Parents blasted a New York Public School policy banning cell phones citing safety issues. One parent said with terrorism a risk, she wants to have easy access to her child. She wrote, "She and I both feel a little less crazy knowing that if something major happens -- an accident, a crisis -- that she can be in touch with me. If your child went to school blocks from ground zero, you'd know what I'm talking about. "

California health officials began inspecting a local Subway food chain after a woman claimed she found the remnants of a half-inch human digit in her hoagie. Subway officials are also looking into the origin of the foreign object, hoping the claim is a hoax. The woman's claim in reminiscent of a particularly damaging accusation levied at a Wendy's franchise last year. That incident, the old finger in the chili scare, turned out to be a hoax, but it cost the food chain an estimated $2. 5 million in bad publicity and sales, a company spokesperson claimed.

Two men claim they set a record by traversing the entire New York subway system in just over 24 hours. Matt Green and Don Badaczewski's time is just over an hour faster than the previous record. They did not sleep and Green, 26, did not eat during their trip.

Dropping an earlier plan to censor the photo, the subway walls in Tokyo will now feature a nude and pregnant Britney Spears. The advertisement space at the posh Omotesando station next week will be rented by HB Japan Inc. , publisher of the Japanese edition of Harper's Bazaar. They aim to promote their October issue with Spears posing naked on the cover. The AP reports that the advertisement that will appear in Tokyo is the same that was used in the August issue of the magazine's U. S. edition. It shows the 24 year old Spears baring her belly but she covers her breasts with her hands.

A 23-year-old man from Brooklyn has admitted that he tried to kiss, fondle and lick the legs and toes of more than 70 women on the New York subway over the last three years, prosecutors said on Wednesday. In a handwritten confession to police released by the Manhattan district attorney's office, Joseph Weir said his aim was "to make them laugh and smile and open to talk to me. "