White Horse of Uffington Killings

Police have recovered the bodies of one of two suspected murdered individuals near the famed White Horse of Uffington. 

The Uffington White Horse is a highly stylised prehistoric hill figure, 374 feet (110 m) long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed whitechalk. The figure is situated on the upper slopes of White Horse Hill in the English civil parish of Uffington (in the county of Oxfordshire, historically Berkshire), some five miles south of the town of Faringdon and a similar distance west of the town of Wantage. 

The Daily Mail, among other sources, is reporting that police hunting for the missing Sian O'Callaghan (pictured above) said they have found the body of the 22-year-old buried at this famous beauty spot. 

The area is symbolic* and historically significant.

The body was found near the White Horse of Uffington hill, near Wantage, Oxfordshire, around 13 miles from the nightclub where she disappeared from last Saturday evening. Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher said a 47-year-old cabbie from Swindon was being held on suspicion of the murder.

Police search the area for evidence.

The divorced father-of-three is said to have told the police the location of a second body but further details have not yet emerged.

The paper reported:

Although formal identification of the body found today is yet to take place, he said the bodies is believed to be missing Sian and her family had been informed.

Police earlier swooped on a man at an Asda store in Swindon - and arrested him before seizing a vehicle.

The man arrested today was named by neighbours as local private hire driver Chris Halliwell.

The divorced father-of-three teenage girls lived around 11 miles, or a 25 minute drive, from the 'shallow grave' that Sian's body was found in close to the beauty spot.

He is reported to have spoken with police today then walked them to the bodies at the landmark.

Police had previously said that two bodies had been found but it is now understood that only one has been discovered.

The location of a second body believed to be buried nearby was made known to police but they have not yet discovered it.

A Wiltshire Police spokesman said tonight: 'Wiltshire Police would like to make it clear that while the location of two bodies has been identified to the Senior Investigating Officer, only one body has currently been found and this is believed to be Sian O'Callaghan.The second body has yet to be recovered.'

At a press conference tonight Mr Fulcher from Wiltshire Police said: 'A 47-year-old man from Swindon is in custody, having been arrested for kidnap and two murders.

'The location of two bodies have been identified to me by this individual, one of whom has yet to be identified formally, but I am quite clear is Sian.

'I have informed Sian's family, who are obviously deeply distressed, and I would ask you please to give them time and space to come to terms with what's happened.

'The public and the media have been a fantastic help in the desperate effort to find Sian over the last few days. This has of course been a fast-paced inquiry.

'Having found these bodies, you will appreciate that I am under extreme pressure to undertake certain actions and procedures, and I would ask you to give me some time to enable me to recover these bodies, with the dignity and respect that they deserve.'

He said he was concerned for the family, and the effect this would have on them.

'I want to recover these people and give them the dignity they deserve.'

Chief superintendent Steve Hedley added: 'We want to continue with this investigation which is at a significant stage. We have a family who are extremely distraught.'

Police had earlier been combing woodland with sniffer dogs as they searched for Sian who had not been seen since Saturday evening at the Japanese-themed Suju nightclub.

But a white forensics tent had today been set up on a gravel driveway outside the suspect's semi-detached red-brick home in Swindon and it was cordoned off as forensic officers examined the scene.

A neighbour, who did not want to be named, said the father-of-three was divorced and had been separated from his wife.

Sian went missing after a 'girl's night out' with friends at a nightclub in her home town. 

She was pictured on CCTV leaving the club in the High Street at 2.52am. The flat she shared with her boyfriend, Kevin Reape, 25, is just a half-a-mile walk away from the night spot but she did not make it home.

Mr Reape contacted police the next morning after failing to get in touch with his partner.

The Japanese-themed Suju nightclub is in Swindon, Wiltshire; it was where Sian was last sighted before she was apparently taken to the woodlands. 

More location background:


The hill forms a part of the scarp of the Berkshire Downs and overlooks the Vale of White Horse to the north. Best views of the White Horse figure are obtained from the air, or from directly across the Vale, particularly around the villages of Great Coxwell, Longcot and Fernham. The site is owned and managed by the National Trust.

