Bin Laden Audio Recording "Puzzling"; New York Ranger Found Dead

By Rosie Gray Sat., May 14 2011 at 9:53 AM

Categories: Caffeine Nation, Crime, Fire, Link Dump, New York Rangers, Osama bin Laden, Rosie Gray

An unreleased audio message from Osama Bin Laden recorded just before his death has been described as "puzzling" and "a head scratcher" by an official. In the recording, Bin Laden talks about the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, but not Libya, Yemen, or Syria. It's confusing that Bin Laden would suddenly throw his hat into the ring months late on the Arab uprisings and leave out most of the countries involved, and also that he wouldn't mention his support for the movement trying to take down Muammar Qaddafi, who he hated. [CNN]

The New York Rangers' Derek Boogaard was found dead in his Minneapolis apartment. The cause of death is unknown; Boogaard was 28. Boogaard had signed to a four-year contract with the Rangers, but was sent home a week before this season's end for unspecified reasons. [NYP]

A three-alarm fire killed two occupants of a building on Covert Street in Brooklyn last night. The house was illegally subdivided, and the FDNY thinks the men were trapped inside; one of them died after jumping out of a window and the other was found on the top floor. [Gothamist]

A man in the Spanish town of Los Cristianos beheaded a 62-year-old British woman on vacation there while she was in a supermarket. Then, as if that isn't gruesome enough, he dropped the head outside on the street before being apprehended. The suspect, a 28-year-old homeless Bulgarian national, seems to have had no reason or motive whatsoever. A witness told local radio, "I parked my car and saw a man running out with something bloody in his hands and a security guard chasing him. He threw it to the ground, it almost hit me and what he had been carrying was a woman's head." [BBC]

"She arrived like a modern-day Cleopatra, smiling and waving down at her adoring masses from the top deck of a trolley, her blown-out tresses fluttering in the wind." This is the lede of an article about J.Lo. [NYT]

Chris Brown and Rihanna recently started following each other on Twitter. [TMZ]

Newt Gingrich told a Georgia audience that the 2012 election is the most important since 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected. Something about four more years of "radical left-wing values," etc etc. [BusinessWeek]

[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]

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