The September 7 video shows bin Laden dressed in a white hat, white shirt and yellow sweater. Krawetz notes “this is the same clothing he wore in the 2004-10-29 video. In 2004 he had it unzipped, but in 2007 he zipped up the bottom half. Besides the clothing, it appears to be the same background, same lighting, and same desk. Even the camera angle is almost identical.” Krawetz also notes that “if you overlay the 2007 video with the 2004 video, his face has not changed in three years–only his beard is darker and the contrast on the picture has been adjusted.”… At roughly a minute and a half into the video there is a splice; bin Laden shifts from looking at the camera to looking down in less than 1/25th of a second. At 13:13 there is a second, less obvious splice. In all, Krawetz says there are at least six splices in the video. Of these, there are only two live bin Laden segments, the rest of the video composed of still images. The first live section opens the video and ends at 1:56. The second section begins at 12:29 and continues until 14:01. The two live sections appear to be from different recordings “because the desk is closer to the camera in the second section.” Then there are the audio edits. Krawetz says “the new audio has no accompanying ‘live’ video and consists of multiple audio recordings.” References to current events are made only during the still frame sections and after splices within the audio track.” And there are so many splices that I cannot help but wonder if someone spliced words and phrases together. I also cannot rule out a vocal imitator during the frozen-frame audio. The only way to prove that the audio is really bin Laden is to see him talking in the video,” Krawetz says.

A male chow mix laid down in the middle of a busy street this morning to keep watch over its companion, a female German shepherd mix, after it was hit and killed by a car on Chambers Road near East 52nd Avenue. The dogs lacked any identifying tags and had been reported running loose together for the past two days, according to Denver Animal Care & Control director Doug Kelley. "When a companion animal is hit, they'll stand vigil. It's sad," Kelley said of the dog. "It's kind of uncommon to see it in the middle of the road." He speculated the two dogs, neither of which had been spayed, had been involved in a "romance." Denver police officers were called to the scene just after 6:30 a.m. to help direct traffic until animal control officials could respond to the situation, according to a police department spokesman. Patrolman Bill Tyler said two "good Samaritans" helped out at the scene. One driver blocked the lane with a car and turned on the vehicle's flashing lights after a couple of cars narrowly missed hitting the chow and its lost love. Another person was able to get the surviving dog onto the median between the north and southbound lanes of Chambers, Tyler said. "The chow didn't want me to get anywhere close to the dead dog," said Tyler. "I guess you could say (the dog was upset)."

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein yesterday vowed to investigate a Queens high school policy that may have cost a teen girl her health. The Daily News reported yesterday an official at Jamaica High School barred school deans from calling 911 in an emergency - just weeks before 14-year-old Mariya Fatima suffered a stroke her family says could have been less devastating. Klein called this a violation of Department of Education policy and instructions he had sent to principals early this year. "We'll look into it and take appropriate action," he said. Former Jamaica Assistant Principal Guy Venezia sent a memo to school deans on April 12 banning 911 calls "for any reason." Mariya began to vomit at school on April 27 and collapsed in the hall, but her family says help did not arrive until 90 minutes later.

SAMPSON COUNTY, N.C. – On the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, students at one high school were not allowed to wear clothes with an American Flag. Under a new school rule, students at Hobbton High School are not allowed to wear items with flags, from any country, including the United States. The new rule stems from a controversy over students wearing shirts bearing flags of other countries. Gayle Langston said her daughter, Jessica, was told to remove her stars and stripes t-shirt. “Today she wanted to wear her shirt, and I had to tell her no,” said Langston. “She didn't like it at all because I knew it would get her in trouble. Of all days, 9/11, she could not wear her American Flag shirt.” The superintendent of schools in Sampson County calls the situation unfortunate, but says educators didn’t want to be forced to pick and choose which flags should be permissible.

It seems that the Sgt. had worked an overtime shift and was on his way home, and was very tired. Just as he got there, he got word that his son had been involved in a car crash. It was apparently fairly serious, and the car was totaled, although his son's injuries were not too bad. He immediately went to the hospital with his wife. After all that, he and his wife did indeed go out to eat after sitting at the hospital for hours. I don't know what other "errands" he might have run before returning home, but it was 13 hours later, on a day that began with him being somewhat exhausted. The key here is HE WAS OFF DUTY, not on duty as I first thought and as such he was in his personal vehicle. When he returned home, he realized that Bandit was not in his kennel, and then it occurred to him that he might still be in the car. Upon checking the car he found Bandit dead, and was extremely distraught. I might add that Sgt. Lovejoy is a decorated and exemplary officer having had several positions of responsibility in the Chandler PD before taking over as K9 supervisor.

Despite the recent spate of shootings on our streets, we pride ourselves on our strict gun laws. Every time an American gunman goes on a killing spree, we shake our heads in righteous disbelief at our poor benighted colonial cousins. Why is it, even after the Virginia Tech massacre, that Americans still resist calls for more gun controls? The short answer is that “gun controls” do not work: they are indeed generally perverse in their effects. Virginia Tech, where 32 students were shot in April, had a strict gun ban policy and only last year successfully resisted a legal challenge that would have allowed the carrying of licensed defensive weapons on campus. It is with a measure of bitter irony that we recall Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, recording the words of Cesare Beccaria: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

In Britain, however, the image of violent America remains unassailably entrenched. Never mind the findings of the International Crime Victims Survey (published by the Home Office in 2003), indicating that we now suffer three times the level of violent crime committed in the United States; never mind the doubling of handgun crime in Britain over the past decade, since we banned pistols outright and confiscated all the legal ones.

"It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations." Bin Laden comes close to offering a date for the tape with this by saying, "... just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons." He goes on to call Noam Chomsky "among one of the most capable of those from your own side," and mentions global warming and "the Kyoto accord." He also speaks to recent issues grabbing headlines in the United States, referring to "the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes..." "To conclude," bin Laden says, "I invite you to embrace Islam." He goes on to say: "There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat [alms] totaling 2.5 percent.”

Osama Bin Laden's widely publicized video address to the American people has a peculiarity that casts serious doubt on its authenticity: the video freezes at about 1 minute and 36 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen! The words spoken when the video is in motion contain no references to contemporary events and could have been (and likely were) made before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The audio track does appear to be in the voice of a single speaker. What I suspect was done is that an older, unreleased video was dubbed over for this release, with the video frozen when the audio track departed from that of the original video.