The figure has been shown to date back some 3,000 years, to the Bronze Age, by means of optically stimulated luminescence dating carried out following archaeological investigations in 1994. These studies produced three dates ranging between 1400 and 600 BC. Iron Age coins that bear a representation comparable to the Uffington White Horse have been found, supporting the early dating of this artifact; counter suggestions that the figure was fashioned in the Anglo-Saxon period now seem untenable. Numerous other prominent prehistoric sites are located nearby, notably Wayland's Smithy, a long barrow less than two kilometres to the west. The Uffington is by far the oldest of the white horse figures in Britain, and is of an entirely different design from the others.

It has long been debated whether the chalk figure was intended to represent a horse or some other animal. However, it has been called a horse since the eleventh century at least. A cartulary of Abingdon Abbey, compiled between 1072 and 1084, refers to "mons albi equi" at Uffington ("the White Horse Hill").

The horse is thought to represent a tribal symbol perhaps connected with the builders of Uffington Castle. It is quite similar to horses depicted on pre-Roman British coinage and the Marlborough bucket.

Until the late 19th century the horse was scoured every seven years as part of a more general local fair held on the hill. When regular cleaning is halted the figure quickly becomes obscured; it has always needed frequent work for the figure to remain visible.

In August 2002 the figure was defaced with the addition of a rider and three dogs by members of the "Real Countryside Alliance" (Real CA). The act was denounced by theCountryside Alliance.

The white horse at Folkestone, Kent, is based on this horse. At Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, there is a larger replica of the Uffington horse.


++++++

*For those interested in the general Fortean thoughts of how some unexplained events appear to be linked to "devil names" and other similar sites, please see past entries in the archives of this blog and this passage from my book, Mysterious America.


As those who are aware of my nearly 40 years of human services and forensic work with abused children and adults realize, I do not take it lightly such criminal activity. In understanding the underlying themes of symbolism, it is hoped that future killings, injuries, and harm will be prevented to the victims of such incidents.


Sources: As noted, the mainstream media has covered this story extensively in the U.K. The White Horse of Uffington material is from Wikipedia, for general background. 

Northern Irish Clowns Attack

What is the source of this poster's twisted concept?

Evil clowns anew?


Trying to find the "Top Ten Evil Clowns of 2011"? See here.

A man has been assaulted by two men wearing clown masks in Donaghadee, a small town (population about 6,500) in County Down, Northern Ireland. The town lies on the northeast coast of the Ards Peninsula, about 18 miles (29 km) east of Belfast and about six miles (10 km) south east of Bangor.

At about 8 PM local time (2000 GMT) on Tuesday, 22 March 2011 (i.e. 22-3-11 in the UK), two men with baseball bats called to a flat in Barnagh Grove and assaulted the 42-year-old who lives there. The man's arm was broken and he suffered other injuries. He was taken to a hospital for treatment, according to the BBC.

Police said the attackers were wearing "clown-type masks" and black clothing.

Donaghadee is known as a significant site from the Irish Rebellion of 1798. On the morning of Pike Sunday,  June 10, 1798, a force of United Irishmen (a guerilla force, not unlike the revolutionaries contemporary in America and France), mainly from Bangor, Donaghadee, Greyabbey and Ballywalter, Ireland, attempted to occupy the town of Newtownards. They met with musket fire from the market house and were defeated.

A question for the Irish readers: What is "Pike Sunday"?

March 17th: War In Libya?

Update: 

On the evening of March 17th, the U.N. Security Council approved (10-0, 5 abstainees) measures including a no-fly zone to try to halt Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's advances and the use of any other measures necessary to protect Libyans. Canada immediately noted they were ready to send 6 fighter jets to Libya to help enforce the no-fly zone. News services reported that the first strikes will be unilateral ones by British and French aircraft. Those countries' fighters could be in the air within hours of the resolution's approval. It is likely five Arab air forces will take part. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had earlier said it will mean bombing Libyan air defenses. 

On the morning of March 18, 2011, New York time, Libya's foreign minister declared a cease-fire after the U.N. Security Council approved the no-fly zone to protect civilians. Later reports, however, note that twenty-five people, including several children, were killed during heavy bombardments by forces loyal to Gaddafi on the western city of Misrata on Friday, a doctor in the city told Reuters.

++++

The following was posted early on March 17th, 2011. Also, I had mentioned a month ago (here) that this date would have some significance.

