Friday, April 11

:
DUELING DOCUMENTARIES -
Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

A British TV series called Cutting Edge will broadcast a program about this case on Thursday evening at 9pm
local time.

Sex, Lies and the Murder of Meredith Kercher
will examine the situation and hear from
critics of the investigation so far.

"Knox's parents explain to Cutting Edge why they think their daughter is innocent, and the heartbreak they experience every time they see her in prison."

Daniel Knowles reports at the Croydon Guardian, the Kerchers' neighborhood newspaper, a component of the Local Guardian Network syndicate owned by a subsidiary of U.S. Gannett.

:: Murder Examined ::
+ with hot comment thread.

...

Thursday, April 10

:
THE PERUGIA NIGHT RAPTOR -
Meredith Kercher Murder Case -


CBS TV has posted a preview of their investigation into the Meredith Kercher homicide, which will be carried on 48 Hours Saturday night. This series usually presents a very good quality program, which I sometimes watch, but ever since CBS merged their news and entertainment divisions, legitimate questions can be raised as to what their primary objectives are with these programs.

In this case, it does not auger well that the posted preview seems to contain some conspicuous inaccuracies even before they broadcast it.

First, Amanda Knox is NOT being held in "a maximum security Italian prison." Capanne, we have been led to believe, is a relatively low level security facility, more like a secure halfway house. She is there primarily because she gave conflicting stories accounting for her whereabouts.

Meredith Kercher's throat was not slashed; worse yet, it appears that she was stabbed through her neck, like from right to left, the path of the knife breaking her Adam's apple along the way - a particularly vicious manner of killing someone.

She may have been in a choke hold at the time, although there are reported indications that she was being tackled from behind, according to some of the forensic investigators. The description given seems reminiscent of the way a hawk or an eagle kills its prey.

Was she in a stupor? We don't have the toxicological results; someone may have slipped a "micky" into her beverage, perhaps to facilitate the robbery of the cottage. The murder may have occurred subsequent to the robbery and by an entirely different and separate culprit.

I hope they catch whoever committed this murder, because he is a dangerous homicidal psychopath; if he is not caught and put away, he will probably do it again. I wouldn't want any other young women to share Meredith Kercher's tortured death.

Despite my preliminary misgivings, I look forward to whatever 48 Hours can illuminate about this situation. It is an intriguing mystery, but very troubling, too.

And, by the way, CBS is usually very generous
about posting material from this series onto the Net.

:: A Long Way From Home ::

Saturday - April 12th at 10pm ET/PT.

Produced by Joe Halderman, Douglas Longhini, and Chris Young. Peter Van Sant is the reporter or presenter. He has been assisted by Private Investigator Paul Ciolino.

...

Wednesday, April 9

:
I RED THE NEWS TODAY, O'BOY (3#)-

Is the Newspaper Industry
really on the verge of disaster?

# John Morton. "I will point out that despite weak advertising and all the other woes newspapers endured last year, the average operating profit margin of the publicly owned companies' newspaper operations was 17 percent. Most non-media businesses couldn't hope to achieve even half that in the best of times."

# Neil McIntosh: "Serious journalism was described at the conference, repeatedly, as something like broccoli, or medicine the citizenry needs to spoon down, no matter how unpalatable, if democracy is to survive."

# Desperation over losing control of the public discourse must have prompted this melodramatic story by Matt Richtel at the NY Times which issues a dire warning to bloggers: stop blogging or you will die!

...
:
BAGHDAD: FIVE YEARS ON (9#) -

Blitz-lite, Baghdad's Metal Music,
Salam Pax & Christians going Deutsche Treat . . .

I was awakened this morning at 5am by news coming over my bedside radio that the Green Zone in Baghdad was under fire. Arose immediately and gulped down a cup of coffee I had stored in my fridge. Turned on the TV for local headlines, then logged online in order to determine the veracity of this story. After considerable searching, it seemed that AP may have been the source of this story, but I don't have a lot of faith in single-source news.

# "Witnesses said a rocket or mortar had been fired into the Green Zone in the Iraqi capital, The Associated Press reported this morning, Wednesday."

# *the Green Zone, was hit again Wednesday by "indirect fire," the U.S. Embassy said. There were no reported injuries in the indirect fire, the term used for rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, but the U.S. military says Shiite militants backed by Iran have been staging such attacks.*

# AFP reports that there were at least 52 rocket or mortar bomb hits on the Green Zone over the past week.

# "Baghdad has imposed a one-day vehicle curfew as a security measure for the fifth anniversary of the city's capture by American forces."

* * * * *
# Salam Pax was featured this morning on the Al Jazeera TV Net website as an Iraqi Voice. He's got complex, mixed feelings, as usual. His topic: Baghdad after Saddam.

# A music group from Baghdad called Acrassicauda is in a new movie, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, Paul Brownfield tells us at the LAT.

# Reporter Basil Adas describes the confused feelings some Iraqis have while marking this anniversary.

* * * * *
# Australia is offering to resettle about 600 Iraqis who have been working as translators and fixers for its soldiers and diplomats.

# And there is a notable article by Peter Wensierski at Spiegel about German refuge for Iraqi Christians.

...
:
MORNING OPENERS (3#) -

We've been have stormy weather here for the past couple of days, which has interfered with blogging. So, I decided to start today with a few more off-beat stories:

# Hostile Troopers: Mariam Al Hakeem is reporting that girls at a school in Saudi Arabia have been attacked by a troop of baboons; these attacks have become a growing problem in the southern regions of Taif, Al Baha and Majarida recently.

