Saturday, March 18, 2006The judge in the U.S. federal death penalty trial against Zacarias Moussaoui ruled on Friday that prosecutors can seek replacement witnesses for seven Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees whose testimony was tainted, and therefore disallowed because of pre-trial coaching by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lawyer.

The 18-member jury (6 alternates) were sent home for a week while the court dealt with the revelation that government aviation security witness had been contacted prior to the trial by TSA lawyer Carla J. Martin, to help prepare their testimony in the case.

Martin, aged 51, is accused of misconduct by sending prosecution witnesses e-mail that included trial transcripts of another related case along with observations of her own that pertained to the Moussaoui case, including suggestions and talking points. She was recently suspended with pay by the TSA and retained Roscoe Howard to act as legal council in the face of legal actions that might arise against her.

Judge Leonie M. Brinkema initially ruled to prevent testimony from any aviation employees, but reversed her decision after the prosecution argued they would have little case left if their testimony remained inadmissible. FAA employee testimony is expected to take the form of what measures would have been taken by the agency to prevent against the September 11, 2001 airliner attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. if Moussaoui had warned officials of the plan prior to the strikes.

The connection to the Carla Martin involvement in the case was discovered in a separate trial involving liability law suits against two U.S. airline companies for losses as a result of the attacks. Family member lawyers of flight attendants drew attention to contacts by Martin to persons involved in the case.

The jury will return Monday for the trial’s resumption.

A U.S. federal public defender appointed to Moussaoui argued for the jury to spare his life during opening statements on Monday, March 6, in the trial that will determine his fate — either life in prison or death by lethal injection.

Defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon said that Moussaoui “aspires to martyrdom,” and called on jurors to deny the Al-Qaeda operative his wish to die. A wish that would result in him becoming “a smiling face on a recruiting poster for Osama bin Laden,” MacMahon said.

Moussaoui is believed by some to be the missing member in the team of 19 other attackers that carried out the suicide airliner strikes in New York City and Washington D.C. Arrested in Minnesota on immigration charges three weeks prior to the attacks, Moussaoui could have warned officials of the pending attacks, but failed to do so, argued Assistant U.S. Attorney Rob Spencer for the prosecution in opening statements.

The second day of the trial both Moussaoui and juror’s attention was riveted as a federal prosecutor read a radio transmission account of the exchange between a flight attendant on Flight 11 and ground controllers.

“We are flying low. We are flying very very low. We are flying way too low,” Amy Sweeney told controllers, according to an Associated Press report. The plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:44 a.m. after she said, “Oh my God, we are way too low!”

Moussaoui has claimed that he had no involvement with the 9/11 attacks when he pleaded guilty to:

1. conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries
2. conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy
3. conspiracy to destroy aircraft
4. conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction
5. conspiracy to murder United States employees
6. conspiracy to destroy property

He said that he was to play a role in another future attack on the White House using an aircraft. Four of the conspiracy charges each carry a maximum penalty of death.

Family members of the nearly 3,000 killed in the attacks were able to watch the Alexandria, Virginia courtroom proceedings by closed-circuit television in six U.S. cities: New York, Boston, Central Islip, N.Y., Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia.

Moussaoui has a history of disrupting previous trial proceedings with outbursts. He has disavowed his lawyers, and mostly ignored his mother who was present during the opening days of the trial because she had spoken to his defense lawyers.

Upon leaving the Tuesday, March 7 court session for a recess, Moussaoui pumped his right fist in the air and shouted, “Allah Akbar! God curse America! Bless Osama bin Laden!”

The outbursts have been timed to occur outside the earshot of Judge Brinkema and the jury as those persons filed out of the courtroom for recesses.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April last year to the conspiracy charges. Evidence linking him to the plot was discovered when his duffel bags were searched after the attacks.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

On Sunday, female ice hockey players from North and South Korea joined one another for a training session before the upcoming Winter Olympics. Players from the two Koreas are to compete together as a united team for the events hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which are scheduled to start on February 9; Seoul’s Unification Ministry said. The cross-border gesture is part of diplomatic efforts to ease tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula and the team was approved by the International Olympic Committee.

The International Olympic Committee selected Pyeongchang in 2011 to host the event, marking South Korea’s first opportunity since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. The earlier event was marred by violence as North Korea had bombed a South Korean flight several months prior, killing over 100 and boycotted the event. Inter-Korean relations have changed considerably in the ensuing thirty years, including the two sending unified teams for table tennis and youth football in other non-Olympic competitions.

The announcement that the two countries would compete together was a stated goal of South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Last year, he announced the proposal and the two nations went into discussion this month. After two weeks, they made the announcement to field a consolidated 35-strong team of ice hockey players and have joint skiing exercises with both team coaches involved.

According to Yonhap News Agency estimates, about 80% of South Koreans support dialogue, but the move to have a joint team has been controversial. Over 10,000 South Korean citizens sent a petition to South Korean President Moon opposing the union and a group of North Korean defectors held a protest at the South Korean National Assembly on January 24, tearing apart photos of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Public support for eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula has waned in recent years, with the younger generation more skeptical of the possibility.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Michael Jackson’s This Is It, a documentary film based on world-famous singer Michael Jackson rehearsing for his last tour before his untimely death, will be premiered in at least 15 cinemas in cities all over the world simultaneously.

