(CNN) — A Philadelphia-area day care center said Thursday that members of a private swim club made racist comments about the center’s children, and the club then canceled their swimming privileges.

 Some kids from the the Creative Steps Day Care center said club members made racial remarks.

The Creative Steps Day Care children — ages kindergarten through seventh grade — went to the Valley Swim Club in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, on June 29.

The day center’s director, Alethea Wright, had contracted to use the club once a week. During their first visit, some children said they heard club members asking why African-American children were there.

One of the boys told the Philadelphia Inquirer that a woman at the club said she feared the children “might do something” to her child.

Days later, the day care center’s $1,950 check was returned without explanation, Wright said.

The stepfather of one of the children was filing a complaint against the club with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, the panel’s chairman, Stephen Glassman, said Thursday.

The commission is investigating the allegations, spokeswoman Shannon Powers said, and will attempt to resolve the conflict out of court.

Sen. Arlen Specter’s office said the Pennsylvania Democrat has sent a letter to the Valley Swim Club president asking him to reinstate the contract with Creative Steps, saying, “I think that you would agree that there is no place for racism in America today.”

CNN attempted to speak with club President John Duesler on Thursday. He said he had no comment and asked CNN to leave the club property.

But Duesler told two Philadelphia television stations that the children had changed “the complexion” and “atmosphere” of the club.

A small group of protesters gathered in front of the club Thursday and said they think Duesler’s statements prove that the club’s action was racially motivated.

“I was hoping it wouldn’t be something that was so blatantly apparent. I was hoping that it was overcrowding,” one protester said. “When I read the statement by the club president, it made it blatant.”

Jim Flynn, who said he was one of the club members who made a complaint against the children, said it was not racially motivated.

“There were a lot of children in the pool and not enough lifeguards,” he said. “As general members, we were not told that they were coming. If we knew, we could decide to not come when the pool was crowded or come anyway. We could have had an option.”

He said two other day-care centers, neither of which included minority children, had previously been similarly disinvited.

A private Philadelphia boarding school said Thursday that it plans to help the day care center.

“We thought it was appalling what happened,” Girard College Admissions Director Tamara Leclair said.

She is meeting with the director of Creative Steps to sign a contract allowing the children to use Girard’s facilities this summer, as early as Monday.

“We’ve had a wonderful response. I even received an e-mail from a woman in Florida telling us we did the right thing.

Press Release on resolution

WASHINGTON (CNN) –The House of Representatives will not take up a resolution honoring the late entertainer Michael Jackson, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday.

Pelosi called Jackson “a great, great performer” and acknowledged there is “lots of sadness.” But the speaker said at a press conference that while members could express their sympathy on the House floor, she added “I don’t think it’s necessary” to pass a resolution.

“A resolution, I think, would open up (debate) to contrary views that are not necessary at this time to be expressed in association with a resolution whose purpose is quite different,” Pelosi explained.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who spoke at the memorial service for Jackson on Tuesday in Los Angeles, has introduced HR 600, “Honoring an American legend and musical icon.”

The resolution states, “Whereas Michael Jackson was not only an accomplished recording and performing artist, he was a noted humanitarian.”

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., criticized the media’s extensive coverage of Michael Jackson’s death earlier this week, calling Jackson a “pervert,” a “pedophile,” and “child molester.”

By Mark H. Gaffney

July 07, 2009 “ICH” — The evidence was crucial because it undermined the official explanation that Hani Hanjour crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon at high speed after executing an extremely difficult top gun maneuver. But to understand how all of this played out, let us review the case in bite-size pieces…

In August 2004 when the 9/11 Commission completed its official investigation of the September 11, 2001 attack, the commission transfered custody of its voluminous records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).[1] There, the records remained under lock and key for four and a half years, until last January when NARA released a fraction of the total for public viewing. Each day, more of the released files are scanned and posted on the Internet, making them readily accessible. Although most of the newly-released documents are of little interest, the files I will discuss in this article contain important new information.

