TheState.com: Nation Extra

Kidnapped Missouri boy recounts captivity in interview

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:17 EDT

ST. LOUIS — A Missouri teenager who was kidnapped and held for four years said he figured his days were numbered when his abductor decided to take another boy, according to transcripts from a television interview released Wednesday.

Shawn Hornbeck, now 17, and his parents recounted their story during an interview with CBS News’ “48 Hours Mystery,” in which he discusses details of his captivity for the first time.

“The days got slimmer,” he said. “‘Cause it’s a replacement. When you get a new car, what do you do with the old one? You usually get rid of it, right?”

Shawn was 11 when he was kidnapped by Michael Devlin in 2002 near his home in Washington County, Mo. He and Ben Ownby, another kidnapped boy, were found in the suburban St. Louis apartment of Michael Devlin, who is now serving life sentences in prison for kidnapping and abusing the boys.

But Shawn said death didn’t scared him. His greatest fear over the more than four years of captivity was that he would never see his family again, he said.

Madison plantation finishes $24 million restoration

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:15 EDT

ORANGE, Va. — Descendants of President James Madison and the slaves who lived on his plantation joined U.S. Supreme Court justices and politicians on Wednesday to celebrate the end of a five-year, $24 million architectural renovation.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said while the home, called Montpelier, was a fitting tribute to Madison, the most prominent memorial is the fact that the United States is “a free country governed by the rule of law.” Historians credit Madison with being the architect of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and Wednesday marked the 221st anniversary of the Constitution’s signing.

Roberts said Montpelier “stands with Mount Vernon and Monticello” — the homes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, respectively — as landmarks to the nation’s Founding Fathers.

The brick Georgian home at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains underwent an architectural restoration to make the structure authentic to the period between 1809, when Madison was elected the nation’s fourth president, and 1836, the year he died.

Montpelier changed hands among several private owners after Madison’s death and a number of them made drastic additions and renovations to the home, including adding entire wings, moving doors and spreading stucco over the exterior of the structure.

Century after first fatality, air travel has good safety record

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:16 EDT

PHOENIX — It was called an “aeroplane,” but the contraption Orville Wright piloted on Sept. 17, 1908, was hardly more than a big box kite with a motor. And unlike his famous first flight in 1903, this one was doomed.

Less than five minutes after takeoff, Wright’s plane lay smashed, his passenger mortally injured, and the world got an early taste of the perils of flying. It was the first fatal airplane crash in history, according to the Flight Safety Foundation.

“The aeroplane is still far within the experimental stage,” a New York Times writer lamented three days later. “The perfected machine will doubtless be different from it in everything from principle to motive power.”

A hundred years later modern jets have indeed made air travel the safest way to get around. Yet, to the consternation of the airline industry, flying still generates for many the same rush of anxiety that onlookers must have felt when Wright’s plane dove into the parade ground at Ft. Myer, Va.

“There’s still this mystique about flying,” said Ron Nielsen, a retired US Airways pilot who’s found a second career counseling people who are afraid to fly. “There’s a fear of being closed in, and there’s a fear of dying.”