Stay with me here. These are games that boys into men play, deadly, yes, but happening on a strange landscape that takes into account Oklahoma, Texas, Tibet, Nepal, Iraq, and Libya - and some characters all too familiar to you.

Libya? March 17th? Yes, the American involvement in Libya is tied to that specific date. In 1957, from March 17 to 20, in the wake of the 1956 Suez Crisis, Ambassador James P. Richards, Special Assistant to President Eisenhower, visited Libya. His mission resulted from the President’s earlier address to Congress, in which Eisenhower promised that the United States would defend countries in the Middle East against communist aggression and would supply development and security assistance as needed (the Eisenhower Doctrine). Richards made a second visit to Libya on May 4. A joint U.S.-Libyan communiqué announced that the United States was prepared to assist in a survey of Libyan development needs, development of broadcasting and telecommunications, assistance in education, electric power development, and domestic water supplies. 

  
James Richards of South Carolina served in World War I and played professional baseball before his election to his first of twelve terms in the House in 1932. 

Also in March 1957, Vice President Richard M. Nixon visited Libya. Then on June 30, 1957, the United States and Libya signed a military assistance agreement, and a Military Assistance Advisory Group was later established in Libya. Two years later, on April 9, 1959, Standard Oil of New Jersey discovered oil in Zelten. By 1961, Libya had 10 fields producing oil for export. By 1965, Libya was the sixth-largest oil exporting nation. 

In 1957, on March 17th, an Abominable Snowman expedition was creating media attention. Who was the head of that expedition? Tom Slick, of course. The date March 17th keeps surfacing in an almost ritualistic way as a "chosen" date for activities that has ties to oil, Tom Slick, Abominable Snowmen, and more.

Wonder and wander with me in this temporal stream of consciousness on this St. Patrick's Day.

First, always intriguing to me has been the fact that March 17th is seen as a pivotal date in the history of the wealthy Oklahoma/Texas oil family of the cryptozoologist Tom Slick.
Tom Slick's father was also named Tom Slick, and history remembers him as the "King of the Wildcatters." Wildcatting was the practice of going about the dry, harsh farm lands of Oklahoma and Texas, buying up oil lease rights, and drilling for oil, on pure speculation. For years, his nickname was "Dry Hole Slick" and "Mad Tom."

But then in 1912, Tom Slick, Sr. made the "biggest discovery of his life" when the Wheeler Well Number 1 in the Cushing Field of Oklahoma struck oil with a giant gusher on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day. Slick controlled the information about the discovery, however. He rushed to the Cushing farm, and cut the telephone lines. He hired out all the horse and rigs thereabouts so the news would not travel out. Slick also bought up all the nearby leases for one dollar an acre. Two weeks later, Harry Sinclair had to buy up leases for $200 an acre. The Cushing Field has been called one of the greatest oil fields ever found. Think James Dean as Jett Rink in the 1956 motion picture Giant.

From March 17, 1912, henceforth, "crazy ole Tom" Slick was called "Lucky Tom Slick." He made millions from the Cushing leases. Slick's family moved to Texas to follow the oil boom of the 1920s. When Tom Sr. died at the early age of 46, his estate was estimated to be worth seventy-five million dollars in 1930 dollars!

Tom Slick, his son (who really never used the "Jr." too often), was to inherit his parts of the principal of his father's money when he reached 30, 45, and 55 years of age. But the will stated Tom could live off the interest and he did, as an investor, jetsetter, playboy, friend of Howard Hughes and Jimmy Stewart, and adventurer. By the year 1960, Tom Slick had inherited 15 million dollars. By 1962, Tom Slick was dead in a mysterious air crash, at 46 - the same age his father died.

While Slick had decided to invest in oil and beef, he had creative ideas for what else he wanted to do with some of his money. Part of his inheritance went into his search for cryptids. I document in my Slick biography his quests for the Loch Ness Monster, Sumatran rhinos, Trinity Alps' Giant Salamanders, Bigfoot, and Orang Pendek.

Tom Slick (above, after his March 15, 1957, near-death accident in Nepal) was most famous, of course, for his expeditions in search of the Abominable Snowmen, the Yeti of the Himalayan Mountains.

