TV’s most powerful moments: 9/11, Katrina, O.J., Nielsen study finds

TV’s most powerful moments: 9/11, Katrina, O.J., Nielsen study finds - The Sept. 11 tragedy was the most powerful event in television history, according to a new study released Wednesday by Sony Electronics and Nielsen.

According to Nielsen's survey of 1,077 American adults, 9/11 was the most "universally impactful" televised moment of the last 50 years, followed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995, the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 and the death of Osama bin Laden last May.

To measure impact, Nielsen and Sony created a score for each event derived by the number of people who viewed the event live, the number who could recall details about where they were during the occurrence and the number who could remember discussing what happened with others. Those parameters may explain why the surreal, slow-speed chase of Simpson's white Ford Bronco on June 17, 1994, ranked higher on the list than the 2011 earthquake in Japan, the Columbine High School shootings and the 2010 BP oil spill.

It may also be the reason that the endlessly hyped wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011 had more influence, according to Nielsen, than the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Here are the top 20 events, according to the survey:

1. Sept. 11 tragedy (2001)
2. Hurricane Katrina (2005)
3. O.J. Simpson verdict (1995)
4. Challenger space shuttle disaster (1986)
5. Death of Osama bin Laden (2011)
6. O.J. Simpson white Bronco chase (1994)
7. Earthquake in Japan (2011)
8. Columbine High School shootings (1999)
9. BP oil spill (2010)
10. Princess Diana's funeral (1997)
11. Death of Whitney Houston (2012)
12. Capture and execution of Saddam Hussein (2006)
13. Barack Obama's acceptance speech (2008)
14. The Royal Wedding (2011)
15. Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963)
16. Oklahoma City bombing (1995)
17. Bush/Gore election results (2000)
18. L.A. riots (1992)
19. Casey Anthony verdict (2011)
20. Funeral of John F. Kennedy (1963)

Five of the top 20 most powerful moments—bin Laden's killing, the earthquake in Japan, the Casey Anthony verdict, the royal wedding and the death of Whitney Houston—occurred within the last two years, while JFK's assassination and funeral in 1963 were the only televised events from the 1960s. And just one from the 1980s—the Challenger disaster—registered among the 20 most resonating, TV-wise.

The survey was conducted by Nielsen in February. Sony commissioned the study in part to prove that despite the prevalence of Facebook and Twitter, people still watch major news events on television. "The study shows that we still turn to TV to inspire those [social media] discussions," Sony Electronics VP Brian Siegel said. (Loose translation: We should buy more TVs, preferably from Sony.)

It also showed that age and gender play a big role in what we consider must-see TV.

Apart from 9/11, the most highly recalled events among females were the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana, the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton and the 2004 finale of "Friends." Among men, the killing of bin Laden and the U.S. hockey team's 1980 Olympic "miracle" were the most powerful television events excluding the 2001 terror attacks.

Among women aged 18-34, the Tiger Woods cheating episode ranked highest in the scandal category, whereas President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky had a greater effect among men in the same age range.

Men over the age of 55, meanwhile, were influenced heavily by the "Thrilla in Manila" bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, and Joe Namath's MVP performance in Super Bowl III. But 18-34-year-old men said they were most "impacted" by LeBron James' decision to sign with the Miami Heat. ( The Lookout )

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Iranian bomber maimed in blasts in Thai capital

Iranian bomber maimed in blasts in Thai capital - An Iranian man was seriously wounded in Bangkok Tuesday when a bomb he was carrying exploded and blew one of his legs off, police and government officials said, but they declined to speculate on whether he was involved with any militant group.

Shortly before, there had been an explosion in a house the man was renting in the Ekamai area of central Bangkok, and shortly afterwards, another blast on a nearby road.

A policeman gestures at the site where a man was injured when a bomb he was carrying exploded, in central Bangkok February 14, 2012. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

"The police have control of the situation. It is thought that the suspect might be storing more explosives inside his house," government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisaeng told reporters.

The three blasts came a day after bomb attacks targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia. Israel accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind those attacks.

Hezbollah is a Shi'ite Islamist group backed by Syria and Iran that is on the official U.S. blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations.

Iran denied involvement in the New Delhi and Tbilisi bombs.

Thai police said they were working to make safe an unspecified amount of explosives found in the house, which did not appear to have been badly damaged.

Police said they were looking for two other men who had been living there and they later said they had apprehended one suspect at Bangkok's main Suvarnabhumi airport.

"We discovered the injured man's passport. It's an Iranian passport and he entered the country through Phuket and arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport on the 8th of this month," Police General Bansiri Prapapat told Reuters.

TAXI A TARGET

Police declined to make any link between Tuesday's incident and the arrest last month of a Lebanese man in Bangkok who, according to the Thai authorities, had links to Hezbollah.

The police discovered a large amount of explosive material in an area southwest of Bangkok at around the time of that arrest. The United States, Israel and other countries issued warnings, subsequently lifted, of possible terrorist attacks in areas frequented by foreigners.

The Lebanese man has been charged with possession of explosive material and prosecutors said further charges could follow next week.

Tuesday's blasts in the sprawling Thai capital were not near the main area for embassies.

A taxi driver told Thai television the suspect had thrown a bomb in front of his car when he refused to pick him up near the site of the first blast. He was wounded slightly.

Government spokeswoman Thitima said police had then tried to move in and arrest the man but he attempted to throw another bomb at them. It went off before he was able to do so, blowing one of his legs off. A doctor at Chulalongkorn Hospital told reporters the other leg had had to be amputated.

Another doctor was quoted on television as saying three Thai people had suffered minor injuries in the incident, in addition to the taxi driver.

