Security scare in New York, empty rice cookers found

New York went on alert for two hours Friday during the morning rush hour because of three suspicious objects that turned out to be empty rice cookers. Police said the alarm was first sounded in Manhattan around 7:00 am (1100 GMT) when a passenger saw a cooker abandoned at the Fulton Street subway station near the World Trade Center -- a neighborhood rebuilt after the September 11 attacks in 2001. A second rice cooker was found in an another part of the same station. The station was quickly evacuated, service on two subway lines was suspended and trains on other lines serving Fulton Street bypassed the station. As police announced the objects turned out to be harmless, a third suspicious object was detected on 16th Street in the Chelsea district further to the north. It, too, turned out to be a rice cooker.