WASHINGTON (AP) — WNBA star Brittney Griner didn’t want any alone time as soon as she boarded a U.S. government plane that would bring her home.
"I have been in prison for 10 months now, listening to Russian. I want to talk," Griner said, according to Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, who helped secure the basketball star’s release and bring her back to the U.S. last week.
She then asked Carstens, referring to others on the plane: "But, first of all, who are these guys?"
"And she moved right past me and went to every member on that crew, looked them in the eyes, shook their hands and asked about them, got their names, making a personal connection with them.," Carstens recalled. "It was really amazing."
Ultimately, Griner spent about 12 hours of an 18-hour flight talking with others on the plane, Carstens said. The two-time Olympic gold medalist and Phoenix Mercury pro basketball star spoke about her time in the Russian penal colony and her months in captivity, Carstens recalled, although he declined to go into specific details.
"I was left with the impression this is an intelligent, passionate, compassionate, humble, interesting person, a patriotic person," Carstens said. "But above all, authentic. I hate the fact that I had to meet her in this manner, but I actually felt blessed having had a chance to get to know her."
#5
The press all assured us, that baller's
A sensitive soul, and no mauler.
"Her voice! So hypnotic!"
"And so patriotic!"
"The kindest... most wonderful... scholar!"
[FOX] As she tried to run away, the suspect tackled her and wouldn’t let her go. She turned and shot him, police said.
She then ran and hid in the side yard of a house as a second suspect started shooting at her. He fled before police arrived and found the suspect lying dead in the street bleeding from his head.
She was taken into custody but was released without arrest when police determined she had acted in self-defense. The suspect's pulse and bleeding had begun to subside by the time the police arrived.
[UPI] Five-year-old Aspen Jeter, a South Carolina girl missing since Thanksgiving when her mother was found slain, has been safely located and her father has been arrested, police said.
Not exactly a happy ending, but at least happier than it might have been.
Aspen was located and taken into custody in Virginia on Friday, while her father, Antar Jeter, was arrested in connection with the death of the girl's mother, Crystal Jeter, Orangeburg County, S.C., Sheriff's officials said.
Crystal Jeter was found dead by police during a welfare check of her home on Thanksgiving. Authorities said they quickly determined that Aspen and her father, Antar Jeter, were missing and turned to the public for information, releasing photos of the two.
Authorities were able to track ATM transactions to narrow down their search for the missing pair. Criminal Mastermind™
With the assistance of the U.S. Marshall's Service, they tracked Antar and Aspen to a hospital parking lot in Danville, Va., obtaining a warrant for the father's arrest before taking the pair into custody.
Authorities claim the vehicle Antar was driving was stolen.
Its unknown where Aspen will be placed following her fathers arrest but Justin Bamberg, an attorney representing Crystal Jeter's family, told news hounds that "Aspen will not become a ward of the state. We are going to make sure she's with family."
Antar Jeter was charged with murder and grand larceny. Orangeburg County Sheriff Leroy Ravenell said he is working with Virginia authorities for his extradition to South Carolina.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/11/2022 00:00 ||
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[BearingArms] The AR-15 is demonized today following the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. It’s being treated like a firearm only used for nefarious purposes when that’s simply not true. Like any firearm, it can be used for good or ill, just as any other tool.
For example, recently in Glen St. Mary, FL, that same demonized weapon was used to help repel a group of armed home invaders.
Three men say they were asleep inside a mobile home in Glen St. Mary about 4 a.m. Sunday when they heard a voice outside yell "Sheriff’s Office!" before the front door burst open.
In stormed a masked gunman who fired off a single round before two of the men inside, one armed with an AR-15 rifle and the other with a handgun, emerged from two bedrooms and opened fire. BLAM, BLAM, BLAMETY BLAM!
Gunfire ripped into the masked gunman and two other intruders, who crumpled to the floor with multiple gunshot wounds. OWW, OWW, OWETY OWW!