As we know, the 9/11 Commission did not begin its work until 2003–––more than a year after the fact. By this time a number of journalists had already done independent research and published articles about various facets of 9/11. Some of this work was of excellent quality. The Washington Post, for example, interviewed aviation experts who stated that the plane allegedly piloted by Hani Hanjour [AA Flight 77] had been flown “with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm.”[2] Yet, strangely, when other journalists investigated Hani Hanjour they found a trail of clues indicating he was a novice pilot, wholly incapable of executing a top gun maneuver and a successful suicide attack in a Boeing 757. By early 2003 this independent research was a matter of public record, which created a serious problem for the 9/11 Commission…

By all accounts Hani Hanjour was a diminutive fellow. He stood barely five feet tall and was slight of build. As a young man in his hometown of Taif, Saudi Arabia, Hanjour cultivated no great dreams of flying airplanes. He was satisfied with a more modest ambition: he wanted to become a flight attendant. That is, until his older brother Abulrahman encouraged him to aim higher. Even so, Hani Hanjour’s aptitude for learning appears to have been rather limited. Although he resided in the US for about 38 months over a ten-year period that ended on 9/11, Hanjour never learned to speak or write English, a telling observation about his capacity for learning. As we will discover, he actually flunked a written test for a driver’s license just weeks before 9/11.

While it is true that Hanjour trained at various flight schools in the US, the evidence shows he was a perpetual novice. Hanjour dropped out of his first school, the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics, located in Oakland, after attending only a few classes. Next, he enrolled at Cockpit Resource Management (CRM), a flight school in Scottsdale, Arizona. But his performance as a student at CRM was less than adequate. Duncan K.M. Hastie, owner of the school, described Hanjour as “a weak student” who was “wasting our resources.”[3]

After several weeks, Hanjour withdrew from the program, then returned in 1997 for another short period of instruction. This on and off pattern of behavior was typical of the man. Hastie says that over the next three years Hanjour called him at least twice a year, and each time wanted to return for more training. By this time, however, it was obvious to Hastie that his erstwhile student had no business in a cockpit. Hastie refused to let Hanjour come back. “I would recognize his voice,” Hastie said. “He was always talking about wanting more training. Yes, he wanted to be an airline pilot. That was his stated goal. That’s why I didn’t allow him to come back. I thought ‘You’re never going to make it’.”[4]

Rejected by CRM, Hanjour enrolled at nearby Sawyer Aviation, also located in the Phoenix area. Wes Fults, a former instructor at Sawyer, later described it as the school of last resort. Said Fults: “it was a commonly held truth that, if you failed anywhere else, go to Sawyer.” Fults remembers training Hanjour, whom he describes as “a neophyte.” He says Hani “got overwhelmed with the instruments” in the school’s flight simulator. “He had only the barest understanding of what the instruments were there to do,” said Fults. “He [Hanjour] used the simulator three or four times, then disappeared like a fog.”[5] I must emphasize to the reader, I am not making this up. Other accounts by Newsday, the New York Times, as well as the FOX network, all confirm that Hani Hanjour was at best a novice pilot.

Evading the Language Requirement

In fact, because fluency in English is required to qualify for a US pilot’s license, Hanjour’s atrocious English should have barred him from ever obtaining a license. But it seems that Hanjour exploited a loophole in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system, which for years has outsourced the pilot certification process. According to a June 2002 story in the Dallas Morning News, Hanjour was certified in April 1999 as an “Airplane Multi-Engine Land/Commercial Pilot” by Daryl Strong, one of the FAA’s 20,000 designated pilot examiners.[6] Although an FAA official later defended the agency’s policy of using private contractors, a critic, Heather Awsumb, took issue with it. Awsumb is a spokesperson for the Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS) Union, which represents more than 11,000 FAA and Defense Department employees. She pointed out that the FAA does not have anywhere near enough staff to oversee its 20,000 designated inspectors, all of whom have a financial interest in certifying as many pilots as possible. It seems that Hanjour evaded the language requirement by finding an examiner willing to ignore the rule. Said Awsumb: “They receive between $200 and $300 for each flight check. If they get a reputation for being too tough, they won’t get any business.” According to Awsumb, the present system allows “safety to be sold to the lowest bidder.”[7]

Later, Hanjour’s horrible English prompted one flight school, Jet Tech, to question the authenticity of his FAA-approved pilot’s license. Jet Tech was another school in the Phoenix area where Hanjour sought continuing instruction. Peggy Chevrette, operation manager at Jet Tech, later told FOX News: “I couldn’t believe that he had a license of any kind with the skills that he had.”[8] She explained that Hanjour’s English was so bad it took him five hours to complete an oral exam that normally should have taken about two.

