SoFlo: Looking For Mr Crowbar (2#) -

The scion of the Miami Fontainbleau Fortune was found dead over the summer under suspicious circumstances in Westchester County NY.

Ben Novack Jr appeared to have been beaten to death only a few months after the death of his mother Bernice from a fractured skull at her Fort Lauderdale home.

An inventory of Novack Jr's estate revealed that his collection of Batman Memorabilia was being stored in several warehouses in Broward County, but the locks on the storage units had been allegedly broken, leaving the contents vulnerable to burglary.

The increasingly bitter disputes over the unsolved scion's murder and the multi-million dollar estate have already resulted in at least one reported incident of physical violence in the streets of Las Olas.

:: 1010wins :: - - - :: Miami Herald ::

...

Mez: Indy Eyes Denied (2#) -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Presiding Judge Giancarlo Massei has denied requests
for independent experts to review evidence in the case.

Closing arguments are scheduled
for Nov 20th; the deliberation process
for a verdict is expected to begin Dec 4th.

The suspect who was already convicted,
Rudy Guede, will begin his appeal on
Nov. 18th; and Andrea Vogt reports:

"This is important because information that comes out in Guede's appeal, where he is expected to take the stand to tell his side, could have an impact on Knox and Sollecito's case, particularly if he implicates them."

ABC's 20/20 announced earlier this evening that they are planning a segment or program to cover the recent developments in this case on a future date. The other TV News Magazine programs will probably follow suit.

:: Andrea Vogt at SPI :: - - :: Nick Pisa at Sky ::

...

Coventry & The Twin Towers (4#) -

I may have thought of this because . . .

recently, Vera Lynn published a new book of her
memoirs, and she is part of the soundtrack of my life . . .

"Coventry had a medieval city centre regarded at the time as the best preserved in Europe... The centre of the raid was meant to be the cathedral, and a cross was drawn over the city to this effect."

Jackie Litherland,
:: Durham UK: Letters ::

...

Mez: The Chilled Labyrinth (2#) -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Proceedings for this case have resumed. Various requests for further clarification on some aspects are being submitted to the court.

Among them, Giulia Bongiorno and Luca Maori for the Defense are requesting more forensic experts to further clarify the Time of Death. I don't believe this is possible to ascertain with exactitude.

I view the cottage crime scene in its entirety as the product of design - as if it were the environment of a computer game. In this environment, which is configured internally as a sort of labyrinth, the front door was left open.

What was the purpose of
the open door as a design element?

The open door may have chilled the interior of the cottage so that the usual post-mortem processes could have been impacted with the possible effect of obscuring the TOD.

We'll try to check back later to see if
anything else develops out of today's hearing.

:: La Nazione original :: - - - :: G translated ::

...

Iran: Nuke Jockey & Net (2#) -

One of their nuclear scientists has gone missing, and the regime is accusing the USA of being behind it. Shahram Amiri vanished while he was visiting Saudi Arabia. Maybe he decided to take a vacation in Sweden for a while and get away from all that radioactive pressure.

And another thing . . .

The Guardian also reports that the Revolutionary Guards have acquired 51% of the country's Telecom outfit under the pretext of a "privatisation" scheme.

What's the definition of privatisation? Very loose.

:: Nuke :: - - - :: Telecom ::

...

Mez: Locked & Lurching -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

The Locked Room Mystery on Pergola St seems to have been designed like a genre of computer games, perhaps like the famous Castle Wolfenstein games. That's just my impression.

So far, I have tentatively settled on a motive of Racism and Ethnic Cleansing, but because of the configuration of this Locked Room Scenario, I believe there is also a psychopathic motive of outwitting the authorities.

Barbie Nadeau lays out a neat outline of the case. It may be useful to compare her analysis with your own. Anything new to you here? Anything you don't agree with?

New to me: Knox has been observed
winking at Sollecito. Winking. Really?

I look forward to Closing Arguments.

:: The Italian Job :: How the evidence stacks up.

...

Crazed Trends: The Nico-Bubble

You may experience strange dreams . . .
you may have hostile feelings or suicidal thoughts . . .

Well, as expected, it didn't take long for the pharmaceutical companies to begin offering their highly patented cigarette replacement goodies - and just in time for the heavy foot traffic of Christmas season in America's shopping malls when crazed assassins armed with automatic weapons would have the most impact.

Unexpectedly, much time in the TV commercials is devoted to cautions about taking these highly patented substances. But will these warnings prove effective?

At my local pharmacy, there are now THREE long shelves filled with these nostrums prominently displayed behind the cash register at only $49.95 each - the Bad Mood is included for free!

How long will it take for
someone's Bad Mood to turn deadly?

"The new addiction is taxing addictions."

:: By William Saletan ::

...