Those details surfaced Tuesday when the Baker County Sheriff’s Office released an arrest report linked to this weekend’s home invasion turned deadly triple shooting.
Five people are charged in the case. Investigators suspect the home invasion escalated from an ongoing feud between two groups that was stoked by social media threats.
The victims told deputies they acted in self-defense when they turned their guns on the intruders, with one of them estimating he fired over 30 rounds from an AR-15 before the threat was over. Need range time.
Afterward, the victims retreated to another part of the home before they dialed 911, according to the report. None of them was hurt during the shooting.
One of the would-be invaders later died from his wounds. Rosebud!
Another is still being treated, while a third was treated and released to police.
So, do the anti-gunners want to tell us again how an AR-15 isn’t useful for home defense? Do they want to tell us how no one needs a 30-round magazine? Do they even want to acknowledge this one happened at all? Probably not.
You see, they’re not big on facts. They like hyperbole and emotion, but a situation like this? Oh, they’ll most likely pretend it didn’t happen.
The problem for them is, it did. It’s not the only case, either. Last year, a kid in Oklahoma used an AR-15 to defend against multiple home invaders. In both of these cases, the AR-15 was the absolute best choice simply because of the number of people attacking the home.
While most home invasions aren’t groups of people storming a home, the innocent, law-abiding citizen doesn’t get a say in what happens. We have to deal with whatever gets thrown at us. The bad guys always get the initiative, and we have to react. It sucks, but it’s what happens when you’re trying to follow the law.
An AR-15 levels the playing field tremendously, especially with a 30-round magazine.
A handful of guys in Florida are probably more than willing to tell you all about how many rounds they had to fire to finally repulse the attack, though we already know.
Leave our guns alone. We need them to keep ourselves and our family safe—just in case something like this happens to us.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/11/2022 00:00 ||
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[Fort Worth Star-Telegram] A man was taking photos with his wife on the summit of a scenic New Hampshire mountaintop when he fell and tumbled to his death, state officials say. The husband and wife were hiking in Crawford Notch State Park on Saturday, Dec. 10, and made their way to the top of Mt. Willard — a popular destination in the park offering panoramic views of the surrounding forest — around 10:30 a.m.
While they were snapping pictures to commemorate the moment, the wife heard a yell and turned to see her husband slip off a cliff jutting 800 feet above the ground below, officials said. "Due to the icy conditions and steepness of the terrain the hiker’s wife called 911 for assistance," the release said. Conservation officers and specialized mountain rescue crews made their way to the summit and rappelled down the side of the cliff with ropes and harnesses, photos show.
They found the man at 2:30 p.m., officials said. He was dead, having plummeted roughly 300 feet from the summit. Crews lifted his body to the top and carried it to the trailhead parking lot, the release said. Crawford Notch, a nearly 5,800 acre state park boasting hiking trails, fishing, waterfalls, wildlife and "spectacular mountain views," is 96 miles northeast of Concord.
[YouTube] This video is brought to you by the Garand Collectors Association & it previews the Philippine Military Assistance Program M1 rifles that were recently returned to the Civilian Marksmanship Program.
[Daily Wire] A host of historic artifacts, including firearms linked to two presidents, are being sold this weekend, giving bidders the rare opportunity to own the gun of a former president.
The Illinois-based Rock Island Auction Company (RIA) is auctioning off a trove of historic guns, swords, and other items this weekend, including a factory-engraved Smith & Wesson Model No. 3 single-action revolver that belonged to former President Theodore Roosevelt.
"Any time you can have a Teddy Roosevelt item, he’s such a man of his times, it’s very exciting," Joel Kolander, interactive production manager for RIA, told The Daily Wire. "I’ve been working for Rock Island Auctioning Company for ten years, I can count on one hand the amount of presidential-tied items that we have had."
