Monday lunchtime news roundup: tea, no sympathy

Yep, you saw it - tea. Trying to be more health-conscious these days. I kinda miss being vegan.

Today's news roundup is kind of weird. From Belfast, Ireland:

Belfast City Airport has introduced a new alert system designed to help deaf and hard of hearing passengers. All deaf or hard of hearing passengers will have access to a hand-held Deaf Alerter device, which will vibrate and flash automatically if the fire or security alarms at the airport are activated. As well as being a safety device, the alerter will also help to keep passengers who have difficulty hearing spoken announcements up-to-date with the latest information with their flight. It will alert passengers to any announcements or changes concerning their flights, telling them when their gate opens and when boarding begins. In the event of delays or cancellations, it will let them know the revised departure times for their flights.

Here in the States, we don't have such equipment available - but many airlines do offer text or e-mail alerts for the above events. Those with pagers should contact their airline and see what is available.

In other news, was pleased to see my friend Jenn Dodds quoted on U.TV Live regarding yet another internet application for Deaf people (are you watching, Ridor?):

A group of British deaf people have today launched a major new internet service which aims to bring deaf people from across the globe closer together. Deaf-blogs.com is a new free service which will bring together online journals, known as blogs, by deaf people from all over the internet, promoting self-expression in text, images and video to reflect how diverse the international deaf community is.

The new site also offers support and step-by-step guides for anyone who wants to set up and run their own blog or videolog but isn`t sure what to do.
Click here to find out more!

Yay, international deaf blogging! Maybe Ridor can work out the next Deaf Blog Awards with Deaf-blogs.com. Any other deaf news out there?

Am continually shocked by the Abramoff scandal currently raging. More about that later.