Leading miserabilist and former Smiths front-man Morrissey has fallen foul of the Homeland Security dragnet, according to BBC radio reports. It is not yet clear whether or the US officials involved had listened to Meat is Murder, or whether they thought they had a match on notorious Manchester terror mastermind Anwar al-Morrissey.

Morrissey is now a resident of Los Angeles, and was reportedly detained for some time at LAX airport. The BBC quotes him as saying that there was some problem with his passport, and that he was briefly suspected of being a terrorist. But he'll have been used to that in his musical career. And now he'll have one of those letters from the Department of Homeland Security saying he's not - but we doubt that'lll cheer him up much.

In related news, the European Parliament has narrowly voted, by 276 to 260, to reject the European Commission's deal on the transfer of airline passenger records to the US. The Parliament had already deemed the protection in the deal "inadequate". The Commission has constructed the agreement in such a way that it does not need Parliament's agreement for it to go ahead, but Parliament has asked member states not to implement the agreement in their own law until The European Court of Justice has ruled on the subject. ®

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