The revolver, which could go for up to $1.4 million or more, was shipped to Roosevelt just before he left the U.S. in 1898 to fight in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt did not end up using the gun during the war, instead carrying one that had been salvaged from the USS Maine. The Maine had exploded under mysterious circumstances, precipitating the war with Spain.
"It’s [in] remarkable condition," Kolander said, "It’s almost fortunate that this revolver did not go off to war because there’s no way that it would have survived in the condition that it did." The gun, which has been held in a private collection, was factory engraved by the Youngs, a family known at the time for their skill at engraving.
[France24] In 2010, a collection of wartime letters and photographs was discovered in an old cupboard at a high school in Paris. Forgotten for years, the letters were written by a former pupil, Louise Pikovsky, to her beloved school teacher during World War Two.
The last note dates to the day Louise and her family were arrested at their home. Father, mother and all four children were imprisoned in the Drancy internment camp near Paris before being deported to Auschwitz. The Pikovskys never came back.
When France 24 journalist Stephanie Trouillard found out about the letters, she decided to help Khalida Hatchy, a teacher and librarian at the school, explore Louise’s story. Starting with the young pupil’s writings and photographs, they were able to track down witnesses, cousins and former classmates from her time at the lycée Jean de La Fontaine. Through months of research, they pieced together fragments of her life, and shed light on the circumstances of the family’s disappearance.
This web documentary recounts their historical investigation, which eventually led the two researchers to Jerusalem. More than seventy years after Louise’s untimely death, it finally gives a voice to a talented young girl who was unable to fulfil the bright future she deserved.
[MAIL] A winter storm packing powerful winds, aided by what's being termed an 'atmospheric river,' is bringing heavy rain and several feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada.
The storm shut down mountain highways, toppled trees and triggered flood and avalanche warnings on Saturday from the coast of Northern California to Lake Tahoe.
More than 250 miles of the Sierra remained under a winter storm warning at least until early Monday from north of Reno to south of Yosemite National Park.
As much as 4 feet of snow is expected to fall by the end of the weekend in the upper elevations around Lake Tahoe, and as much as 6 feet in more remote parts of the Sierra to the north and south.
A 70-mile stretch of eastbound U.S. Interstate 80 was closed 'due to zero visibility' from Colfax, California to the Nevada state line, transportation officials said while tire chains were required on much of the rest of I-80 in the mountains from Reno toward Sacramento.
An 'atmospheric river' is a plume of moisture which comes in off the Pacific Ocean and is similar to a fire hose as it fires moisture into one specific area for an extended period of time leading to heavy rain or snow, explained CNN.
#2
An 'atmospheric river' is a plume of moisture which comes in off the Pacific Ocean and is similar to a fire hose as it fires moisture into one specific area for an extended period of time leading to heavy rain or snow, explained CNN.
Just another effort to conflate 'climate' with 'weather', then inflict maximum panic about both?
#5
"To South of Yosemite" is a "journalist's" vague conception of location. It'll extend south into Owen's Valley down to Ridgecrest/China Lake on the 395
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/11/2022 10:22 Comments ||
Top||
#6
the storm has dropped alot of snow from the sierras(shasta to bridgeport) to the northern Nevada Mns and on up to central idaho where I've gotten about 30 inches so far in my yard.
#10
I'm along the 395 at the South end of the Carson Valley, elevation 4950. We got several inches of rain Saturday and Saturday night, and we have about 4 inches of snow this morning. The Sierra's have gotten several feet of Sierra Cement (wet, heavy snow). Sierra-at-Tahoe reports 50" in past 72 hours.
#11
after the storm stops, the area will get a week or so of mostly clear wx with cold mornings
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/11/2022 15:26 Comments ||
Top||
#12
[Wiki]Pineapple Expressis a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon characterized by a strong and persistent large-scale flow of warm moist air, and the associated heavy precipitation both in the waters immediately northeast of the Hawaiian Islands and extending northeast to any location along the Pacific coast of North America.
Happens every so often...
