted to complete the excavation of a stone sarcophagus that had been partially revealed in the initial excavation.

Once they cleared away the dirt and opened the coffin, they were shocked to find a lead coffin inside the stone one. This may be the first medieval burial of its kind and now scholars are puzzling over what it means, and how to open it without damaging the contents.

They know there's a body inside because the bottom part has been damaged by time enough to reveal a pair of skeletal feet. Church records suggest it may be one of three people--two leaders of the English Grey Friars order named Peter Swynsfeld (died 1272) and William of Nottingham (died 1330). It may also be a knight named Sir William de Moton of Peckleton, who died between 1356 and 1362.

Richard III's remains will be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral early next year. A permanent exhibition about Richard III and the excavation will open in town at about the same time, hopefully with this new burial as part of the exhibit. The university has also launched a Richard III website.

It's one of the most popular attractions in Pyongyang, North Korea, and with a new coat of paint it's ready to attract more admiring crowds for a brainwashing display of jingoism.

The USS Pueblo is a U.S. Navy spy ship captured by the North Korean Navy in 1968. While on an intelligence gathering mission in the Sea of Japan to check out the activities of North Korea and the Soviet Union, the ship was attacked by several North Korean vessels and two jets. Two of her crew were killed before the captain surrendered. The survivors spent eleven months in prison and were subjected to physical and psychological torture.

Despite this, they were defiant. When posed for propaganda photos they subtly gave the photographer the finger. When the North Koreans discovered what this meant, the torture got worse.

North Korea insisted the ship was in its waters, while the U.S. said it stayed in international waters. The U.S. had to finally admit "fault" in order to get the crew's release, and then immediately retracted that admission.

Today the USS Pueblo is still in North Korea. It's been a propaganda piece for some time and is moored next to the Fatherland War of Liberation Museum, where it receives a steady stream of North Korean visitors and a few foreign tours. Now the Japan Times reports it's been repainted and restored along with the rest of the museum. Presumably the damage caused by North Korean guns was left intact, as that was a star attraction. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Trafalgar Square in London has a new statue -- a giant blue cockerel. It's the latest work of art to adorn the Fourth Plinth, a nineteenth-century base flanking Nelson's Column. The other three plinths all have statues but the Fourth Plinth never got one, and so in recent years it's become home to a series of temporary sculptures.

The giant blue cock, as the British media can't resist calling it, has caused a bit of a stir. The cockerel and the color blue are both symbols of France, and this is a square dedicated to one of the British Empire's greatest victories over Napoleon. German artist Katharina Fritsch, who created the sculpture, said she wasn't aware of the symbolism. As London Mayor Boris Johnson says (he's the blond guy with the awful haircut in this video) it could mean a lot of things, such as the British victory in the Tour de France. At the very least, the royal blue hue ties into London's recent baby boy mania.

The Huffington Post has more photos of the giant rooster.

Oh Canada! First you gave us William Shatner, now you give us a human-powered helicopter.

A team of engineers called AeroVelo has won a $250,000 award for creating a human-powered helicopter that could fly three meters off the ground for 60 seconds while keeping the cockpit within a ten-square-meter area. The American Helicopter Society sponsored this Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition, and the prize money has been on offer for nearly 30 years.

Man-powering a helicopter is tough to do since humans don't have strength to lift themselves off the ground without large rotors. Of course, large rotors are heavy, making it hard for a human to get the helicopter off the ground. This is the reason all those Renaissance-era experiments with birdlike flapping wings never worked. To cut down on weight, the team used super-light materials that are too delicate to be flown outdoors.

AeroVelo's flight lasted 64.11 seconds, a world record, and reached up to 3.3 meters in altitude. As you can see from the video, drift was a problem with this and all other competitors, with the machine drifting up to 9.8 meters.

So will this be the new way to get to the hockey game? Probably not. The personal jetpack has been around for decades but never took off either. The Martin Jetpack company is trying to change that, although they haven't yet made their jetpacks -- which will probably cost in the six figures -- commercially available yet. Popular Mechanics did an interesting article on why jet packs aren't feasible.

Officials evacuated and closed parts of the Angeles National Forest after finding a dead squirrel that was infected with bubonic plague, the BBC reports.

Scientists are currently examining the squirrel to see if it died of the disease or of other causes. Park officials are using insecticides on squirrel burrows to kill off any fleas, which is how the disease spreads from one animal to another. The Twisted Arrow, Broken Blade and Pima Loops of the Table Mountain campgrounds are closed until further notice, although hiking is still permitted.

The plague killed about a third of Europe's population in the 14th century but is not nearly as active these days. Only four people have contracted the disease in Los Angeles County since 1984. This map from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows each case of the plague in the United States since 1970. About 80% were of the bubonic variety and most cases were not fatal, since antibiotic treatment is usually successful. In related news, researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany are developing an easy test to detect the plague in its early stages.

As you can see, there are two main clusters. New Mexico gets about half of all the human infections in the U.S. In the 1980s, the worst plague decade, it had slightly more than a hundred cases. Worldwide, most plague cases are in south central Africa and east Asia. People tend to get it while engaged in outdoor activities.

Once again, I'm back in Oxford for my annual summer working holiday. I love this place. This quintessentially English city offers beautiful colleges, the world's coolest museum, even the chance to bump into the Queen.

But all this pales in comparison to the sight of a giant shark crashing into a roof.

The Oxford suburb of Headington is a bit dull, so local resident Bill Heine at 2 New High Street decided to commission sculptor John Buckley to create a 25-foot shark to adorn his roof. It was put up on August 9, 1986, the 41st anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. As Heine explained, "The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation ... It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki."

The clipboard Nazis in the local council were not amused. They tried to have it removed as a pubic hazard. When their engineer said it was perfectly safe, they tried various other excuses. Much legal wrangling ensued.

Decades later, the naysayers are all gone and the shark is still there. It's a much-loved local landmark, a modern folly. I see it every time I come in on the bus from London and enjoy pointing it out to newcomers. There's even a Headington Shark Appreciation Society on Facebook with more than a thousand members. So if you're coming to Oxford, pop on over and see the Headington Shark.