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Comment by Pinatubo | Hacker News Reader

His father has run for president in Sudan and last made headlines for debating a Florida pastor who burned a Quran.

This kid stuck a Radio Shack clock in a pencil case, and deliberately disrupted a class with it after he was asked to put it away -- he plugged it into the wall and left it beeping until he was kicked out of class and arrested for having a hoax bomb.

This whole episode was engineered by a politically active family, who is now running off to Qatar with all the free publicity and stuff gullible Americans gave them.

Al Jazeera is based in Qatar. Watch for the dad to appear on that network as a frequent commentator on anti-Islamic prejudice in America -- this was probably arranged weeks ago, possibly even before the hoax bomb incident.

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> This kid stuck a Radio Shack clock in a pencil case, and deliberately disrupted a class with it after he was asked to put it away -- he plugged it into the wall and left it beeping until he was kicked out of class and arrested for having a hoax bomb.

Cite? That's contrary to all the reports I've seen.

Even if he did plug it in in the classroom instead of simply forgetting that the alarm was set, it still doesn't justify the actions of the school employees or police.

This is the second time in this comments section someone has posted a conspiracy-esque "it didn't happen the way the press said!" and the second time that the conspiracy theory has completely missed the point of the incident.

Ahmed himself admits he plugged the clock into the wall and it was beeping:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=801_1443042484

Teachers are required by law to report potential threats to the administration and law enforcement. The police are required by law to investigate potential threats reported in schools. Ahmed was apparently uncooperative with the police, leading to further confusion and suspicion.

This was deliberate.

> This whole episode was engineered by a politically active family, who is now running off to Qatar with all the free publicity and stuff gullible Americans gave them.

The more I read into the story the more it seemed like the kid wasn't as innocent as he appeared to be when the story broke out...

>Al Jazeera is based in Qatar. Watch for the dad to appear on that network as a frequent commentator on anti-Islamic prejudice in America -- this was probably arranged weeks ago, possibly even before the hoax bomb incident.

Care to record this prediction on predictionbook.com or better yet, a betting site?

Edit: Because it's interesting, and I think something like this deserves to be aggregated and quantified.

> he plugged it into the wall and left it beeping until he was kicked out of class

I'm trying to imagine how this would happen and I'm failing. Do you have some sources to back this story up?

The clock was AC powered (you can see the cord and transformer in various pics) - it's not going to make any noise without being plugged in to a power source.

It has a battery backup which should be able to power everything except the display.

I'm surprised that Obama stuck his nose in this. He really should let "local news" be local. Not everything has to be a federal case.

And when I was 14, I was building real digital clocks out of 7400-series TTL chips. And so were many other nerdy kids back in 1976.

> I'm surprised that Obama stuck his nose in this. He really should let "local news" be local.

It was already national news getting heavy coverage at the time. So, letting local news be local wasn't relevant to this case at that point.

One of the biggest allies to US doing that? Can you not talk about things you know nothing about please?

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