#13
These idjit reporters jump at any chance to use the “atmospheric river” term. Seems like it came into vogue about five years ago. I wonder what they’ll use the next time we have a real El Niño winter…atmospheric flood?
[FoxNews] Teachers and school staff are voicing concern at the rise in dangerous and even violent student misconduct in Brevard County, Florida.
Parents, educators and school administrators spoke candidly of the problem, at a Thursday school board meeting in the county.
"I've watched dozens of my peers and friends leave their classrooms, schools or their profession entirely," said Matthew Yount, a 5th-grade teacher at Imperial Estates Elementary School in Titusville.
Yount added, "An almost universal reason is the deterioration on student behavior over the past few years.
His brief remark is only one in a growing chorus of testimony from educators and school staff claiming that student misbehavior has transcended the disrespectful and become increasingly severe.
Many in the area have claimed that the pandemic's extended closure of schools was to blame for the rising cases of severe misconduct from students. But Yount said he believes the lockdowns were only "an accelerant" on the fire.
The teacher cited "egregious behaviors" he has witnessed in Florida schools, including spitting, biting, drug use and theft.
Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey hosted a live press conference Nov. 28, announcing his decision to pursue a no-nonsense crackdown on student behavioral problems in the county's public schools.
Florida sheriff calls for new student disciplinary measures in front of a jail.Video
Claiming to have received extensive reports of dangerous and sometimes violent student misbehavior from teachers, school staff and administrators, Ivey announced his intentions to reform the county's discipline guidelines.
#3
Yount added, "An almost universal reason is the deterioration on student behavior
craven and/or lunatic school administrators and lawyers over the past few years.
#1
Granted, this is neither Army nor Navy, but all the discussion of how the US military will answer the elites' call to suppress US citizens comes down to this:
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/11/2022 4:06 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Sportsball is crushing American freedom. Anyone who is still saying it "builds character" is part of the problem, like Boosh maundering about "the religion of peas."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/11/2022 4:27 Comments ||
Top||
#3
#2 Sportsball is crushing American freedom. Anyone who is still saying it "builds character" is part of the problem, like Boosh maundering about "the religion of peas."
Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-12-11 04:27
...It corrupted the service academies decades ago.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/11/2022 6:51 Comments ||
Top||
#4
...It corrupted the service academies decades ago.
Agreed. The Service academies should be in a lower, not Semi-Pro, Division. It is not their job if, IF they feel that participating in college athletics is necessary and appropriate.
[NTD] The FBI not only has possession of a laptop computer owned by slain Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich, but a report detailing forensic imaging of what’s being described as Rich’s work computer, the bureau revealed in a new filing.
The FBI’s records office located the report while searching for the work computer, Michael Seidel, chief of the office, said in a sworn declaration filed with a federal court in Texas on Dec. 9.
He described the document as “a three (3) page forensic report detailing the actions performed by an outside entity to image the work laptop.”
The report was among four documents that had never been disclosed by the FBI in relation to Rich’s case.
Journalist Sy Hersh said in 2017 that he was told by a source about an FBI report on Seth Rich. He said, according to the source, that Seth Rich’s computer showed the DNC staffer had relayed DNC documents to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency group. Hersh made the disclosure in a phone call with Ed Butowsky, an investor who later retracted claims about Rich being a WikiLeaks source.
Rich was gunned down in the early morning hours on July 16, 2016, near his home in Washington. The killing of Rich, the DNC’s voter expansion data director, remains unsolved. Authorities have claimed that the killing was a robbery gone wrong. Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, has suggested that Rich passed DNC files to the group, which released the DNC files in 2016. U.S. authorities have alleged that Russians hacked into the DNC systems, but those allegations were made before the FBI received images from the DNC’s server to determine their validity.
The Metropolitan Police Department, the lead investigating agency, has declined to say whether the FBI was helping with the probe into Rich’s death.
