New Times Broward-Palm Beach reports that not only did alleged terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta waltz past the INS in January 2001, he actually went back with fellow hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi in tow. An INS mistake had given Atta an extra two months on his visa, and he wanted Al-Shehhi to get the same. José Touron, an INS union official, tells New Times, "He was daring -- he put his head right back in the lion's mouth." The INS refused and took the extra two months away from Atta, but New Times reporter Bob Norman argues they could have investigated the two men then and there.
Ron Curran, a veteran writer and editor for LA Weekly and the San Francisco Bay Guardian, plans to launch a new alternative syndicate in the spring. The service, to be called Pulp Syndicate, takes aim at non-profit AlterNet, but Don Hazen, AlterNet’s executive editor, isn’t too worried. "We look forward to whatever healthy competition they might provide," Hazen says.
Are American Muslims harboring terrorists or seeking peace? To answer the question raging on talk radio, Willamette Week peeks behind the curtains at Portland's Islamic Academy. WW's Chris Lydgate interviewed students, teachers and parents, reviewed textbooks and sat in on classes and prayers. "What we discovered was neither the conservatives' paranoid nightmare of fanatics sharpening scimitars nor the liberals' wishful daydream of Unitarians in headscarves. Instead, we developed a far more nuanced image. We found a deeply conservative faith determined that its children not lose their way in a me-first society--and a group of believers scrambling for sanctuary in a newly suspicious nation," Lydgate writes.
Debbie Eason, founder of the Creative Loafing chain of alternative newsweeklies, is planning a new venture after selling the chain to her children. She intends to launch a new paper, either weekly or biweekly, covering intown western Atlanta, appropriately called West Side Story, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. She tells the daily her new paper won't compete with Creative Loafing-Atlanta.