In 1957, Tom Slick personally headed his first of many sponsored expeditions to Nepal in search of the Yeti, with Peter Byrne and Sherpa guides along for his deadly serious initial reconnaissance. From noting the timeline for Slick's trek, remarkably, I discovered that Slick began his actual search in earnest in the Arun Valley on March 17, 1957.

On March 18th and 19th, 1957, the Government of Nepal issued press releases and answered reporters' questions that they officially forbade all foreign mountaineers from "killing, injuring, or capturing a Yeti." Slick's party was allowed to carry guns for their self-defense. But they also had steel traps to capture a Yeti, and the new law was specifically targeted at Slick's expedition.

Especially interesting to me is a question I have never had fully answered: Was the character in the movie The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas of the American Yeti hunter and exploiter "Tom Friend" (shown above next to the film's Yeti body) based, in some part, on the real Texan Yeti hunter Tom Slick?

What was one of the other missions of Tom Slick's 1957 expedition? Apparently, it may have been spying on the Chinese in Tibet. Certainly that was what the Russians thought.

This April 27, 1957, article (above) in The New York Times carried the claims that Tom Slick was behind an effort to subvert the Chinese and free Tibet. (It would be revealed years later that Tom Slick and his Slick Airways were working closely with the OSS and the CIA.)

Two years later, what date would the CIA pick to begin the exit of the Dalai Lama from Tibet? March 17, 1959. Who may have been helping with that trek? Tom Slick and Peter Byrne. Perhaps it was Tom Slick that picked the date, not the CIA?

Colonel Fletcher Prouty has written about this secret mission to Tibet. In 1955, Prouty was appointed the first "Focal Point" officer between the CIA and the Air Force for Clandestine Operations per National Security Council Directive 5412. He was Briefing Officer for the Secretary of Defense (1960-1961), and for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Prouty, in his 1973 book about the CIA, Secret Team, writes: "This fantastic escape and its major significance have been buried in the lore of the CIA as one of those successes that are not talked about. The Dalai Lama would have never been saved without the CIA."
On March 17, 1959, three groups, the Dalai Lama, his immediate family and senior advisors, escaped from Lhasa, Tibet.

John Prados writing in The Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (New York: Morrow, 1986), notes: "Tenzin Gyatso [the Dalai Lama] was disguised as a common soldier of the guard.... The best information [about the fleeing Dalai Lama] came from the CIA.... The CIA was so well informed because it had furnished an American radio operator, who traveled with the Dalai Lama's party...There may have been other CIA agents with the party as well."

Who were these individuals? Who helped the Dalai Lama's party get out of Tibet? None other than Peter Byrne, Tom Slick's man in Nepal. He may forget it, but he told me so in 1988, when I was interviewing him about his years of work, overt and covert, with Tom Slick of San Antonio, Texas. I go into further details in my book, Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology (Fresno: Linden Press, 2002).


Is it a coincidence that on this date, seven years ago, some view this same calendar date as being the one that another Texan, linked to oil, began the present Iraqi War? While most historians use the date of March 20, 2003, as the start of the Iraqi War, others point to March 17, 2003. On that special date, the start of the US invasion of Iraq is keyed to President George W. Bush's announcement in a televised speech that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons had 48 hours to leave Iraq, or the United States will initiate preemptive military action against Iraq.

On March 17, 2003, Robin Cook, Leader of the British House of Commons, resigned from the UK cabinet over the plan to invade Iraq. The UK and the USA withdrew a proposed UN Security Council resolution on Iraq. The United States advised UNMOVIC and the IAEA to withdraw all weapon inspectors out of Iraq. This all occurred on March 17, 2003. 

What will happen on March 17, 2011? Will be even know it happened on the 17th? In Libya? In Japan?
Texas, Tibet, Nepal, Iraq, Egypt?
Oil, Yeti, Espionage?

Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence.
Three times is enemy action.
- Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

Supermoon Rising

Cartoon commentary: Adams, Telegraph.

About a month ago, I posted this: "Look to March 17th this year to be a date linked to much turmoil." 

It is only recently that I was reading what etemenanki has linked to regarding the  "supermoon" event tied to March 19th.

On March 19, 2011, the moon will be closer to Earth than at any time since 1992 - just 221,567 miles away - and its gravitational pull will bring chaos to Earth, some say.