NEW RECORDS
The new records were found after the records office contacted an unnamed FBI special agent during its search for Rich’s work computer, according to FBI Records Chief Seidel.
The other records are a letter from a third party that accompanied the work computer and two FBI chain of custody forms.
None of the records were indexed to Rich inside of the bureau’s central records system and neither the forensic report nor the custody forms mention Rich’s name, according to the FBI. They were also not included in an electronic file created for Rich’s case.
The agent claimed that disclosure of the records would harm an FBI investigation into the allegations that Russians had hacked into U.S. systems.
Bureau officials had previously claimed in sworn statements that the FBI had searched for records on Rich but did not locate any.
The FBI now wants the court to agree to keep the new records shielded from Brian Huddleston, a Texas resident who filed a lawsuit against the bureau over its ignoring a Freedom of Information request for records on Rich.
In 2020, for the first time, the FBI admitted it had files from a computer belonging to Rich. Some of those files were then released to Huddleston and made public, including documents that appear to suggest that someone could have paid for his death.
[BBC] A teenage girl's incurable cancer has been cleared from her body in the first use of a revolutionary new type of medicine.
All other treatments for Alyssa's leukaemia had failed.
So doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital used "base editing" to perform a feat of biological engineering to build her a new living drug.
Six months later the cancer is undetectable, but Alyssa is still being monitored in case it comes back.
Alyssa, who is 13 and from Leicester, was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in May last year.
T-cells are supposed to be the body's guardians - seeking out and destroying threats - but for Alyssa they had become the danger and were growing out of control.
Her cancer was aggressive. Chemotherapy, and then a bone-marrow transplant, were unable to rid it from her body.
Without the experimental medicine, the only option left would have been merely to make Alyssa as comfortable as possible.
"Eventually I would have passed away," said Alyssa. Her mum, Kiona, said this time last year she had been dreading Christmas, "thinking this is our last with her". And then she "just cried" through her daughter's 13th birthday in January.
What happened next would have been unthinkable just a few years ago and has been made possible by incredible advances in genetics.
The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which was invented only six years ago.
Bases are the language of life. The four types of base - adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T) - are the building blocks of our genetic code. Just as letters in the alphabet spell out words that carry meaning, the billions of bases in our DNA spell out the instruction manual for our body.
Base editing allows scientists to zoom to a precise part of the genetic code and then alter the molecular structure of just one base, converting it into another and changing the genetic instructions.
The large team of doctors and scientists used this tool to engineer a new type of T-cell that was capable of hunting down and killing Alyssa's cancerous T-cells.
They started with healthy T-cells that came from a donor and set about modifying them.
The first base edit disabled the T-cells targeting mechanism so they would not assault Alyssa's body
The second removed a chemical marking, called CD7, which is on all T-cells
The third edit was an invisibility cloak that prevented the cells being killed by a chemotherapy drug
The final stage of genetic modification instructed the T-cells to go hunting for anything with the CD7 marking on it so that it would destroy every T-cell in her body - including the cancerous ones. That's why this marking has to be removed from the therapy - otherwise it would just destroy itself.
If the therapy works, Alyssa's immune system - including T-cells - will be rebuilt with the second bone-marrow transplant.
[DAILYEXCELSIOR] With the advent of Quantum Mechanics in the beginning of the 20th century, Physics broke its complacent dreaming of "Mechanomorphic Universe" a universe moving unfailingly like a machine in perfect order. Quantum Mechanics is viewed as most puzzling part of Physics. The systems at quantum level do not follow the rules that we are used to or we observe in our day to day life. They have intriguing features in the sense that a system can exist in several different states at the same time and even change depending upon whether they are being observed or not.
