Keith Whamond

The Today Show aired an exclusive interview this morning with Charla Nash, the woman who was attacked by Travis the chimpanzee in Stamford last year.

In the interview, Nash told Meredith Vieira that she was ‘sad’ to learn of the death of Travis’s owner, Sandra Herold, on Monday.

Nash also expressed her deep desire to have a face and hand transplant, an operation for which doctors say she’s not currently eligible.

The New York Times’ compelling story regarding senate hopeful Richard Blumenthal’s military service claims was a hot topic of discussion this morning. Blumenthal denied the claims he’s exaggerated his war service when reached late last night by the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and plans a press conference Tuesday to refute the allegations.

The usual team of talking heads on MSNBC’s Morning Joe discussed the story at length:

Mike Allen of Politico.com also spoke on Morning Joe about how striking it is that the McMahon campaign has proudly made clear that they fed the story to The New York Times:

A group called RealityCheck411 posted a video of Blumenthal accurately specifying publicly he never served in Vietnam:

Finally, here’s a video released by the McMahon campaign of Blumenthal claiming he served in Vietnam. Embedding was disabled on the original video, which has since been uploaded by other YouTube users:

Courtesy Paul Rademacher and Google Earth

When I’m trying to wrap my head around some national or international news story, a little context is a big help.

That couldn’t be more true than with the horrific oil spill that has caused incredible destruction in our nation’s gulf region. I’ve read the news stories and I’ve seen the pictures, but, I’ll admit, it’s been tough for me to wrap my head around just how big of a spill this is.

Paul Rademacher has developed a cool mash-up using Google Earth that makes it pretty obvious. Just plug in any address, and the map shows you how big the spill is relative to your area.

The result? It’s really freaking big. Like, bigger than Connecticut and Hawaii combined big.

It’s a great use of technology that makes a dramatic point. (Credit: Gizmodo.com and Paul Rademacher)

Related articles:

• Envisioning the Size of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill (neatorama.com)
• If You Think You Have a Sense of the Oil Spill’s Scale (theatlantic.com)
• How big is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? (google-latlong.blogspot.com)
• The Gulf Oil Spill Is Bigger Than Connecticut [Google Earth] (gizmodo.com)

CNN.com is reporting that Times Square has been evacuated due to a suspicious package.

New York City police are understandably on high alert after a failed car bombing attempt in Times Square last Saturday.

From CNN.com:

Times Square has been evacuated after a suspicious package was found near 45th street, a New York Police Department official said.

The package was found near 45th Street and Broadway, officials said.

The evacuation comes six days after an SUV with explosives was left in Times Square resulting in the arrest of Faisal Shahzad.