[ABC] A 28-year-old man, Bryan Kohberger, was arrested Friday morning in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains in connection with the murders of four University of Idaho students, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Sources said that authorities knew who they were looking for and had tracked Kohberger down to Pennsylvania.
A SWAT team entered the location where he was staying in order to take him into custody Friday. Kohberger appeared before a judge Friday morning.
Moscow police officers, members of Idaho State Police, Moscow city leaders and University of Idaho officials will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. local time Friday.
[YahooSports] Pelé, the Brazilian soccer legend widely hailed as "O Rei do Futebol," the king of his sport, the only man to win the World Cup three times, died Thursday at a hospital in Brazil. He was 82.
His death has sent the entire soccer world — and specifically Brazil, the nation who’d nurtured and worshiped him — into a state of mourning. It was as if a national treasure had been lost forever, because, in fact, Pelé was one. The Brazilian government made that official declaration at the height of his powers. It kept him at his Brazilian club, Santos, where he ultimately scored most of his 1,281 goals — a still-unsurpassed, albeit disputed, world record.
By the end of his 21-year professional career, Pelé had become an international icon, perhaps sport’s first truly global superstar. His late-career stint in New York even helped popularize soccer in the United States. But he was, first and foremost, Brazil’s. Read the rest at the link
[Mail] Time magazine has been ruthlessly mocked for an article saying the origins of exercise are rooted in racism.
The piece, titled 'The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise,' preaches the activity as a pastime started in the early 1900s by white Americans who sought to strengthen their race amid increasing immigration and the abolition of slavery.
Those statements were made by progressive private school teacher Natalia Petrzela, who was interviewed by the publication after engaging in an in-depth study into the origins of calorie-burning activities in the US.
The Columbia grad, a self-professed 'fitness scholar' who works as a history teacher at a famously progressive private school in Manhattan, supports movements such as Defund the Police and Black Lives Matter.
She has penned books expressing her ideals, in which she preaches the use of terms like 'cisgender' and 'white privilege.
Released on Thursday, the article was heavily mocked on Twitter, with dozens taking to the platform to insist stories like these are destroying the publication's reputation.
#2
Yeah. If we'd just been fit enough to pick our own cotton...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/30/2022 5:01 Comments ||
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#3
Way back when I used to watch television, I could turn it on during the weekend and catch black millionaires running all over various sports venues.
I don't recall one being obese.
[FoxNews] A man who police are calling 'Merry Christmas Jay' broke into a Buffalo-area school and brought several people inside to shelter them from the storm.
It is this constant in the background that has shaped the character of the city, as much as the steel and flour mills, the Great Lakes trade, and the unions. Because when winter comes we need to take care of the strangers in our midst who never intended to need help, lest we all die separately.
Police are searching for a man who broke into a Buffalo-area school on Dec. 23 – not to charge him with any crimes, but to thank him for his selfless actions that likely saved several lives and two dogs during last week's brutal winter storm.
The man, who police are calling "Merry Christmas Jay," left a note explaining that he broke a window on Friday evening so that he could bring several people inside Pine Hill School in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga.
"I'm terribly sorry about breaking the school window [and] for breaking in the kitchen," the note reads.
"Got stuck at 8 p.m. Friday and slept in my truck with two strangers. Just trying not to die. There were 7 elderly people also stuck and out of fuel. I had to do it to save everyone and get them shelter and food and a bathroom."
A keyholder at the school had received an alarm about a break-in on Friday evening, but police couldn't immediately respond due to the deteriorating weather.
When an officer eventually made it to the school later that weekend, he found the note from "Merry Christmas Jay."
When the Cheektowaga Police Department pulled surveillance footage from inside the school, they "witnessed people taking care of people."
"There was a freezer full of food but no one touched it. They only ate what was necessary to stay alive. They used the gym for the kids to play and pulled the smart boards out of the classrooms to watch the news for updates," the Cheektowaga Police Department said.
"They had 2 dogs they were also attending to. When they were finally able to leave safely, you never would have known anyone was there."
At least 39 people died from the winter storm, which pounded Buffalo on Friday and Saturday.
The National Guard was going door to door in New York's second-largest city on Thursday and officials warned that more bodies could be found.
“I walked to the houses to see if I could find shelter, any house that had lights on. I had $500 that I was offering, to sleep on their floor,” Withey told WBEN.
After being turned down by everyone, he walked back to his truck defeated and with a new fear he had never experienced.
#3
^^^ Just a tiny bit of that old Judaeo-Christian ethic and love would have gone a long way.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/30/2022 12:27 Comments ||
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#4
Many years ago my older brother was going to town on an errand and I tagged along. Part way there we were stopped by a three foot snowdrift, in Central Oklahoma of all places, and had to abandon the car. A really nice lady welcomed us into her home, gave us warm water to drink and let us sleep on the carpet by the furnace. Good people, Bless them!