Previous supermoons took place in 1955, 1974, 1992 and 2005 - all years that had extreme weather events. The tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia happened two weeks before the January 2005 supermoon. And on Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy laid waste to Darwin, Australia.

Coincidence? Banda Aceh, Indonesia, was devastated by the December 2004 tsunami which took place two weeks before a supermoon.

The Shinmoedake volcano in the Kirishima range in south-western Japan erupted on March 14, 2011.

Is there a relationship between the Japanese 9.0 earthquake of March 11, 2011, as well as the resulting tsunami/nuclear reactor explosions, and the supermoon of March 19, 2011?

How will history record these times?

Mothman's "First Eyewitness" Dies

 

 

 

In February, Linda Scarberry, one of the earliest eyewitnesses (November 15, 1966) to Mothman, was admitted to a Point Pleasant-area hospital, in critical condition. Unfortunately, it was been learned, from John Frick, that after a brief battle with cancer, Linda Scarberry died on Sunday morning, March 6th, 2011.  


Our condolences to the McDaniel and Scarberry families. Linda's maiden name, let us not forget, is the significant cryptoname McDaniel. John A. Keel pointed out that the name "McDaniel" was an important twilight language moniker. 

 

First eyewitnesses: Roger and Linda Scarberry (right) and Steve and Mary Mallette (left).  

Mothman phenomena began in mid-November 1966, when the two couples pictured above, including Linda Scarberry, drove through and parked at an old World War II munitions dump site that the locals called TNT. They saw and said they were chased by a large winged creature. They reported the incident to the police, and the sightings continued from there. The rest is cryptozoological history.

 

On November 15, 1966, the world was introduced to the Scarberry-Mallette sightings of a creature that would become known as Mothman. After this first encounter incident, as reported by the press in the papers of the day, soon a copyeditor in Ohio, a fan of the “Batman” series then on television, would coin the word “Mothman” since the word fit the headline space better. The sightings of a “Big Bird” had become a “big insect” with one copyeditor’s action. 

 

Linda Scarberry said the William Rebsamen-drawn depiction of the Mothman on the cover of my book was the one that looked the most like the Mothman she saw. Her earliest drawings (one of which is below) showed the red eyes, wings, legs, but no arms (which did appear in sketches done years later after the imagery had changed in the retelling, demonizing and theorizing).  

 

A sketch of Mothman (above), made by an eyewitness [Linda Scarberry] in rural West Virginia. In all, more than 100 people reported seeing the creature.--Courtesy Linda Scarberry, in Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend, from the Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2002. 

 

 

William Rebsamen's painting, she said, was in contrast to the image used as a cover on a later edition of John Keel's book. It was that cover art that would serve as the insect-like model of the statue in present-day Point Pleasant. 

 

Linda Scarberry and Loren Coleman, in Linda's home, 2001, during happier times, just weeks before the release of the movie, The Mothman Prophecies. I presented Linda with one of the first copies of my book, Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, which was produced in complete cooperation with Sony/Screen Gems, to appear right before the movie's opening day. The studio was interested in reinforcing the "based on true story" tagline of their feature film.  Linda and I would appear together in the movie's concurrent David Grabias documentary Search For The Mothman, which is in the Deluxe DVD of The Mothman Prophecies.

 

In the 2002 movie, the first sighting involving Linda Scarberry and her three companions was fictionally re-created in dramatic fashion. Above is a screen capture of the incident from The Mothman Prophecies. 




See also John A. Keel's obituary.

Allah Akbar, Blackbirds, and Frankfurt

Two U.S. airmen have been killed in a shooting in front of Terminal 2 of the Frankfurt airport, Germany. AP.

Police stand around a covered U.S. military bus at Frankfurt airport after the shooting. Photo: Boris Roessler. 

A shooter has killed two airmen and wounded two other airmen in an attack on a US Air Force bus at the Frankfurt, Germany airport, on March 2, 2011.

"What we know is that a man opened fire on a bus with U.S. soldiers that was standing in front of Terminal 2 at Frankfurt airport," said a Frankfurt police spokesman.


Major Beverly Mock, a U.S. Air Force spokeswoman in Europe, said all four people shot were airmen.


