Bomb squad blows up news rack promotion

Los Angeles: A newspaper promotion for the upcoming movie Mission: Impossible III misfired when a Los Angeles County sheriff's arson squad blew up a news rack, thinking it contained a bomb.

Instead, the Los Angeles Times coin machine near the intersection of Sand and Soledad Canyon roads in Santa Clarita, California, held a digital musical device designed to play the Mission: Impossible theme song when the rack's door was opened.

The incident was the most spectacular of several bomb reports made by newspaper buyers startled to see a red plastic box with wires protruding from it attached to the interior of racks. Times officials said the devices were placed in 4,500 randomly selected news boxes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties in a venture with Paramount Pictures designed to turn the "everyday news rack experience'" into an "extraordinary mission".