But it wasn’t just his poor English that failed to impress. In his evaluation the Jet Tech flight instructor wrote that the “student [Hanjour] made numerous errors during his performance and displayed a lack of understanding of some basic concepts. The same was true during review of systems knowledge….I doubt his ability to pass an FAA [Boeing 737] oral at this time or in the near future.” The 737 instructor concluded his evaluation with a final entry: “He [Hanjour] will need much more experience flying smaller A/C [aircraft] before he is ready to master large jets.”[9] The 9/11 Commission  Report fails to discuss or even mention this negative written evaluation, even while presenting Hanjour’s substandard performance in a Boeing 737 simulator as sufficient evidence that Hanjour could fly a Boeing 757, an even larger plane![10] The wording of the final report succeeds in giving this impression, however dubious, even while obscuring the facts: an amazing achievement of propaganda.

Early in 2001, Peggy Chevrette, the operation manager at Jet Tech, contacted the FAA repeatedly to convey her concerns about Hanjour. Eventually John Anthony, a federal inspector, showed up at the school and examined Hanjour’s credentials. But Anthony found them in order and took no further action. The inspector even suggested that Jet Tech provide Hanjour with an interpreter. This surprised Chevrette because it was a violation of FAA rules. “The thing that really concerned me,” she later told FOX News, “Was that John had a conversation in the hallway with Hani and realized what his skills were at that point and his ability to speak English.”[11] Evidently, the inspector also sat in on a class with Hanjour.

FOX News was unable to reach John Anthony for comment, but FAA spokesperson Laura Brown defended the FAA employee. “There was nothing about the pilot’s actions” she said, “to signal criminal intent or that would have caused us to alert law enforcement.”[12] This is true enough. The Jet Tech staff never suspected that Hani Hanjour was a terrorist. According to Marilyn Ladner, vice-president Pan Am International, the company that owned Jet Tech, “It was more of a very typical instructional concern that ‘you really shouldn’t be in the air’.”[13] Although Pan Am dissolved its Jet Tech operation shortly after 9/11, a former employee who knew Hanjour expressed amazement “that he [Hanjour] could have flown into the Pentagon. [because] He could not fly at all.”[14]

Read more here

Who are the Uighurs?

The Uighurs are Muslims. Their language is related to Turkish and they regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to other Central Asian nations.

China maintains a high military presence in the Xinjiang region

The region’s economy has for centuries revolved around agriculture and trade, with towns such as Kashgar thriving as hubs along the Silk Road.

In the early part of the 20th Century, the Uighurs briefly declared independence. The region was brought under the complete control of communist China in 1949.

Officially, Xinjiang is now described by China as an autonomous region, like Tibet to its south.

What are China’s concerns about the Uighurs?

Beijing says Uighur militants have been waging a violent campaign for an independent state by plotting bombings, sabotage and civic unrest.

Since the 9/11 attacks in the US, China has increasingly portrayed its Uighur separatists as auxiliaries of al-Qaeda.

It has accused them of receiving training and indoctrination from Islamist militants in neighbouring Afghanistan.

However, little public evidence has been produced in support of these claims.

More than 20 Uighurs were captured by the US military after its invasion of Afghanistan. Though imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for six years, they were not charged with any offence. Albania accepted five in 2006, four were allowed to resettle in Bermuda in June, 2009, while the Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to take the others.

What complaints have been made against the Chinese in Xinjiang?

Activists say the Uighurs’ religious, commercial and cultural activities have been gradually curtailed by the Chinese state.

China is accused of intensifying its crackdown on the Uighurs after street protests in the 1990s - and again, in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

Over the past decade, many prominent Uighurs have been imprisoned or have sought asylum abroad after being accused of terrorism.

China is said to have exaggerated the threat from Uighur separatists in order to justify repression in the region.

