Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND A New York strip club is getting criticism from World Trade Center victims' families, emergency workers and area residents for using famous flag-raising images in promoting the club, the New York Post reports. Advertisement Blue Moon owner Mike O'Brien says he is dumbfounded by the controversy, and that his intention was not to promote his club, but to "honor those who served us." A billboard for the Blue Moon lounge in Newburgh, N.Y., 60 miles north of New York City, shows three firefighters raising the flag in the rubble at "Ground Zero" following the terrorist attacks, as well as another image of six Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima during World War II. In between the two legendary pictures is information about the strip club, including boasts of "exotic dancers" and the availability of adult toys and lingerie. Advertisement "This is blasphemous to use two of the most noble images in the history of our country to promote such a tawdry industry," says state Assemblyman Thomas Kirwan, a Republican from Newburgh. The billboard also drew the ire of Fire Department of New York members, as well as military veterans. NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS Zacarias Moussaoui, charged as a co-conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks, acknowledged in court papers made public that he was, "a Muslim fundamentalist openly hostile to the Jews and the United States of America." At the same time, he repeated his contention that he had nothing to do with the planning of the attacks, The New York Times reports. In handwritten court motions filled with passages from the Koran and barbed insults aimed at Jews and Christians, Moussaoui criticized the trial judge, Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., as well as the court-appointed legal team that Brinkema has since allowed him to fire. Describing himself repeatedly as a "slave of Allah," Moussaoui referred to three lawyers involved in the defense team as "Jewish zealots" and said he would not undergo a psychiatric examination because he would "not participate in an obscene Jewish 'science.'" Advertisement He says he had stopped shaking the hands of the lawyers on his "blood-sucking death team" because "I find them so repulsive as unbelievers." Moussaoui, a 34-year-old French national of Moroccan descent, was granted his request last week to serve as his own lawyer and to dismiss his defense team. Charles Freeman, a Houston lawyer who is Muslim, was selected by Moussaoui as his "standby" lawyer. TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING In Gaza, the mother of a Palestinian suicide attacker who killed two Israelis before being shot dead, says her son did a good thing, the British Broadcasting Corporation reports. A video released by Hamas shows the woman taking up arms beside her favorite son. "We believe our sons go to heaven when they are martyred... when [Jewish] sons die they go to hell," said Naima al-Obeid. She was saying goodbye to her 23-year-old son Mahmoud, a college student on his way to carry out a suicide attack. "God willing you will succeed," she says. "May every bullet hit its target, and may God give you martyrdom. This is the best day of my life." she adds. "Thank you for raising me," her son says in the video. Advertisement He was shot while attacking the Jewish settlement of Dugit in the Gaza Strip Saturday. Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the ambush and the deaths were being celebrated in the woman's neighborhood, the BBC reported. People weren't just remembering her son, they are honoring his mother, the BBC said. She has become a heroine, being talked about on the streets, praised in the local newspapers. AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY Quarterly injections of small amounts of a drug commonly known as Botox can prevent debilitating headaches in most patients who do not respond to other medications, researchers say. "We now have a new treatment for severe headache without the noxious side-effects experienced by patients using many current therapies," says Dr. Stephen Silberstein, president of the American Headache Society Botox is a purified form of botulism, an often-fatal poison found in tainted foods. Though not yet approved for headache treatment, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Botox for other medical uses. Once a drug is FDA-approved for one use, however, doctors may prescribe it for any use. Migraine headaches affect about 17 percent of women and 6 percent of men in the United States. About 5 percent of the population has chronic daily headache. Advertisement Migraine is the leading cause of disability in the world, measured by days missed from work and suffering among working age people, according to Dr. Todd Troost of Wake Forest University Medical School in Winston-Salem, N.C. Botox partially paralyzes muscles for about three months. For headaches, it is injected into muscles around the eyes, forehead and sometimes the jaw. Patients whose headaches involve the entire head get additional injections in the upper back of the neck and the shoulders. (Thanks to UPI's Bruce Sylvester in San Francisco.)