The film is due to premiere on October 27 and October 28. The world cities may be in different time zones with different dates but they will all be premiering the film at exactly the same time. One such premiere location is Los Angeles, in the US state of California, which will have the film starting at 1800 PT. Another simultaneity is the Odeon Leicester Square cinema in London, England, which will start at 0100 GMT on October 27.

Other locations holding concurrent premieres are the South African city of Johannesburg, New York City in New York, German capital Berlin, Russian capital city Moscow, Japanese capital Tokyo, Australian city Sydney, French capital Paris, South Korean city Seoul, and Rio de Janeiro, a large city in Brazil.

Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 aged 50, after suffering from a cardiac arrest. The movie will feature some of the rehearsal footage made in the weeks before his death. In total, there will be at least 25 cinemas premiering the film, but not all of them will be released simultaneously. Sony Pictures, the film production company, have yet to announce the other cities involved. Tickets for the film will be available to purchase from Sunday, September 27. The film is directed by Kenny Ortega, who previously directed all the High School Musical films. He also directed some significant Michael Jackson events, such as his This Is It concert and Jackson’s memorial service.

Jeff Blake, chairman of worldwide marketing and distribution for Sony Pictures, said: “Michael Jackson has an army of fans everywhere around the world… we are giving the audiences an incredible opportunity to join together in celebration of Michael Jackson’s incredible career.”

Saturday, April 2, 2005

Regional U.S. telephone giant SBC Communications is one step closer to offering cable television to the 18 million households in its 13 state coverage area. The company announced a $195 million contract with Scientific-Atlanta Thursday to provide a video operations center and regional hubs for the new service. Under the brand name, U-verse, the SBC’s television rollout is set to launch in 2006 after field trials begin later this year.

The company is seeking the so-called “triple play,” where a telecommunications company offers voice, data and video in one bundled package. Local telephone companies like SBC have been losing business to cable TV companies, which have added telephone and Internet services in recent years.

In a slew of recent deals, SBC is looking to stop that trend. Within the past six months it has signed alliances with various technology firms to build out a fiber network to the home strategy. For instance, SBC has a $1.7 billion deal with Alcatel to build out its fiber optic network and a 10-year, $400 million, pact with Microsoft to license its IPTV technology to allow multi-channel television to stream over its Internet backbone.

In most of the U.S. only cable TV companies like Comcast have been able to offer the “triple play” of voice, video and data services. But traditional phone companies like SBC and Verizon have been upgrading their copper wire telephone networks to fiber optic. SBC says it plans to spend billions of dollars to overhaul its telecommunications network, saying the aging and brittle copper wires which were originally laid in the early 1900s do not have enough bandwidth to allow television capability.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Fears of contaminated bone and skin grafts are being felt by unsuspecting patients following the revelation that funeral homes may have been looting corpses.

Janet Evans of Marion, Ohio was told by her surgeon, “The bone grafts you got might have been contaminated”. She reacted with shock, “I was flabbergasted because I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I didn’t know I got a bone graft until I got this call. I just thought they put in screws and rods.”

The body of Alistair Cooke, the former host of Masterpiece Theatre, was supposedly looted along with more than 1,000 others, according to two law enforcement officials close to the case. The tissue taken was typically skin, bone and tendon, which was then sold for use in procedures such as dental implants and hip replacements. According to authorities, millions of dollars were made by selling the body parts to companies for use in operations done at hospitals and clinics in the United States and Canada.

A New Jersey company, Biomedical Tissue Services, has reportedly been taking body parts from funeral homes across Brooklyn, New York. According to ABC News, they set up rooms like a “surgical suite.” After they took the bones, they replaced them with PVC pipe. This was purportedly done by stealth, without approval of the deceased person or the next of kin. 1,077 bodies were involved, say prosecutors.

Investagators say a former dentist, Michael Mastromarino, is behind the operation. Biomedical was considered one of the “hottest procurement companies in the country,” raking in close to $5 million. Eventually, people became worried: “Can the donors be trusted?” A tissue processing company called LifeCell answered no, and issued a recall on all their tissue.

Cooke’s daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said, “To know his bones were sold was one thing, but to see him standing truncated before me is another entirely.” Now thousands of people around the country are receiving letters warning that they should be tested for infectious diseases like HIV or hepatitis. On February 23, the Brooklyn District Attorney indicted Mastromarino and three others. They are charged with 122 felony counts, including forgery and bodysnatching.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Chinese officials have said that their country’s exports surged last December to edge out Germany as the world’s biggest exporter.

The official Xinhua news agency reported today that figures from the General Administration for Customs showed that exports jumped 17.7% in December from a year earlier. Over the whole of 2009 total Chinese exports reached US$1.2 trillion, above Germany’s forecast $1.17 trillion.

Huang Guohua, a statistics official with the customs administration, said the December exports rebound was an important turning point for China’s export sector. He commented that the jump was an indication that exporters have emerged from their downslide.

“We can say that China’s export enterprises have completely emerged from their all-time low in exports,” he said.

However, although China overtook Germany in exports, China’s total foreign trade — both exports and imports — fell 13.9% last year.