Widespread moderate to heavy rain tomorrow - Saturday could produce flooding of rivers, streams, and creeks along with urban flooding and increased runoff below 7,000 ft in the mountains. Now is the time to prepare for impacts! #CAwxpic.twitter.com/ZEHezqIi08
#8
As you watch rews this weekend covering the flooding along the L.A. River as billions of acre feet of run-off flows into the ocean, consider the 2014 Proposition 1, $2.7 Billion for eight new water storage reservoirs and catchment basins that have yet to start construction.
Democrat management prowess on display!
[The Exposé] In the UK today, it seems, being knighted means you’re someone the UK state wishes to protect from prosecution for crimes against the British people. We don’t need to point to Sir Tony Blair, Klaus Schwab KBE, or even to Sir Jimmy Saville to corroborate this theory. Last week, Pascal Soriot, the French-born Australian and Chief Executive Officer of the British-Swiss pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca plc., whose ’vaccine’ for Covid-19 has produced reports of 875,000 adverse drug reactions in the UK public, including 1,334 deaths, was knighted ’for services to UK sciences and leadership in the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic’.
#1
I understand the 135 was unarmed. Chinese Pilot will benefit from this standoff back home. Australia is getting very nervous at this time. Seriously more to come.
[Gateway] The price of eggs has hit a record high and is not showing any signs of going down in the near future.
From November 2021 to November 22, egg prices jumped a massive 49 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
One of the main reasons for the sky-high inflation has been a deadly avian flu that prompted many large egg and poultry suppliers to have to cull their flocks.
It is estimated that 60 million birds were killed and disposed of due to the virus — which is expected to continue infecting flocks into 2023.
[Breitbart] Goldman Sachs is preparing for more job cuts in the near future, according to CEO David Solomon.
"We are conducting a careful review and while discussions are still ongoing, we anticipate our headcount reduction will take place in the first half of January," Solomon explained in a year-end note to employees, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
"There are a variety of factors impacting the business landscape, including tightening monetary conditions that are slowing down economic activity. For our leadership team, the focus is on preparing the firm to weather these headwinds," he added.
[AlAhram] Kosovo's primary border crossing with Serbia was back open Thursday, dialling down growing tensions that had drawn international calls for de-escalation.
Barricades were dismantled on the Serbian side of the Merdare border point and Kosovo announced the crossing was open a day after Washington and Brussels urged both to ease a simmering crisis.
The latest trouble erupted on December 10, when ethnic Serbs put up barricades to protest the arrest of an ex-policeman suspected of being involved in attacks against ethnic Albanian coppers -- effectively sealing off traffic on two border crossings.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced removal of the barricades late Wednesday during his meeting with Kosovo Serb representatives near the border.
Kosovo police on Thursday said in a statement that the "Merdare border crossing point has been opened for traffic and has returned to full normality".
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, after a bitter war in late 1990s.
But Belgrade still refuses to recognise it and encourages Kosovo's 120,000 ethnic Serbs to defy Pristina's authority -- especially in the north where they make up the majority.
'CONTROLLED CONFLICT'
After the roadblocks were erected, Kosovar police and international peacekeepers were attacked in several shooting incidents, while the Serbian armed forces were put on heightened alert this week.
The European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... and the United States voiced concern over the situation, urged immediate de-escalation and said they are working with both Serbia and Kosovo leaders to seek a political solution to the crisis.
Political analyst Aleksandar Popov said tensions in Kosovo are so high that it would "only take one stray bullet" to significantly aggravate the situation.
However, some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... he labelled the recent unrest a "controlled conflict" and an arm-wrestling contest between Belgrade and Pristina over the influence in the north, where authorities for years have been seeking a special status within Kosovo.
"Pristina gave Serbs the reason to protest by making arrests, the barricades were orchestrated by Belgrade and international peacekeepers mediated to prevent escalation.
"The minute it looked like it was getting out of hand, the West used diplomatic means to stop the whole thing," Popov told AFP.
'FEEL CHEATED, ABUSED'
Around a dozen protesters who were still at a barricade site in Rudare, near Mitrovica, voiced dissatisfaction with the decision to remove the roadblocks.
"It makes no sense, we fought for rights that were not fulfilled, we feel cheated, abused," a 25-year-old man, who refused to give his name, told AFP.
"Why did we come to the barricades, if everything ended this way?" asked a 38-year-old protester, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
In a move that initiated a calming of the situation, a Pristina court ordered Wednesday that the former police officer, whose detention Serbs cited as the main reason for erecting the barricades, be released from prison and placed under house arrest.
Northern Kosovo has been on edge since November when hundreds of ethnic Serb workers in the Kosovo police as well as the judicial branch, including judges and prosecutors, walked off the job.
They were protesting a controversial decision to ban Serbs living in Kosovo from using Belgrade-issued vehicle licence plates -- a policy that was eventually scrapped by Pristina.
The mass walkouts created a security vacuum in Kosovo, which Pristina tried to fill by deploying ethnic Albanian coppers in the region.
On Wednesday, Belgrade's ally Russia voiced support for Serbia and said it was "very closely" following the developments
Kosovo's 1.8 million population is predominantly ethnic Albanian.
