Remember the following photo’s I posted a while ago? Well, the photographer won a World Press Photo award. I’ll post the full series this time:

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At his home in Aurora, Colorado, Maj. Steve Beck, site commander of Marine Air Control Squadron 23 at Buckley Air Force Base, hugs his wife Julie before leaving at 2 a.m. to conduct a casualty notification. “If it was your son,” he says, “would you want us to let you sleep?”

Marines unload the body of 2nd Lieut. Jim Cathey, 24, from a commercial flight to Reno, Nevada, as passengers watch.

Clinging to Beck, Katherine Cathey of Brighton, Colorado, breaks down at the sight of the coffin of her husband Jim, a second lieutenant killed by a booby trap in Al Karmah. She cursed Beck when he arrived and wouldn’t speak to him for an hour. But by the time they reached the airport, she wouldn’t let go.

Katherine Cathey weeps on her husband’s casket at the Reno airport as Major Beck comforts her. She clung to it for several minutes, refusing to move. “I know Jim’s going to be with me in so many ways,” she said later. “And there will be so many people who will teach his son about his father”

On the eve of the funeral, Katherine insisted on sleeping next to Jim’s body, so the Marines arranged a bed and offered to stand guard through the night. She fell asleep to music she and Jim had planned to play at their formal wedding celebration when he returned.

Jim Cathey’s father, Jeff, hugs a Marine as his son’s funeral nears. “Someone asked me what I learned from my son,” he said. “He taught me you need more than one friend”

Beck takes the effects of Lance Corporal Kyle Burns, killed in a fire fight in Fallujah, to parents Bob and Jo in Laramie, Wyo.

Jo thanks Beck after accepting her son Kyle’s medals

Three months after Lance Corporal Joe Welke died from wounds sustained in a gun battle in Fallujah, Beck revisited the Welke family in Rapid City, South Dakota, on what would have been Joe’s birthday. “He would be 21,” said his brother Nick. “The one you look forward to.”

Beck hugs his kids Stephen, 2, and Lindsey and Abigail, both 4. After one burial, “all I wanted to do was play with my children,” he says. “But all I was thinking about while I was playing was all those guys out there in harm’s way, making all that possible.”

See the Rocky Mountain News’ multimedia presentation, and learn more about this story

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Skeletons are being removed from the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a $150m (£86m) “museum of tolerance” being built for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Palestinians have launched a legal battle to stop the work at what was the city’s main Muslim cemetery. The work is to prepare for the construction of a museum which seeks the promotion of “unity and respect among Jews and between people of all faiths”.

Israeli archaeologists and developers have continued excavating the remains of people buried at the site – which was a cemetery for at least 1,000 years – despite a temporary ban on work granted by the Islamic Court, a division of Israel’s justice system. Police have been taking legal advice on whether the order is legally binding. The Israeli High Court is to hear a separate case brought by the Al Aqsa Association of the Islamic Movement in Israel next week.

As the General says:

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..an act so brilliantly twisted it tops even John Bolton’s nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize as this year’s best example of the use of disingenuousness as a weapon.

Het onderwerp bij de wekelijkse foto fuck is eigenlijk wel voorspelbaar:

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The international jury of the 49th annual World Press Photo contest selected a color image of the Canadian photographer Finbarr O’Reilly of Reuters as World Press Photo of the Year 2005. The picture shows the emaciated fingers of a one-year-old child pressed against the lips of his mother at an emergency feeding clinic in Niger. A devastating swarm of locusts and the worst drought in decades left millions of people short of food in the African state. The picture was taken in Tahoua, northwestern Niger, on 1 August 2005.

The Colbert Report seems to be getting better…

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Colbert on Science Education in the U.S.A. It’s not happening.

Quicktime Video 5.3MB 4’32

Download: QT|WMV
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Summary: Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume showed an edited video clip of Rev. Joseph Lowery’s remarks at Coretta Scott King’s funeral, during which he mentioned the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Lowery’s remarks were greeted with 23 seconds of applause and a standing ovation, but the clip Fox News aired presented nine seconds of applause and little hint of the standing ovation without noting that the clip had been doctored. After seeing the clip, Roll Call’s Morton Kondracke concluded that the audience “wasn’t exactly uproarious in its response” to Lowery.

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Just over three years ago, as the nation readied for war with Iraq, elementary school teacher Deb Mayer stood in front of her class and uttered the word that would get her blacklisted from her profession.

It was a word that got her deemed “unpatriotic�? by an angry parent. A word that led to her termination from the Bloomington, Indiana school district. A word that got her labeled as a potential sex offender and ruined her chances of finding work elsewhere.

That word was “peace.�?

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Wethouder Sommer van de gemeente Geldrop-Mierlo is niet van plan de 75 euro milieuboete van mevrouw Van Wordragen kwijt te schelden. De 75-jarige vrouw uit Geldrop kreeg de boete omdat ze plastic zakken in de afvalbak bij de supermarkt deed.

Een milieuambtenaar van de gemeente Geldrop bekeurde haar daarvoor omdat er formeel geen huishoudelijk afval in de afvalbakken op straat mogen worden gegooid. De vrouw gooide de lege zakken weg na het voeren van vogels en kippen in een park. Ze is verbijsterd over het voorval en is niet van plan de boete zonder meer te betalen. Ze gaat er beroep tegen aantekenen.

Maar PvdA/GroenLinks-wethouder Sommer is niet bereid tot enige coulance. Hij vindt dat mevrouw Van Wordragen gewoon de wet heeft overtreden.

Gelukkig zijn er volgende maand gemeenteraadsverkiezingen.

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Jack Abramoff said in correspondence made public on Thursday that President Bush met him “almost a dozen” times, disputing White House claims Bush did not know the former lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal.

“The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows,” Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to Kim Eisler, national editor for the Washingtonian magazine.

Abramoff added that Bush also once invited him to his Texas ranch.

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A former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that his superiors authorized him to give secret information to reporters as part of the Bush administration’s defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq, according to court papers.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in documents filed last month that he plans to introduce evidence that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, disclosed to reporters the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate in the summer of 2003.

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Google today announced a new “feature” of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new “Search Across Computers” feature will store copies of the user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google’s own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user’s computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.

“Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google’s search logs, it’s shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the Desktop software can index. The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business, and in many cases you wouldn’t even be notified in time to challenge it.