There have been no major attacks blamed on Islamist militants in Bangkok even though Muslim rebels are battling government security forces in Muslim-dominated southern provinces of the Buddhist kingdom.

In 1994, suspected Islamist militants tried to set off a large truck bomb outside the Israeli embassy in Bangkok but they abandoned the bid and fled after the truck was involved in a minor traffic accident as it approached the mission. ( Reuters )

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Al Qaeda slams Iran for peddling 9/11 conspiracy theories

Al Qaeda slams Iran for peddling 9/11 conspiracy theories - It's not often foreign leaders are chastised by al-Qaeda for going too far in their critique of the United States--but Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has somehow managed the trick. Ahmadinejad is already facing bruising attacks at home from conservative Iranian clerics and politicians on several fronts--and now al Qaeda representatives are assailing him for peddling conspiracy theories that deny the terrorist group's culpability for the Sept. 11 attacks.

According to the new issue of "Inspire" magazine--the English-language propaganda outlet put out by the group's Yemeni affiliate al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)--Ahmadinejad insulted the terrorist group by renewing past conspiratorial claims about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon during his speech before the United Nations last week.

"The mysterious September 11 incident" merits an investigation into possible "hidden elements involved" seeking a pretext for America's invasion of the Middle East, Ahmadinejad suggested in his Sept. 22 address to the world body--prompting an immediate walk-out by the United States and several European delegations.

And it seems that this was all a bit much for al Qaeda.

"The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government," an article in Inspire's latest issue argued, according to ABC News' Lee Ferrin. "So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?"

For Iran, "al Qaeda was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world," the rant continued. "Al Qaeda... succeeded in what Iran couldn't. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories."

Iran is committed only to carrying out "lip-service jihad" against the United States, it added.

(Whether the Inspire article author is aware that his rant echoes a skit by the satirical media outfit "the Onion" in 2008 is unclear.)

Ahmadinejad's 9/11 conspiracy theories were hardly anything new--nor was the American and European walkout that they provoked. Indeed, both have becoming staples of recent years' annual gathering of world leaders for the UN General Assembly opening session.

So too has Ahmadinejad's flurry of media interviews on his New York trips.

In such a meeting with journalists following his UN address, the Iranian leader was more restrained--if not more conciliatory--as he sought to draw equivalences between the West's economic troubles and those of Iran, the target of international sanctions over its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad also responded to questions about his own reported domestic political problems with Iran's hardline parliamentarians, suggesting that the divided political scene in Tehran is not all so different from the partisan rancor faced by the American president in Washington.

The Iranian leader went on to press other supposed analogies between Iran and the West. When several journalists in attendance asked him about the treatment of Iranian political prisoners, human rights abuses and political repression, Ahmadinejad countered that violence involving law enforcement kills 30 Americans every week, and spoke of the independence of Iran's judicial system. And when another reporter queried him about Iran's alleged military and financial support for Bashar al-Assad's crackdown in Syria, Ahmadinejad denied playing such a role, going on to argue that the successful Arab rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia overturned autocrats long allied with the United States. And so on.

Some of America's "jobless, hopeless youth see no alternative but to join the armed forces," Ahmadinejad said. "We are not happy" when American soldiers die in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Why do they need to die in Afghanistan? . . . Some wish to accuse others. Yet they are ignoring their own fundamental role."

Whether Ahmadinejad will get many further opportunities to portray such narratives on the world stage is not as assured as it once perhaps seemed. The UN gathering in New York this year was missing several autocrats who had become perennial fixtures--Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, and Tunisia's Ben Ali among them. And Ahmadinejad, currently in his second presidential term, is also a lame duck, as Iran is due to hold presidential elections in 2013. ( The Envoy )

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Florida pastor oversees Quran burning

Florida pastor oversees Quran burning - The controversial Florida pastor who halted plans to burn a Quran on the 9/11 anniversary last year oversaw the burning of the Islamic holy book on Sunday after it was found "guilty" during a "trial" at his church.

"We had a court process," said Pastor Terry Jones, who acted as judge, in a phone interview. "We tried to set it up as fair as possible, which you can imagine, of course, is very difficult."

Jones said about 30 people attended the mock trial at his Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville.

Jones considered the "International Judge the Quran Day" to be a fairer way of addressing the Islamic holy book, and denied breaking earlier promises not to burn a Quran.

If the jury had reached a different conclusion, Jones said he would have issued an apology for his accusations that the Quran promotes violence.

"We still don't feel that we broke our word — that was in relationship to International Burn a Quran Day," he said, referring to his previous plan to burn a pile of Qurans on the 9/11 anniversary to protest plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero. "We would not establish another International Burn a Quran Day."

Last year's aborted event provoked criticism from U.S. religious leaders, violent protests abroad and pressure from President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates before Jones called it off.

After a six-hour trial on Sunday that featured a Christian convert from Islam as a prosecuting attorney and a Dallas imam as a defense lawyer, a jury of 12 church members and volunteers made the judgment, Jones said.

He said the punishment — burning the book after it had been soaked in kerosene for an hour — was determined from four choices on his organization's Facebook page. He said "several hundred" were polled and voted for burning over shredding, drowning and facing a firing squad.

Jones considered the burning — which was conducted by another pastor since Jones was serving as the judge — a one-time event.

"That is not our intention, to run around America burning Qurans," he said.

Jones has launched a new organization, Stand Up America, and plans to protest the Quran, Shariah law and "radical Islam," and has scheduled an April event in front of an Islamic center in Dearborn, Mich.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, declined to comment at length about Jones' trial.

"Terry Jones had his 15 minutes of fame and we're not going to help him get another few minutes," he said. ( usatoday.com )

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