Beijing has also been accused of seeking to dilute Uighur influence by arranging the mass immigration of Han Chinese, the country’s majority ethnic group, to Xinjiang.

Han Chinese currently account for roughly 40% of Xinjiang’s population, while about 45% are Uighurs.

What is the current situation in Xinjiang?

Over the past decade, major development projects have brought prosperity to Xinjiang’s big cities.

The activities of local and foreign journalists in the region are closely monitored by the Chinese state and there are few independent sources of news from the region.

China has been keen to highlight improvements made to the region’s economy while Uighurs interviewed by the press have avoided criticising Beijing.

However, occasional attacks on Chinese targets suggest Uighur separatism remains a potent - and potentially violent - force.

A protest in July in Urumqi, the region’s capital, turned violent, with about 140 people killed and hundreds injured.

Authorities blamed Xinjiang separatists based outside China for the unrest, while Uighur exiles said police had fired indiscriminately on a peaceful protest calling for an investigation into the deaths of two Uighurs in clashes with Han Chinese at a factory in southern China

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: “I promised efficiencies and effectiveness. That’s not how I’m wired. I’m not wired to operate under the same old politics as usual. I promised that four years ago and I meant it. That’s not what is best for Alaska at this time. I’m determined to take the right path for Alaska, even though it is unconventional and it’s not that comfortable.”

Palin ran as Senator John McCain’s Vice Presidential nominee in last year’s elections and is a considered a top Republican hopeful in 2012. Her replacement, Alaska Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell, says he thinks Palin’s mounting legal bills over a series of ethics complaints forced her to step down. Palin’s legal team meanwhile has warned news outlets not to publish stories speculating whether she’s under federal investigation. In a four-page letter, Palin’s attorney warns that media groups could be sued if they grant space to rumors that Palin is being investigated for alleged embezzlement in the construction of a sports arena. The FBI says Palin is not under investigation.

The Sun is reporting shortly after the injection, Jackson’s breathing got “slower and slower until it stopped.”

We cannot confirm this story. We can say, however, that after Jackson was badly burned during the filming of a Pepsi commercial, he became addicted to painkillers and ended up at the Betty Ford Clinic. As for the painkillers, there are reports he was given Demerol.

In addition, during the child molestation trial, cops seized syringes and drugs, including Demerol.

Part 1

Beyond this, his business acumen and intuitive understanding of the music market allowed him to showcase his remarkable talents.

Michael Jackson sold records by the million - and broke records too.

With the soulful vocal presence of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and the dance moves of James Brown, Jackson’s appeal crossed both national and racial boundaries.

His first break came in 1968, when the Jackson Five signed to the Motown label, and he was just 11 when the group released its first single.

WORLDWIDE ALBUM SALES Off The Wall: 19m Thriller: 65m Bad: 28m Dangerous: 29m HIStory: 18m Invincible: 8m

Hits like I Want You Back, ABC, The Love You Save, and I’ll Be There, which all went to number one in the United States in 1970, made the Jackson 5 the first group in pop history to have their first four singles top the charts.

Before long, the youngest member of the Jackson Five was beginning to outstrip his brothers.

A series of solo hits, including Got To Be There, Rockin’ Robin and Ben - the maudlin, yet chart-topping, paean to a rat - had shown that the promise of early years had come to fruition.

By the mid-1970s, both Michael’s, and his brothers’, careers were beginning to stall. Motown has ended its interest in the group, which had re-signed - as the Jacksons - to the Epic label.

But it was while Michael was working on the film musical The Wiz, an all-black retelling of the Wizard of Oz - in which he played the Scarecrow to Diana Ross’s Dorothy - that he met the man who would turn him into a superstar and transform the world of popular music.

Music producer, composer and arranger, Quincy Jones, who could already boast a formidable track record, having created hits for artists like Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and George Benson, took Jackson’s raw talent and moulded it into an awesome new sound.

Video extravaganza

Their first collaboration, Off The Wall, released in 1979, became the first album to provide four top ten US hits for an artist: the title track, Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, Rock With You and She’s Out of My Life.