Entanglement is one of the most fascinating predictions of Quantum Physics. This phenomenon reveals itself at very microscopic level (subatomic). When scientists including Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrodinger first discovered the phenomenon of entanglement in 1930’s, they were disturbed and puzzled because entanglement required two separated particles to remain connected without being in direct contact. Einstein famously called it ’spooky action at a distance. Einstein looks up to quantum mechanics as a means to describe nature on an atomic level, but he doubted about its useful basis for the whole of physics. He famously rejected quantum mechanics, pointing out that God does not play dice. He thought that describing reality required firm predictions followed by direct observations.
On October 4, 2022 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the Nobel Prize for Physics 2022 to three Physicists namely Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for their experiments with ’entangled photons’. The Royal academy announced this prize with a statement that ’these experiments have established the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science."
(QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT IS REAL)
In 1960 John Bell developed the mathematical inequality that is named after him. The inequality states that if there are hidden variables, the correlation between the results of a large number of measurements will never exceed a certain value. However quantum mechanics predicts that a certain type of experiment will violate Bell’s inequality. The scientists who were not so optimistic about efficacy of quantum mechanics were of the opinion that correlation between entangled particles is because of some local hidden variables which instruct them what result they should give in an experiment.
To explain the bizarre implications of entanglement, Einstein along with Podolsky and Rosen published a paper called EPR paradox. They proposed that ’hidden variable’ concepts should be added to Quantum Mechanics.
Neils Bohr disputed EPR theory while as Schrodinger hypothesized that entanglement vanishes with large particle separation.
To develop the experiments to test Quantum Mechanics and its predictions was unpopular and thought to be risky and wastage of time among the physicists. No physicist was willing to pursue this line except a young Physicist John Clauser. In 1969 John Clauser was the first to demonstrate experimentally that two widely separated particles (about 10 feet apart) can be entangled. Later Alain Aspect in 1981 and Anton Zeilinger in 1997 conducted ground breaking experiments using entangled light particles (photons) at a distance of 40 feet. These experiments proved that the quantum entanglement is a real principle and passes test after test. Hence Quantum Mechanics is correct and today’s quantum physicists say there is nothing ’spooky’ about it as described by Einstein. These path breaking experiments paved the way for quantum computers, quantum networks and quantum encrypted communications and will usher in the fourth industrial revolution.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/11/2022 00:00 ||
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#1
Quantum Mechanics is viewed as most puzzling part of Physics.
#2
Albert Einstein famously said that quantum mechanics should allow two objects to affect each other's behaviour instantly across vast distances, something he dubbed "spooky action at a distance"1.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/11/2022 12:33 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Science lost a lot of credibility when it decided that "How" or "Why" were immaterial to "What".
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[FOX] As she tried to run away, the suspect tackled her and wouldn’t let her go. She turned and shot him, police said. .png)
[Fort Worth Star-Telegram] A man was taking photos with his wife on the summit of a scenic New Hampshire mountaintop when he fell and tumbled to his death, state officials say. The husband and wife were hiking in Crawford Notch State Park on Saturday, Dec. 10, and made their way to the top of Mt. Willard — a popular destination in the park offering panoramic views of the surrounding forest — around 10:30 a.m. 
[Daily Wire] A host of historic artifacts, including firearms linked to two presidents, are being sold this weekend, giving bidders the rare opportunity to own the gun of a former president.
[France24] In 2010, a collection of wartime letters and photographs was discovered in an old cupboard at a high school in Paris. Forgotten for years, the letters were written by a former pupil, Louise Pikovsky, to her beloved school teacher during World War Two.
Nicolaas Pieter Johannes Janse van Rensburg, 1864-1926: 
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] 
[DAILYEXCELSIOR] With the advent of Quantum Mechanics in the beginning of the 20th century, Physics broke its complacent dreaming of "Mechanomorphic Universe" a universe moving unfailingly like a machine in perfect order. Quantum Mechanics is viewed as most puzzling part of Physics. The systems at quantum level do not follow the rules that we are used to or we observe in our day to day life. They have intriguing features in the sense that a system can exist in several different states at the same time and even change depending upon whether they are being observed or not.