A source told Fox News that the shooter yelled "Allah Akbar" when opening fire on the U.S. military personnel. He then dropped his gun at the scene, ran into the terminal and was subdued.


“Allah Akbar" is translated as "God is [the] Greatest," or "God is Great." It is a common Islamic Arabic expression, used as both an informal expression of faith and as a formal declaration.


After 9/11, the FBI released a letter reportedly handwritten by the hijackers and found in three separate copies on 9/11 
~ at Dulles, 
~ at the Pennsylvania crash site, and 
~ in Mohamed Atta's suitcase.

It included a checklist of final reminders for the 9/11 hijackers, including an excerpt which reads: "When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, 'Allahu Akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers." 
Also, in the cockpit voice recorders found at the crash site of Flight 93, the hijackers are heard to be reciting the "Allah Akbar" as the plane plummeted toward the ground.

When in March 2002 Maryam Mohammad Yousif Farhat of Hamas, also known as "Umm Nidal" (and subsequently elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council), learned that her adolescent son died on a suicide mission in which he killed five teenagers, she celebrated by proclaiming "Allahu Akbar!" and giving out boxes of halva and chocolates.

In 2003, when Imam Samudra became the second Bali bomber from a violent Islamist group to be sentenced to death for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, Samudra chanted during his sentence, "Allahu Akbar."

In 2004, in an execution video of Nick Berg being beheaded in Iraq, as one man sawed off Berg's head the other captors shouted: "Allahu Akbar!"

In the 2007 Fort Dix attack plot, a group of radical Islamists who were convicted of plotting an attack on the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey had videotaped themselves shooting weapons and shouting "Allahu Akbar."

In 2008, Aafia Siddiqui yelled "Allah Akbar" as she fired at U.S. interrogators.

During the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, witnesses reported that gunman Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" before opening fire, killing 13 people and wounding 30 others.

Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad smiled and said "Allahu Akbar" after receiving a life sentence in 2010 for his attempted bombing.


After the Germany shooting today, a 21-year-old man was arrested.  He is reportedly from Kosovo.  Kosovo is a disputed territory, created following the collapse of Yugoslavia.

The name of his country, Kosovo (Serbian: Косово, pronounced [ˈkɔsɔvɔ]), is the Serbian neuter possessive adjective of kos, 

which means "blackbird," an ellipsis for Kosovo Polje "field of the blackbirds," the site of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Field. The name of the field was applied to an Ottoman province created in 1864.


In the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, Ottoman forces defeated a coalition of Serbs, Albanians, and Bosnians led by the Tsar Lazar Hrebeljanović. Soon after, parts of Serbia accepted Turkish vassalage and Lazar's daughter was married to the Sultan to seal the peace. By 1455, it was finally and fully conquered by the Ottoman Empire.


Intriguingly, considering what I previously wrote about the date of February 17th, Kosovo declared independence on February 17, 2008.

Police officers investigate the crime scene after a gunman fired shots at U.S. Air Force personnel. Photo: Michael Probst.

Kosovo Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi told the Associated Press that German police identified the suspect as Arif Uka, a Kosovo citizen from the northern town of Mitrovica, an ethnic Albanian who has been living in Germany for some time.

"This is a devastating and a tragic event," Rexhepi said. "We are trying to find out, was this something that was organized or what was the nature of the attack."

Mitrovica has been a flashpoint for tensions between Serbians and ethnic Albanians since the city was divided by a NATO bombing campaign in 1999. Although U.S. troops are based in the southeast of Kosovo, they have been called to help alliance forces and local security forces restore order in Mitrovica in recent years.

A senior U.S. intelligence official told ABC News the attack was likely terror-related. Uka is another "dot in the matrix" of a rising threat of fundamentalist terror originating in the Balkans, the official said. 

Another man from Uka's home town in Kosovo that was among those arrested in Raleigh, North Carolina, on terrorism charges in July 2009.

+++++++

Blackbird .. Evan Rachel Wood

Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these sunken eyes and learn to see All your life You were only waiting for this moment to be free. Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly Into the light of the dark black night. Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly Into the light of the dark black night. Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise You were only waiting for this moment to arise You were only waiting for this moment to arise

On New Year's Eve, December 31, 2010, over 5000 red-winged blackbirds fell from the skies around Beebe, Arkansas.