Are you worried about buying toys this year? With all of the recent recalls of lead-tainted toys, you may be wondering which toys are safe to buy children for Christmas. Here is your guide to ensure that you and your loved ones have a safe, lead-free holiday season.
On the Friday before the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden appeared in a new video, his first since prior to the U.S. presidential elections in 2004. In analyzing the video, Neal Krawetz of Hactor Factor, an expert on digital image forensics, said in his latest blogs that the video contained many visual and audio splices, and that all of the modifications were of very low quality.
Most striking is bin Laden’s beard, which has been gray in recent images. For this video it is black. “As far as my tools can detect, there has been no image manipulation of the bin Laden portion of the image beyond contrast adjustment. His beard really does appear to be that color.” The Washington Post has the full video here.
Krawetz says the inner frame of bin Laden was resaved at least twice, and not at the same time. The images show fine horizontal stripes on bin Laden and a background indicating these came from interlaced video sources. In contrast, the text elements, such as the As-Sahab logo, appear to be from non-interlaced sources.
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.”
More important though are the edits. 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.
Another bin Laden video was released on September 11 and was much more straightforward. There was a still image of the black-bearded bin Laden (oddly, using a frame not used in the previous video), and then, as has been a tradition at al-Qaida , there was a long, unedited video of a statement read by Azzam Al Amriki, also known as American-born Adam Pearlman, who is currently being sought for treason and thought to be living in Pakistan. That doesn’t mean the 9/11-released video wasn’t doctored.
Click here and mouse over the image to see Krawetz’s 75 percent error level analysis of one image. The white frame around Azzim reveals that his video was composited against the drawing of the World Trade Center being attacked. As Krawetz presented at this year’s Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, al-Qaida has a history of doctoring background either to present propaganda or simply to disguise locations. In a separate interview, Krawetz talks with CNET News.com about some of the tools he used in his analysis.
It is not uncommon for organizations to hire motivational and entertaining speakers for events. The idea is to combine live entertainment while delivering a message that the organization wishes to promote. Various celebrities are often hired for speaking engagements. A fascinating aspect of celebrity speaking engagements is the fee that they charge. Some, often lesser known, celebrities charge a few thousand dollars for the privilege of having them grace an event and give a formal speech. However, the more famous celebrities require hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for their services. Here is an entertaining list of celebrities and the fees that they charge for speaking at events. Keep reading…
I never would have seen this one coming!
The very popular and funny, Owen Wilson attempted suicide.
Owen Wilson is an Academy Award-nominated actor and writer. Wilson was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the screenplay of The Royal Tenenbaums, but he is perhaps best known for his successful comedic roles such as John Beckwith in Wedding Crashers and as Hansel in Zoolander. Owen is considered a part of the “Frat Pack,” a set of A-List comedic actors including Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson (Owen’s brother) and Steve Carell who often work in each other’s movies. Owen and Ben Stiller have become best friends from their on-screen performances in movies together.
Wilson sliced his left wrists and took an indeterminate amount of pills.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
Police and an ambulance responded to a 911 call from Wilson’s house in Los Angeles around noon on Sunday.
Owen is said to be in stable condition at the moment.
“Owen Wilson has now been transferred from St. John’s to another Los Angeles area hospital. His brothers Andrew and Luke are with him.
“Andrew found him after the suicide attempt and called an ambulance. Both of Owen’s wrists were slashed superficially and Owen had taken an overdose of pills.
“Owen was found with a nearly empty bottle of pills next to him. He was at his house in Santa Monica.”
Speaking through his publicist, Owen says:
“I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time,” the actor said in a statement released through his publicist on Monday.
If Owen chooses to discuss the matter further with the media, I just hope that he doesn’t try to say his hospitalization was for “dehydration” like Lindsey Lohan and other stars do.
Get well, Owen!
Hulk Hogan’s son, Nick Hogan, 17, and another teenage male passenger were seriously injured in a car wreck last night. Hogan – whose real name is Nicholas Alan Bollea – is one of the stars of the reality show, “Hogan Knows Best”. Nick was driving a yellow Supra. The car careened out of control and hit a palm tree. The car is totaled. Police suspect that the boys were racing, but are not saying for sure. They do know for sure that the car was traveling at a high rate of speed when it crashed. The name of the passenger in the crash is not being released at this time. Both Nick and the other passenger had to be cut out of the car and air-lifted to a hospital. The crash shut down a main road in Clearwater, Florida. Both boys were taken to Bay Front Medical Center in St. Petersburg, FL. Nick is in serious condition and the other passenger is in critical condition.
