By Steve Neavling

TSA screeners were in for a scare at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday when they spotted what appeared to be a pipe bomb inside a traveler’s carry-on luggage.  

Turns out, the nine-inch PVC pipe was a homemade cigar humidor. Along with the pipe where two torch-style lighters.  

When TSA officials opened the pipe, they found a half-smocked cigar.

But because the pipe “could too easily be perceived bu the flight crew and other passengers as a pipe bomb,” TSA officials said the Hopewell Junction, N.Y., resident could not board the plane with the humidor. 

 “Our TSA officers are vigilant about looking for explosive devices, and this certainly gave the impression that it could be a pipe bomb that someone was attempting to carry onto an aircraft,” Robert Duffy, TSA’s federal security director for LaGuardia Airport, said in a statement. “Fortunately it turned out not to be an explosive device, but had he pulled it out during his flight, it could have caused a panic. Replica weapons are not permitted on aircraft and this easily could have passed for an improvised explosive device. It was a good catch on the part of the officers who were staffing the checkpoint.”

By Steve Neavling

A Georgia woman impersonated an FBI agent and even threatened to arrest employees of a local Chick-Fil-A in repeated attempts to score free meals, according to the Rockmart Police Department.  

The ruse landed her in jail. 

Kimberly Ragsdale, 47, was charged with impersonating a public officer and released from jail Saturday on $3,000 bond, The Associated Press reports.

When police arrived to arrest her Thursday, Ragsdale continued to claim she was an FBI agent, insisting her credentials were electronic-only. As she was handcuffed, police said she began to “talk into her shirt like she was talking into a radio telling someone that we were arresting her and to send someone to Rockmart PD,” officers wrote in the arrest report, according to the arrest report. 

“You will not hear a real officer demand a meal anywhere,” Chief Randy Turner said. “If it is given, we appreciate it. If it is discounted, we appreciate it. We will not ask for it or make threats and demand it.”