Every now and again I see a headline that's too good to be true, and I wonder -- why is this not the top story on every news network?
It's kind of like the same feeling you got when you were a little kid swinging your legs in the shopping cart seat at the grocery store, reading about aliens and bigfoots on the supermarket tabloids as your mom got to the front of the line. How did this tabloid get such a big huge scoop?!
Here's what caught my eye today:
"We've Found Bin Laden, Scientists Say."
Wait .. what, really? Apparently some UCLA researchers are enlisting the same types of resources that the smarty-pants mathmeticians on that TV show "Numb3rs" use to track down bad guys. In this case, Geographer Thomas Gillespie, who led the UCLA research team, used stuff like population density, previous bin Laden haunts, available electricity and satellite imagery to pinpoint the terrorost's location. So where is he?
DRUMROLL PLEASE!! Osama bin Laden is in one of three "lairs" in the town of Parachinar, just inside the southern border of Pakistan.
The story on our website says, "Government officials told USA Today that Gillespie's conclusions could potentially hold weight once they are fleshed out and published in journal form."
Um, doesn't the fact that they're waiting for it to be printed up in a journal give us a big clue that U.S. officials DON'T believe the study holds any weight at all? I'm thinking maybe if they had information they thought was good they'd, I don't know, go get him?
Note to the scientist who's in control of the satellite imagery: keep your cameras trained on those lairs, and if you see moving vans, be sure to follow them!
Another story that's been floating around is about this Islamic TV mogul who is accused of chopping off his wife's head at the offices of the TV station in Buffalo.
The story on our website points out the irony in the first paragraph:
"The founder of an Islamic television network that aims to dispel negative stereotypes of Muslims in the U.S. has been charged with beheading his estranged wife in what some have speculated could be an honor killing, according to reports."
The story says most Muslim men consider divorce a grave dishonor to one's family and to Islam.
As I write this, I'm watching video come into the newsroom of that missing snowboarder at Mountain High. They found him this morning, after he spent a freezing cold night in the snow! You can see the on-camera interview of what he told a reporter here right after his rescue.
His name is Brendan Shoemaker, and he apparently did one dumb thing which was to go out of bounds, followed by a smart thing which was to hole up in a snow cave overnight to keep warm. He says the helicopters flew right over him last night and even flashed their night suns on him but didn't see him until about 7:45 this morning.
Lesson learned: don't go out of bounds, he says. So, what's worse, spending the night in the snow, or finding this media scrum waiting to document and broadcast your latest boneheaded move?! Well, we're glad he's okay.
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