Video of the destroyed yellow Supra and Hulk at the scene of the crash is here.
Here is the report from CBS Clearwater, Florida:
The son of professional wrestler Hulk Hogan was seriously injured in a car crash Sunday night, police said.
A Toyota Supra driven by Nick Bollea was traveling at a high rate of speed at approximately 7:30 p.m., Clearwater Police spokesman Wayne Shelor said. Bollea, which is Hogan’s real name, lost control and hit a raised median. The car flipped around, and the back end hit a palm tree.
“The car was destroyed,” Shelor said.
Bollea and an unidentified male passenger were extricated from the car by paramedics, Shelor said. Then they were airlifted to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg. Their official conditions were not immediately available, but Shelor described the injuries of both men as serious.
The crash occurred on State Route 60, a main drag through downtown Clearwater. The road had to be shut down in both directions for several hours, Shelor said.
Alcohol is not believed to have played a part in the crash. The crash seems to have been caused by excessive speed, Shelor said.
Bollea appears on the reality TV show “Hogan Knows Best” with his father, mother and sister. His sister Brooke Hogan is making a name for herself in the music industry.
UPDATE!!!
This just in according to PerezHilton.com:
“Witnesses on the scene of the near-fatal Nick Hogan car crash are confirming that he was racing a silver Dodge Viper at the time, but police say it’s too early to know for sure what led to the crash.
No charges have been filed.
After a big hug and thanking God that he’s okay now, we’d smack the shit out of Nick for risking his own life and putting innocent people in danger as well!”
It might just be the nerd in me, but I think these results are sad. Books are free, people. Just visit your local library and they give them to you to take home for three weeks. Ugh!
One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.
The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn’t read any, the usual number read was seven.
“I just get sleepy when I read,” said Richard Bustos of Dallas, a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.
That choice by Bustos and others is reflected in book sales, which have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way indefinitely. Analysts attribute the listlessness to competition from the Internet and other media, the unsteady economy and a well-established industry with limited opportunities for expansion.
When the Gallup Poll asked in 2005 how many books people had at least started — a similar but not directly comparable question — the typical answer was five. That was down from 10 in 1999, but close to the 1990 response of six.
In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled “Reading at Risk” found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet.
Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn’t read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.
At the same time, book enthusiasts abound. Many in the survey reported reading dozens of books and said they couldn’t do without them.
“I go into another world when I read,” said Charlotte Fuller, 64, a retired nurse from Seminole, Fla., who said she read 70 books in the last year. “I read so many sometimes I get the stories mixed up.”
Among those who said they had read books, the median figure — with half reading more, half fewer — was nine books for women and five for men. The figures also indicated that those with college degrees read the most, and people aged 50 and up read more than those who are younger.
Pollyann Baird, 84, a retired school librarian in Loveland, Colo., says J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter fantasy series is her favorite. But she has forced herself to not read the latest and final installment, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” because she has yet to file her income taxes this year due to an illness and worries that once she started the book, “I know I’d have to finish it.”
People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.
There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.
The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre — including politics, poetry and classical literature — were named by fewer than five percent of readers.
More women than men read every major category of books except for history and biography. Industry experts said that confirms their observation that men tend to prefer nonfiction.
“Fiction just doesn’t interest me,” said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company in Guntersville, Ala. “If I’m going to get a story, I’ll get a movie.”
Those likeliest to read religious books included older and married women, lower earners, minorities, lesser educated people, Southerners, rural residents, Republicans and conservatives.
The publishing business totaled $35.7 billion in global sales last year, 3 percent more than the previous year, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade association. About 3.1 billion books were sold, an increase of less than 1 percent.
The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted from August 6 to 8 and involved telephone interviews with 1,003 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
According to the Associated Press, Jennifer Mee, the 15 year old girl with the endless case of hiccups has gone missing. Police reports are indicating that the teen has run away from home.
This is 15 year old Jennifer Mee on TODAY on March 2.
Mee’s hiccup story made international headlines earlier this year.
Jennifer Mee’s struggle with constant hiccups, occurring up to 50 times a minute and lasting for over five consecutive weeks, made her a newsworthy story. Mee was headline news, featured on morning talk shows, and became an internet sensation because of her case of hiccups. The hiccups stopped for a while, but then started again forcing Mee out of school.
Jennifer Mee was last seen by her sister at a park in north St. Petersburg on Sunday evening, according to police spokesman George Kajtsa. Jennifer’s mother, Rachel Robidoux, reported the hiccupping teen missing about eleven hours later. Continue reading here.
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