Crime: Fatal Nexus (3#) -

A 53-year-old professor of criminal justice and her family have been the victims of macabre murder in Virginia. The main suspect is a 20-year-old rap entertainer they met at a Goth gathering who allegedly followed them home. There may be some occult or metaphysical aspects to the story, but details have yet come to emerge.

:: Jonathan Harwood dispatches a brief report.

NB: We may be witnessing here the death rattle of The First Post, an online magazine based in London which I have enjoyed. Recently, I understand, Felix Dennis purchased the operation, but now it appears that he just bought it to kill it off. I am very saddened by this turn of events.

:: Suspect :: some background ::

:: Victims :: some background ::

...

Mez: Not So Excellent Adventures -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Andrea Vogt reports that the University of Washington has instituted some changes since the arrest of Amanda Knox in how they deal with students participating in international programs, including those who find themselves in emergency situations.

Knox, who was arrested in Perugia, Italy, for the murder of her Eurasian roommate, allegedly sent an e-mail to the UW's assistant director of study abroad programs.

Knox's e-mail, Vogt reports, "has taken on particular importance because it is the most thorough written account of 'how I found my roommate murdered' before Knox's arrest."

The e-mail account allegedly differs from the narrative account which Knox gave to the Perugia authorities in the Italian police station. More recently, I believe, she also gave an account when she testified in court.

It looks like Dr Mignini's office put up a white board to chart these accounts - what a headache that must have been.

:: Andrea Vogt at SPI ::

...

Media & More (8#) -

Is this a fraudulent conveyance or just a plush cash cow? While The Tribune Co "may be bankrupt, it’s not broke." The proposed disbursement of bonuses comes under continuing scrutiny. The Tribune Co is the parent company of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the LA Times.

# Blogging Small-Town Life: a feature story in this week's Newsweek by Johnnie L Roberts who lives in South Orange NJ. New online hyper-local websites are covering the news instead of printed media.

"There's still wariness among locals unaccustomed to being covered so closely by bloggers... Outside observers say the bigger worry is that too many sites are trying to subsist off the same small base of advertisers."

# Eric Schonfeld writes about Ken Auletta's new book:
Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It.

# Tina Brown is celebrating the first anniversary
of The Daily Beast. Congratulations, Tina!

# Himanshu Bhagat writes about the debut of
Delhi Noir from the Akashic series at livemint.

# Emily Bell comments on
the London Evening Standard going free.

# A raven has been frightening a woman by tapping at her window, trying to steal her groceries and sitting on her car. The bird had been on friendly terms with her neighbor previously.

...

Bookish: Colliding Cosmos (5#) -

Academic Disaster Readiness,
Depressed Robots and Culture in Kabul . . .

Duly noted even Across the Pond, The University of Florida removed an online link to a disaster recovery exercise involving an attack by zombies. But don't panic, because The Miami Herald has come to your rescue with the link. I haven't checked it out myself, so you're on your own with this one: PDF Alert!

# Cult Fiction: On Oct 12th, And Another Thing is expected to debut. Jenny Turner writes a nostalgic piece about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and wonders whether that world can be updated to our era.

# A portrait of Afghani media mogul Saad Mohseni.

# New York Magazine's Boris Kachka gives us a roundup of new Literary Memoirs from Michael Chabon and others.

...

Mez: CBS True Crime Producer Accused -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Robert J. Halderman,
the alleged blackmailer of David Letterman,

"is a producer on the CBS news programme 48 Hours, which specialises in investigating and recreating real-life mysteries including the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and the murder of Meredith Kercher."

:: Philippe Naughton ::
-- Times of London --

...

Raising Their Tech Level (4#) -

:
Media Tech Summit Conference . . .
UC Berkeley group meeting at Google HQ,
discussing the role of technology in today's MSM.

# Last week, downtown NYC was
flooded with fake editions of the NY Post.

# Cheltenham's Naughty Boyz: weird
cyberpunk Peter Pan fantasy scenario.

# Gay Penguins Star at Banned Book Week.

...

Media Scan (7#) -

The Tribune Co, parent of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper, has told Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey the company needs to disburse $70 million in bonuses to its top managers in order to motivate them.

# Paul Gillin reports that Bob Garfield from NPR's On The Media radio program has just had a new book published called The Chaos Scenario, which Gillin reviews with a big Thumbs-Up and says is a lot of fun.

# Speaking of NPR, Romenesko reports that a listener challenged Scott Simon's annual salary of $300,648. The ombud responded.

# Print is Undead: How NYC's 7 newspapers
are (nearly) surviving by Graham Rayman

:: Print Link Alert! :: Village Voice ::

# India now has more daily
newspapers than any other country.

...

