Whitney Houston dead at 48

Whitney Houston, one of the biggest pop stars of the ’80s and ’90s, has died, as ABC News reports. The cause and location (UPDATE: location was the Beverly Hilton Hotel) of her death haven’t been reported yet. She was 48, which is just impossibly sad.



CNN BREAKING: Pop Diva Whitney Houston Dead at 48 ~~ RIP Houston comes from a musical family; mother Cissy is a gospel music legend, Dionne Warwick is a cousin. Aretha Franklin was her godmother. She started out singing backup for Chaka Khan before Clive Davis signed her to Arista as a solo artist in 1983. She released her self-titled debut album in 1985, which was a massive success and the beginning of an absolute monster run that kept going through the late ’90s. The version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that she sang at the Super Bowl in 1991 ended up being released as a pop single that made the top 20, which is ridiculous, and her version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” sold four million singles and ended up breaking all sorts of pop records. She also acted in big movies like The Bodyguard and Waiting To Exhale. Commercially, she was an absolute juggernaut.

As a singer, Houston, along with sometime rival Mariah Carey is often derided as being the catalyst for soul music’s move away from raw emotion toward cold technique. And she was certainly wasn’t afraid to show off how ridiculously gifted she was as a vocalist. But this interpretation doesn’t really do justice to Houston’s ability to sell a song. Even though her songs often came with some of the cheesy smooth-pop flourishes popular at the time, she had a way of bringing a ballad to a monstrous soul-tugging crescendo. There’s a reason why a song like “I Will Always Love You” moved so many millions, and cold technique isn’t it.

Houston, of course, married Bobby Brown in 1992, and that long and troubled marriage made her total tabloid fodder. She had issues with drugs, and she became notorious later on for acting really weird on Brown’s reality show Being Bobby Brown. The couple divorced in 2007, and Houston’s attempts to return to the pop mainstream since have met with mixed success — though her last studio album, 2009′s I Look To You, sold a ton of first-week copies. We’ll certainly learn more about the circumstances surrounding her death in the weeks ahead, but what a sad early end. RIP Whitney Houston - We Will Always Love You (1963~2012) Raw Video: Whitney Houston's Last Performance

Beaking News: Colonel Muammar al Qaddafi has been captured and killed

The head of the Libyan military council said Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed Thursday as fighters battling the vestiges of his fallen regime took control of his hometown of Surt after a prolonged struggle.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan strongman who fled into hiding after rebels toppled his regime two months ago in the Arab Spring’s most violent uprising, was killed Thursday as fighters battling the vestiges of his loyalist forces wrested control of his hometown of Surt, the interim government announced.

Al-Jazeera television showed what it said was Colonel Qaddafi’s corpse as jubilant fighters in Surt fired automatic weapons in the air, punctuating what appeared to be an emphatic and violent ending to his four decades as the self-proclaimed king of kings of Africa.

Libyans rejoiced as news of his death spread. Car horns blared in Tripoli as residents poured into the streets to celebrate.

Mahmoud Shammam, the chief spokesman of the Transitional National Council, the interim government that replaced Colonel Qaddafi’s regime after he fled Tripoli in late August, confirmed that Colonel Qaddafi was killed, though he did not provide other details.

“A new Libya is born today,” he said.  “This is the day of real liberation. We were serious about giving him a fair trial.  It seems God has some other wish.”

Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the Tripoli military council, said on Al Jazeera that anti-Qaddafi forces had Colonel Qaddafi’s body.

It was not clear precisely how he died. Some reports, which could not be verified, recounted that Colonel Qaddafi was arrested, wounded by gunshots and died in custody.

Libya’s interim leaders had said they believed that some Qaddafi family members including the colonel himself and some of his sons had been hiding in Surt or in Bani Walid, another loyalist bastion that the anti-Qaddafi forces captured earlier this week.

(Via The New York Times)

Bin Laden’s body buried at sea

by News Source on May 2, 2011

Brian Whitaker reports:

The dilemma of what to do with Osama bin Laden’s body appears to have been quickly resolved if reports that he has been buried at sea prove correct.
Burying him on land could have led to his grave becoming a centre of contention as well as raising questions about where he should be buried.

“Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world’s most wanted terrorist would have been difficult,” a US official said, adding: “So the US decided to bury him at sea.”
Fears about Bin Laden’s burial place turning into a shrine for Islamists were probably unfounded, since the Wahhabi/Salafi tradition rejects such things. Even Saudi kings are buried in unmarked graves.

Senior US officials initially told news agencies that his body would be disposed of in accordance with Islamic tradition, which involves ritual washing, shrouding and burial within 24 hours.
Although the swift burial complies with Islamic custom and should therefore avoid causing any offence in Muslim countries, the apparent haste could lead to claims that the person killed was not really Bin Laden – though the US authorities have taken DNA samples and appear to have no doubts.

The 24-hour rule has not always been applied by the US in the past. For example, the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein – sons of the Iraqi dictator – were held for 11 days before being released for burial.

Burial at sea is rare in Islam, though several Muslim websites say it is permitted in certain circumstances.

One is on a long voyage where the body may decay before the ship reaches land. The other is if there is a risk of enemies digging up a land grave and exhuming or mutilating the body – a rule that could plausibly be applied in Bin Laden’s case.

For sea burial, according to alislam.org, the body should be lowered into the water “in a vessel of clay or with a weight tied to its feet”. The website adds: “As far as possible it should not be lowered at a point where it is eaten up immediately by the sea predators.”