OCALA, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man is accused in a plot to blow up several Target stores along the East Coast in an attempt to acquire cheap stock if the company’s stock value plunged after the explosions. Mark Charles Barnett, 48, was charged in a criminal complaint filed Thursday with possession of a firearm affecting commerce by a previously convicted felon, according to the U.S Attorney’s Office in Florida’s middle district. Barnett, a registered sex offender in Florida, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. A team of federal, state and local officials arrested Barnett Tuesday in a parking lot in Ocala. He was taken to the Marion County Jail, where he’s still being held. Jail records don’t say whether he’s hired a lawyer. According to an affidavit, Barnett offered to pay another man $10,000 to place at least 10 “improvised explosive bombs” disguised in food-item packaging on store shelves from New York to Florida. The criminal complaint said Barnett delivered the items to the other man on Feb. 9.
He also provided a bag of gloves, a mask and a license plate cover. But the other man went to authorities. He handed over 10 food boxes — for breakfast bars, stuffing and pasta — that contained black powder bombs, according to the Ocala Star-Banner. Special Agent Dewane L. Krueger of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told the newspaper that he and other ATF agents were told last month that Barnett wanted to recruit someone to deliver packages to multiple locations, including stores in Florida, Virginia and New York. “The swift work of ATF special agents, explosives enforcement officers and other specialized violent crime resources foiled this individual’s plot that could have caused great harm to the public,” said Daryl McCrary, special agent in charge of the ATF Tampa Field Division. The complaint said an explosives expert determined the bombs were capable of causing property damage, serious injury or death to anyone who was near the item if it exploded.
When you get tired of having it in your living room, hey - take it to the swimming pool. As long as you don't have a cat with sharp claws or a careless smoker in your family, you're OK. You might be OK anyway. Inflatables come with patch kits.Don't look for blowup furniture where your mother bought her sofa. It's sold in retail chains that cater to teens (like Claire's Boutiques and Contempo), music stores, mail-order catalogs and a number of Web sites. Air chairs cost under $50; inflatable tulips - a hugely popular accessory, for some reason - are around $5."Our inflatable furniture sells great," says Heather Creason, manager of Claire's, an accessory shop in Towson Town Center. have people jumping up and down on it all day."Nouveau Contemporary Goods, the Baltimore store that specializes in retro chic home furnishings, was a bit ahead of its time last year when it introduced an upscale version of inflatable household items."They just didn't sell," says owner Steve Appel.So who would have thought that the local bubble-gum set would embrace inflatables?
Actually these marshmallow-looking chairs and sofas appeal not only to youngsters but to college students in dorm rooms, anyone who moves a lot and those who enjoy a little quirkiness in their lives. You can carry a whole living room in the trunk of your car. A deflated chair is about the size of a large book, one that weighs a quarter of a pound. Blow it up with a foot pump that sells for $6 (or your bicycle pump), and it can hold a 300-pound man."Inflatables really took off about 18 months ago," says Kenneth ,, Tawil at Nuvo, one of the nation's largest manufacturers of blowup furniture and household items. "There's a very high 'oooh' factor. You want to interact with it when you see it."Most of today's customers probably don't realize they're taking part in a '60s-pop revival when they buy these brightly colored blowups."Their portability and purity worked very well with the '60s rebellion against what mom and dad had, so they appealed to the Woodstock generation," says James Abbott, curator of decorative arts at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
"But because of NASA and the space age, the 2001 minimalist approach to decorating, they were also popular with the mainstream."The future is at IKEA - or will be this fall. The Swedish home-furnishings company is planning to introduce its IKEA a.i.r. line of inflatables here. (The initials stand for "air is a resource," according to public-relations manager Marty Marsten.)IKEA's version of blowup furniture, already available in Europe, is constructed of individual cells inside a colorful slipcover."That way the whole thing won't deflate if you sit on it with a nail in your pocket and puncture one cell," says Marsten.INFLATABLES ON LINEAn easy way to buy inflatable home furnishings - or at least to get an idea of what's out there - is through the Internet. * * * Blowup furnishings even have their own exhibition on the Internet. 'Blushing' ear is no cause for alarmWhy expansion tank is neededTrying to clarify convection settingsChild sex abuser sentenced to 8 years Girl and 2 boys were victims7 Ways Michael Jackson Changed The WorldA finale to get 'Mad About'