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The "collective failure" of Pakistan's military and spy authorities allowed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden to live in multiple places in the country for nearly a decade. That's the finding of a confidential Pakistani government report published Monday by Al Jazeera.

The 336-page report said officials in the Pakistani government, military, intelligence and security agencies did not know that bin Laden lived in the country.

But, the report adds, "the possibility of some such direct or indirect and 'plausibly deniable' support cannot be ruled out, at least, at some level outside formal structures of the intelligence establishment."

The al-Qaida leader was killed in May 2011 during a Navy SEAL raid on his home in Abbotabad, an affluent area north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. His home was mere minutes from the Pakistani military academy.

Bin Laden "was able to stay within the limits of Abbotabad Cantonment due to a collective failure of the military authorities, the intelligence authorities, the police and the civilian administration," the report says. "The failure included negligence and incompetence and at some undetermined level a grave complicity may or may not have [been] involved."

Al Jazeera's investigative unit says the report outlined how "routine" incompetence at every level of the civil governance structure allowed bin Laden to move around the country.

The report says in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, bin Laden lived in South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Swat, Haripur, Abbotabad and "possibly other places." It said members of his family lived in Karachi, Quetta and Iran.

Pakistani officials said for years they did not know the whereabouts of the world's most wanted man or even if he was alive.

And in the wake of the raid that killed bin Laden, it emerged that Pakistani authorities were kept in the dark about the U.S. operation.

Here's more from Al Jazeera:

"The report of the Abbottabad Commission, formed in June 2011 to probe the circumstances around the killing of Bin Laden by U.S. forces in a unilateral raid on the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, draws on testimony from over 200 witnesses, including members of Bin Laden's family, Pakistan's then-spy chief, senior ministers in the government and officials at every level of the military, bureaucracy and security services."

When Asiana Flight 214 from South Korea crashed onto the runway at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, hundreds of flights into that airport were canceled, stranding thousands of travelers at airports across the country.

The Asiana crash came right in the middle of a holiday weekend, disrupting airline networks. And it occurred during a weekend when many flights were intentionally overbooked.

What happened next to all those stranded travelers offers a revealing window into how airlines view their passengers.

The fate of each traveler trying to get back to San Francisco depended almost entirely on their "status": how the airline computer systems calculated their potential future value to the airline. When there's a disaster or bad weather closes an airport, available seats are doled out based on a customer's status on the airline, not how far they have come or how long they have been struggling to get home.

The scene inside Newark's United Airlines terminal Sunday afternoon bordered on chaotic. At Gate 113, a huge crowd of people pressed up against the desk trying to get to San Francisco. Half a dozen previous flights had been delayed or canceled in the past 24 hours.

Imran Qureshi was stuck at Newark after flying in from the United Kingdom on Saturday.

"There is no way to go home," he said. "I have been going to every flight — which leaves every hour — to see if I can get on a standby but apparently the airline has policies to overbook every flight. So if they have overbooked their flight, people on standby have no chance at all."

The flight Qureshi was hoping to get on had close to 100 passengers waiting on the standby list and no free seats. United was bumping between six and 12 confirmed passengers off most flights from Newark to San Francisco on Sunday, adding to crowds in the airport.

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Last week, July 1 marked 150 years since the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg, a crucial victory for the Union and a turning point in the Civil War. But it came at an enormous cost to both sides — thousands of soldiers were killed and tens of thousands more were wounded.

However, it might have been even worse had it not been for a surgeon named Jonathan Letterman, who served as the chief medical officer of the Union's Army of the Potomac. He presided over some of the bloodiest battles in U.S. history and, over the course of a single year, revolutionized military medicine.

Scott McGaugh has just released his biography of Letterman, called Surgeon in Blue. He joins NPR's Rachel Martin to discuss the father of battlefield medicine, what conditions were like before he came along and the legacy he left behind.

France's vaunted culinary culture has been taking it on the chin lately.

First came the news, which we told you about in April, that the majority of France's restaurants are now fast-food joints.

And now, another blow. In a recent survey of French restaurants, more than a third fessed up that they serve industrially prepared, and often frozen, food. Fast-food outlets, mind you, weren't even included in that poll, which was conducted by Synhorcat, a French restaurant trade group.

But fear not, foodies: The French National Assembly is taking action. After all, gastronomy is a cornerstone of French culture, and its restaurants are a prime tourist attraction. So France's lower Assembly has approved a bill that would force restaurants that make their food on site to use the label "fait-maison" – or homemade.

The bill still needs to pass the Upper Senate to become law. But if it goes through, any restaurant that boasts that "homemade" label but uses shortcuts — like buying pre-chopped onions — will be fined.

"Seventy percent of French restaurants rely on companies to deliver ready-made meals that only require the ding of a microwave," says Xavier Denamur, who owns five restaurants in Paris' Le Marais neighborhood.

Denamur tells The Salt that French restaurants have long had a dirty little secret: Many of them — from fast-food places to brasseries to high-end restaurants — use "ready-to-serve" meals made by industrial food manufacturers. (The website of one such company, Brake France, promotes several of these meals as "grandmother-style" recipes.) Often, Denamur and others contend, eateries will mix these premade meals with freshly prepared dishes.

Some of France's leading chefs — like Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon and others — are calling for the new labeling efforts to go further: They want to limit the use of the term "restaurant" to only those eating establishments that make their food in-house from scratch. Under that scenario, "restaurant" would become an "appellation" — a label that serves as a symbol of quality, similar to those given to particular wines and cheeses.

But UMIH, France's main association of restaurant owners, opposes this new "restaurant" label, arguing it will create confusion among the public and have "drastic consequences" for the industry. Instead, UMIH suggests a new category of "artisanal" restaurants for those making everything from scratch.

UMIH claims that it's virtually impossible for small-restaurant owners who do make everything by hand to compete economically with those who don't. Denamur counters that the new labels will level the playing field, so that only the best survive. Other restaurateurs maintain they've had to resort to labor-saving techniques to turn a profit on tight margins.

If the new "homemade" label rules do become law, interpreting them could be a minefield, says London-based catering and restaurant consultant David Read. For instance, does "homemade" allow restaurants to use deboned fish or premade butter? What about frozen vegetables?

"Sometimes fresh vegetables don't taste as good as vegetables that have been picked exactly when ripe and frozen properly," he notes. "I love fresh vegetables, but you can't run a chain of restaurants like that."

Restaurants, he notes, will sometimes outsource the "extras" they lack the resources or expertise to make. "Often, a bakery can provide much better bread and pastries than a restaurant can make themselves," he says. "It doesn't make it a bad restaurant."

Label-proponent Denamur agrees it's important to draw the line.

"Anything that has not been altered by industrial means is acceptable," he says. "A fish freshly filleted has not suffered alteration apart from being cut. Equally, a restaurateur cannot be expected to buy a whole beef to serve a steak."

For Denamur, the main issue is transparency for the consumer, ensuring diners know what they're getting. The country's gastronomic reputation, he says, "enables unscrupulous restaurateurs to sell whatever they want. Tourists are probably the first victims."