CAIRO (AFP) -- The head of the investigation into the crash of an Egyptian charter plane said he was puzzled why its flight data recorders showed one thing when the aircraft was doing something different.

CBS News reported, meanwhile, that a passport belonging to one of the hijackers, Satam al-Sugami, was found on the street minutes after the plane he was aboard crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center and before the New York landmark collapsed.
mr ed - hmmmm - another passport

"With Adolf Hitler's ascendancy to the chancellorship, the Nazi Party quickly consolidated its power. Hitler managed to maintain a posture of legality throughout the Nazification process."
When one is comparing then and now, I think the most interesting factor is that most German Jews remained in Germany until it was too late. They just couldn't believe Hitler was as dangerous as some people said he was. The more prescient Jews (most often those who could afford to do so) got out, however.
Hitler came to power in 1933, but the killing of Jews (and others) didn't begin until five years later, in 1938

'Downers' are cows that can't walk.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says the sick cow was a downer.
The people who were there say it wasn't.
It's important, because the USDA focuses its 'mad cow' testing on downers.

Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests. Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10 hottest years on record have occurred.

LONDON (PTI) -- In a forthright view that is likely to embarrass her husband, Cherie Blair, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, is reported to have observed that George W Bush "stole" the US presidential election from Al Gore.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish organization that combats anti-Semitism, condemned the results, and said Israel should "draw the only conclusion possible" and exclude the E.U. from having a role in any peace process.

Rush Limbaugh's attorney mounted an offensive Monday, accusing Palm Beach County prosecutors of smear tactics and likening his client to any ordinary American with chronic pain.

A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations.
In a ruling handed down late Friday and made available Monday, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins said the ban on providing "expert advice or assistance" is impermissibly vague, in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.
The Humanitarian Law Project, which brought the lawsuit, said the plaintiffs were threatened with 15 years in prison if they advised groups on seeking a peaceful resolution of the Kurds' campaign for self-determination in Turkey.

Among unexamined facts about the administration?s determination to go to war is that, in the weeks leading up to
the invasion of Iraq, US oil companies doubled their imports of Iraqi oil. According to government figures, US imports of Iraqi oil, which increased steadily following the November 2002 elections, almost tripled from November 2002 (9.57 million barrels) to February 2003 (25.78 million barrels). Iraqi oil imports almost doubled in the weeks following December 2002. Indeed, even in March 2003, the month US troops invaded Iraq, US petroleum companies imported 22.9 million barrels of Iraqi oil.
There is another sad point: in April 2003, US imports of Iraqi oil totaled at least 18.8 million barrels, and some estimates give 21 million barrels. Yes, that?s right: immediately after the invasion of Iraq, with US troops given the mission of controlling Iraq, somebody was pumping millions of gallons of Iraqi crude out of the country. Evidently somebody felt that to the victors belong the spoils. It was following this successful transition, on May 1, that Bush made his flight-suit appearance on an aircraft carrier, to proclaim major combat over.