Jackson the child wonder in 1972 on Top of the Pops

Four years later came Thriller, the album which would define his career. A heady mix of disco, R&B and funk, its nine tracks spawned seven hit singles and became the best-selling album of all time, with at least 55 million copies bought to date.

Having already experimented with video on Off The Wall, Jackson now took the new medium to new heights.

The John Landis-directed film, accompanying the album’s title track, was a 16-minute big-budget extravaganza, featuring cutting-edge special effects and the voice of veteran horror actor, Vincent Price.

The Thriller video, and its companion, Beat It, also ended MTV’s neglect of black artists, while making the mini-musical blockbuster de rigueur for any self-respecting pop star.

Besides his successful solo career, Jackson also recorded a series of hit duets with Paul McCartney, who had written the Off The Wall track, Girlfriend.

The two stars appeared on one another’s albums with songs like The Girl Is Mine and the chart-topping Say Say Say.

Stripped-down sound

The relationship soured, though, in 1985, when Jackson outbid both McCartney and Yoko Ono to secure the ATV music-publishing catalogue, which included the rights to more than 250 Lennon/McCartney songs.

Not for the first time, Jackson’s ruthless business streak had asserted itself.

The same year also saw the USA For Africa charity single, We Are The World, co-written by Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, reach number one in the US.

The Jackson phenomenon showed no sign of slowing down when, in 1987, he released the third, and final, Quincy Jones-produced album, Bad.

Thriller was the biggest-selling album of all time

With five number one hits, including Man in the Mirror and Dirty Diana, the album also featured a 17-minute video, courtesy of Martin Scorsese, to promote the title track and a year-long world tour, at the time the largest-grossing in history.

Dangerous, Jackson’s 1991 outing, featured a more stripped-down sound than its three predecessors.

But the magic remained, and tracks like Heal the World and Black and White soon became worldwide hits, despite the tabloid headlines and court cases which now threatened to damage the singer’s reputation.

But his 1995 album, a compilation of old hits and new material entitled HIStory, failed to ignite the popular imagination.

Controversy

Despite the biggest-ever publicity campaign for an album, estimated at $30m, HIStory enjoyed a brief appearance in the charts.

Whether this was due to the star’s increasingly erratic behaviour, continuing speculation about his private life or just the public turning increasingly to rap and hip-hop, is a matter for debate.

But one track, in particular - They Don’t Care About Us, with the lyrics, “Jew me, sue me” - outraged many people including Jackson’s long-time friend and supporter Steven Spielberg, who saw it as anti-Semitic.

And his appearance at the 1996 Brit Awards ceremony in London, surrounded by children and a rabbi, proved too much for some, most notably Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, who showed his displeasure by storming the stage and interrupting the performance.

Jackson’s live shows were big-budget spectaculars

Michael Jackson’s final album, Invincible (2001) was released at a time when he looked anything but.

A swirl of controversy, including Jackson’s repeated assertions that his record company, Sony, had asked for their money back - all $200m of it - and that the label’s chairman, Tommy Mottola, held black artists back, effectively drowned out the music.

It seemed an underwhelming end to what had been one of the most spectacular of all musical careers.

In recent years, Jackson was plagued by money problems and shielded himself from public view.

Arrested in 2003 on charges of molesting a 14-year-old boy, he was cleared in June 2005 after a five-month trial.

As rumours of bankruptcy circled after the trial, Jackson moved for a period to the Middle East.

There he befriended the king of Bahrain’s son, Sheikh Abdulla Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa, who helped fund Jackson’s lavish lifestyle.

But the sheikh later sued Jackson for $7m (£4.7m), saying the star had reneged on a music contract that would have been used to pay back loans. The pair settled out of court last year.

Jackson was due to begin a series of sold-out comeback concerts, starting with an appearance in London next month.

Hundreds of fans queued at the O2 arena as tickets went on sale to the public and more than a quarter of a million people queued online.

In the end, around 750,000 tickets were sold for the 50-date residency - which Jackson had billed his “final curtain call”.

Rehearsals for the show were under way when the star suffered a cardiac arrest at his home in Bel Air. He was later pronounced dead at the UCLA medical centre in Los Angeles.

Source BBC