Bookish: Unexpected Moves (3#) -

Could Sherlock Holmes
have travelled to India?

Yes, it's possible. In another delightful column, Zac O'Yeah reminds us that there were "missing years after Holmes fell off a Swiss mountain." Although Holmes claimed that he spent two years in Tibet, that may have been a casual over-simplification.

:: And thereby hangs a tale . . .

# Celebrate Your Freedom
To Read - It's Banned Books Week -

:: David Shenk :: "When I was 10, my eye caught a curious title on my school library shelves. It was A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle... Later, I learned that this splendid piece of literature has often been banned because its ideas about witchcraft may be too powerful for an impressionable child's mind."

:: Book Patrol :: Elsewhere ::

...

Meandering Book Paths (2#) -

Motoko Rich reports that Tina Brown has decided to orchestrate some "insta-books" out of her Daily Beast home base under the imprint of Beast Books which will be distributed by Perseus, first as e-books and then as paperbacks. Sounds good to me.

Will Barbie Nadeau produce such a book on the Meredith Kercher Murder Case? Since she has already written about three-quarters of a book while covering the story, that seems quite possible.

# Celibrate Your Freedom
To Read: It's Banned Books Week -

:: Julia Keller :: "My childhood was a bloodbath."

...

Mez: Defense Firecracker (3#) -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Grab yer smelling salts, Granny!
The Sacred Chain may have been broken . . .

Arguably, it's not nice to throw a legal firecracker into the courtroom just before ending your case, but that seems to be what Defense did on Saturday. Dramatic? Yes. But it leaves people feeling feeling uneasy and unresolved.

First, Defense DNA expert Sarah Gino challenged the validity of the DNA evidence on the butcher knife. I am not equipped to argue about DNA here. The Court may invite an outside, independent DNA expert to contribute an opinion. Moving on...

Computer expert Antonio D'Ambrosio for the Defense testified that "someone had used the young man's computer, which the defence said might have erased data that could prove his innocence."

Let's unpack this. Defense is making two claims here.

The first allegation is that the Sacred Chain of Custody was broken here. In a murder case, evidence must be secured, sequestered and signed for. It is being alleged that the Sollecito computer was left somehow unsecured and, as a result, it suffered outside interference. That's very bad.

But Defense goes on to make yet a second claim:

"Whoever it was cancelled valuable data that showed
Raffaele was on the computer the night of the murder."

Let's clarify this. There are at least 3
file "cabinets" involved, as far as I know:

-- 1) the Temporary Internet Cache file cabinet,
-- 2) the Browser History Log,
-- 3) and the Connections Log Viewer.

Even if the Temporary Cache of Internet material was overwritten, that operation would not impact the other two cabinets which are entirely separate. Defense's claim that the history of that computer's usage was "cancelled" does not seem credible to me. I'm not a computer whiz, but it looks like double talk to me.

Just short of dripping a bottle of nail polish onto the naked hard drive, how could the other two entirely separate record logs be cancelled, erased or corrupted? Sorry, but I don't buy that. Let's say I'm a bit dubious. I expect that the second claim is going to need some further clarification.

Court will reconvene Oct 9th. We haven't heard final summations yet. Also, Rudy Guede's appeal is due in November with the possibility that he could contribute more information.

:: Andrea Vogt at SPI ::

...

Mez: Friday Favored the Defense -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Friday's testimony seemed like the first favorable development for Amanda Knox. A Defense expert, Prof Caltagirone, explained that Knox could have developed false memories under stress and, as a result, could have made a false confession.

Two questions flow from this:

-- 1) is it possible?
-- 2) and is it plausible?

I believe it is possible. People do make false
confessions under stress. It's not so unusual.

But is it plausible in this instance?
That is a more complex question.

What makes it less plausible to me is that the man who was convicted was Black, the man Knox accused was also Black, and Blacks are a minority in Italy where most of the population is White.

If both Guede and Lumumba were Italian Whites, this abstract theory would seem more plausible to me. But, by the same token, if your auntie had wheels, she'd be a tea cart.

:: Nick Pisa, UK Mail ::

...

UFOs: More Rendlesham Disclosures -

Linda Moulton Howe appeared
on the C2C radio program during
the overnight and disclosed more about
the Bentwaters/Rendlesham Forest UFO case.
The program is syndicated across the country.

I caught some of it, but there's plenty more
to read, and I've only dipped into a bit so far.

:: C2C Howe program ::

...

UN 2: Further Afield -

For those who are interested in reading more
about the Nazi Holocaust, I would recommend
the following as a good book on the topic:

Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny.

It is the story of a small town policeman from Austria who rose in the Nazi ranks. It is written "as told to" the writer from an extended series of interviews conducted with the subject while he was in prison. It contains many hitherto obscure details and even diagrams.

...