# "The inaugural Sony World Photography Awards will be held in Cannes, France, between April 21 and 25. Top amateur honors have gone to Arup Ghosh of India. Professional shutterbugs nominated in 11 categories will find out in Cannes who has been named Photographer of the Year." See a gallery of the finalists here, too.

# Young Star Academy TV Celeb Joins Terrorists: A new al-Qaeda video is expected in three months from Al-Sahab featuring Hussein al-Ahmad, a Kuwaiti pop singer featured on the Star Academy TV show, who left for Afghanistan a few weeks ago in order to join al-Qaeda fighters in that country.

...

Tuesday, April 8

:
ZELCO HIRES INTERGRAB GUY -

The Tribune Co, parent of the SF Sun-Sentinel, has
announced its new Interactive Chief: Marc Chase, who:

"obviously blackmailed his way into
the position he is not remotely qualified to hold,"

according the corporate press release.
Chase worked with Randy Michaels at Jacor.

:: Editor & Publisher ::

...
:
MEZ: FRESH EYES (2#) -
Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Judge Claudia Matteini has ordered a new post mortem from three independent experts: Professor Giancarlo Umani Ronchi, Anna Aprile and Mariano Cingolani, who are described as three of Italy's leading forensic experts.

Allegations have been raised in recent days that the CSI team carelessly contaminated evidence. And the chain of custody has been questioned, according to the latest dispatch from Nick Pisa in Rome.

Results from the aforementioned independent trio will be officially presented to the judge on April 19th.

The latest Theory of the Crime in Italy: she might have been killed with two knives in the course of a sex game gone wrong.

I'm not convinced this was about sex games, but my impressions remain fluid and flexible. Currently, I suspect it is possible that the reason this case seems so confounding is because there may have been two different crimes which occurred at that scene.

The first crime, a simple theft. Perhaps Rudy Guede invited himself over to the girls' cottage with hopes of ripping off the place or pilfering some small but valuable items - has anyone counted the silverware and gadgets yet? Are there any pricey items missing?

And then, entirely separate from that, a crime of opportunity and one which Andre Gide would call a gratuitous act (an acte gratuit) by an intruder.

It seems to me that stabbing someone through the hyoid is an act of calculated design - almost an intellectual crime - performed by a psychopath who believes he could act "without consequences" and, if need be, outwit the authorities.

And I don't think that intruder was Fantomas.

...

Monday, April 7

:
Bookish (3 of 3): LOOSE LINKS (4#) -

The BookSurge Revolt: This is
a skirmish we really didn't need:

"YouWriteOn, the Arts Council initiative for new writers, has called for a boycott of Amazon after the retailer's move to push publishers into using its own print on demand service."

:: Recently noted on the LIS blog, too.

# Richard Askwith set off on an automobile tour of rural England to see how much is left of the old-fashioned local village style of life. The Lost Village is reviewed by Christopher Hart.

# A notable overview survey of research into the phenomenon of jihadiism from the Times of London Literary Supplement: Studying the Jihadies by Thomas Hegghammer. [TLS]

...
:
Bookish (2 of 3):
CRIME, REAL & IMAGINED (4#) -


# Misha Glenny is a respected writer whose (non-fiction) McMafia has just made its debut. I don't know how it is being released or distributed in an international vein, but it is attracting numerous reviews. Among them:

:: reviewed by Andrew Anthony::
:: and by Robert Cole ::

# Crime fiction reviews this weekend in The Observer include Frances Fyfield's Blood From a Stone which starts with a man cutting off a woman's finger at the kitchen table; last down the page, Nicola Upson has written a sleuther called An Expert in Murder, which stars the real author (now deceased) Josephine Tey, portrayed in 1930s-era theatrical London. And brief reviews of some other books by Peter Guttridge.

# And lastly here: A pair of whodunnits
located in atmospheric village settings
:: reviewed by Susanna Yager.

...
:
Bookish: BREAKTHROUGH DETECTING (3#) -

Barkeep pens winner, bedouin sleuth,
and prototype crime solver . . .

An outstanding article about Police Officer Jack Whicher
who helped establish the first modern Detective Bureau:

"The prince of detectives," as a colleague described him, Inspector Jonathan Whicher was one of the founding members of the first detective force in the English-speaking world... He and his colleagues had few precedents to guide them: they made up their methods on the hoof... Whicher had a literary afterlife... leaving the pages of the press to reappear in the pages of fiction.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale has been published by Bloomsbury. And it is the BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week this week. [guard]

# Middle East Mystery: a literary foray into the tense passions simmering just under the radar in modern-day Jeddah written by an author who has lived in the area:

The lifeless body of Nouf, daughter of a wealthy family, is found out in the desert after an apparent kidnapping. Nayir, a desert tracker, is called upon to become the Private Eye to investigate the situation.

This novel is said to capture both the glitzy modernities of Saudi Arabia together with the social constraints which are widely customary there and the dynamic tensions between these two cultural currents.

The Night of the Mi'raj by Zoe Ferraris
:: is reviewed by Lucy Beresford.

# Now, here is the kind of news
one wants to wake up to on Monday morning:

A New Orleans bartender is the winner of the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Bill Loehfelm is the author of a noir mystery set in lower-middle-class Staten Island: Fresh Kills. He won a $25,000 publishing contract with Penguin, which will publish the novel in late summer.

...