By Staff
A group of United Airlines employees swear they saw a mysterious, saucer-shaped craft hovering over Chicago's O'Hare Airport last fall.
The workers, some of them pilots, said the unidentified flying object (UFO) lacked lights and hovered over an airport terminal before shooting up through the clouds, according to a report in the Jan. 1 Chicago Tribune.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) acknowledged that a United supervisor called the control tower at O'Hare, asking if anyone spotted a spinning disc-shaped object.
But the controllers didn't see anything, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
The biggest thing out of the ordinary at first glance is that nobody photographed this UFO with their cellphone.
Martians must wear underwear and keep their lips sealed.
Ask Michael Richards and his racist rage or Mel Gibson and his Jewish war theories about the likelihood of going unphotographed anywhere.
In the time it takes to hover over an historic event before shooting up through the clouds, cell-phone video of the Dec. 30, 2006, execution by hanging of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein for the mass murder of Shiite civilians surfaced on the Internet to further roil some turbulent waters.
Grainy footage was captured surreptitiously by someone at the foot of the gallows.
This snuff film reportedly doesn't shrink from the grotesque money shot when the trap door opens and terminates the life of a tyrant who ruled by terror.
A voice three times taunts out a name, "Moqtada," as in the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads the most powerful of Iraq's sectarian militias.
His father, also a cleric, Saddam ordered killed.
Payback is hell, the message implies.
Despite what had to be tight security, someone managed to film Saddam's execution.
What might be his motivation?
Was he working for the government, sending a solidarity message to Moqtada al-Sadr, a promise to majority Shiites that they will stay in charge?
Iraq's prime minister ordered an investigation Jan. 2 into Hussein's execution to try to uncover who taunted him in the last minutes of his life, and who leaked the inflammatory footage taken by camera phone of the demise of an unlikely martyr.
Fourteen selected witnesses attended the pre-dawn execution at a Baghdad prison along with guards.
Government-approved witnesses had been searched before boarding a U.S. helicopter that whisked them from the Green zone to the execution site, their mobile phones placed in a box for safekeeping.
Gerald Ford mourners also photographed that scene, ignoring posted signs.
Even starlets who can't remember to wear underwear when they leave the house are probably packing camera phones.
Britney Spears found herself sans panties while exiting a car that also contained Paris Hilton.
Lindsay Lohan similarly flashed a crowd of preteens when she forgot to wear underwear to the Kids' Choice Awards.
Of course, she's attending Alcoholics Anonymous when she isn't even old enough to drink legally.
That's the best advice we can give Martians.
Don't forget to wear underwear.
You will usually be photographed, even hanging around Chicago airports.
Least surprising news of the week: High school students who drink binge drink.
In a nationwide government survey, 45 percent of students admitted drinking in the past month.
Of those who admitted drinking, two-thirds engaged in binge drinking, defined as having five or more drinks in a short period of time.
White House counsel Harriet Miers resigned Jan. 4 as President Bush shuffles his legal team in anticipation of a clash with the new Democratic Congress bent on using its subpoena power to investigate his administration.
She isn't up to this battle, but she was good enough to offer for the Supreme Court last year?
Some Republicans were told she was leaving before Thanksgiving.
With recent hires, the office has about a dozen lawyers – much leaner than under President Clinton, defending lawsuits on many fronts.
Change of mind on "don't ask, don't tell": John Shalikashvili, the Army general who was Clinton's Joint Chiefs chairman when the Pentagon adopted its policy on gays, says he no longer opposes allowing them to serve openly.
Shalikashvili, who retired in 1997 after four years as the nation's top military officer, argued that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would hurt troop morale and recruitment and undermine the cohesion of combat units.
He said he changed his mind after meeting gay servicemen.
"These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers," he wrote in an opinion piece in the Jan. 2 New York Times.
Cereal City USA, the Battle Creek attraction with a cereal museum with interactive exhibits and a mock cereal factory, closed Jan. 4.
Its best year was its first, with 162,000 visitors.
Attendance averaged 86,203 from 2000 to 2005.
Obit: Former Tiger Chris Brown, 45, died from injuries suffered in a house fire in Sugar Land, Texas.
In six seasons the third baseman hit .269 and made the National League All-Star team in 1986, when he hit .367 for the Giants.
Brown, who retired from baseball in 1989, recently worked in Iraq, driving a truck for Halliburton.
Did you know?: Godfather of Soul James Brown, who died at age 73, was an athlete.
He incorporated boxing footwork into his stage show.
He was a left-handed pitcher with "a good fastball, a sharp curve and a wicked floater," according to his 1986 autobiography.
A leg injury steered him toward show business.
Brown in a 2005 interview with NPR credited his trademark splits to Jackie Robinson's first base play.