[BBC] Egypt may have the Pyramids of Giza, but Iraq has the Ziggurat of Ur – an incredibly well-preserved engineering achievement that towers over the ruins of an important ancient city.
(This year, we published many inspiring and amazing stories that made us fall in love with the world – and this is one our favourites.)
Around 4,000 years ago, this pale, hard-packed spit of Iraqi desert was the centre of civilisation. Today the ruins of the great city of Ur, once an administrative capital of Mesopotamia, now sit in a barren wasteland near Iraq's most notorious prison. In the shadow of the towering prison fences, Abo Ashraf, the self-proclaimed caretaker of the archaeological site, and a handful of tourists are the only signs of life for miles. At the end of a long wooden walkway, an impressive ziggurat is nearly all that remains of the ancient Sumerian metropolis.
To get here, I'd been packed into the backseat of a taxi hurtling through the desert for hours, until I began to see the city's famed monument looming in the distance: the Ziggurat of Ur, a 4,100-year-old massive, tiered shrine lined with giant staircases. A tall chain link fence barricading the entrance and a paved parking lot were the only hints of the modern world.
The very first ziggurats pre-date the Egyptian pyramids, and a few remains can still be found in modern-day Iraq and Iran. They are as imposing as their Egyptian counterparts and also served religious purposes, but they differed in a few ways: ziggurats had several terraced levels as opposed to the pyramids' flat walls, they didn't have interior chambers and they had temples at the top rather than tombs inside.
"A ziggurat is a sacred building, essentially a temple on a platform with a staircase," said Maddalena Rumor, an Ancient Near-East specialist at Case Western Reserve University in the US. "The earliest temples show simple constructions of one-room shrines on a slight platform. Over time, temples and platforms were repeatedly reconstructed and expanded, growing in complexity and size, reaching their most perfect shape in the multi-level Ziggurat [of Ur]."
The Ziggurat of Ur was built a bit later (about 680 years after the first pyramids), but it is renowned because it is one of the best-preserved, and also because of its location in Ur, which holds a prominent place in history books. According to Rumor, Mesopotamia was the origin of artificial irrigation: the people of Ur cut canals and ditches to regulate the flow of water and irrigate land further from the Euphrates River banks. Ur is also believed to be the birthplace of biblical Abraham and, as Ashraf explained while he walked us through the ruined walls of the city, the home of the first code of law, the Code of Ur-Nammu, written around 2100 BCE – 400 years before Babylonia's better-known Code of Hammurabi.
[NPR] VATICAN CITY — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 's health has worsened over the past hours due to advanced age and doctors are constantly monitoring his condition, the Vatican said Wednesday, as Pope Francis appealed to the faithful to pray for his "very ill" predecessor "until the end."
Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said Francis went to visit the frail, 95-year-old Benedict in the monastery on Vatican grounds where he has lived since retiring in February 2013. 95 is a pretty good run
"Regarding the health condition of the emeritus pope, for whom Pope Francis asked for prayers at the end of his general audience this morning, I can confirm that in the last hours, a worsening due to advanced age has happened,'' Bruni said in a written statement. Spare him, dear Lord. I have prepared a long list of D.C. beltway alternates for your review and approval.
Former pope Benedict XVI is "lucid and alert" and his condition remains serious but stable, the Vatican said Thursday, the day after revealing the 95-year-old's health had deteriorated.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/30/2022 5:34 Comments ||
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#3
Can't only imagine what the discussion between Him and GOD will be on his arrival.
Like Pope Benedict knew about priests who abused children and failed to act. Then there was Paolo Gabriele leaking detailed problem reports & doc's. Then the public discovery and Vatican doc's that acknowledged a network of high ranking Homosexual priests inside the Vatican. With too much political power.
But with all that said, I feel the current Pope, Pope Francis, will have an even "hotter" discussion on arrival.
Either way, neither comes near the sincerity and spiritual quality of Pope John Paul II.
#9
When Pope John XXIII was asked, “How many people work in the Vatican?” his response was, “About half.”
I've no inside info, but I've gotten the impression over the years that the Vatican bureaucracy has perfected the "bearing false witness" business, and that trying to figure out who did what requires more skill than Ratzinger had.
Anyhow, this evangelical wishes him well here and hereafter.
Posted by: James ||
12/30/2022 18:21 Comments ||
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#10
St. Peter receives a lawyer at the gates and escorts him to his eternal quarters. Walking down the long hall, the lawyer notices as they pass by room after room of Popes. Each room looks like a Motel 6. Finally arriving at his destination, St Peter opens the door to the lawyer. He's stun. It looks like a Vegas VIP suite. He turns to St Peter and points out the accommodations for the Popes. St.Peter says - You got to understand, we have lots of Popes. You are our first lawyer.
#12
It is believed that Benedict, Vigano and Pell were on the trail of corruption in the Vatican Bank. I think he backed off out of fear of getting the JPI treatment. I don’t know that to be the case. I do expect to see Ratzinger in heaven if I make it. That is my goal.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/30/2022 22:28 Comments ||
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#13
True German Ally, who had regularly played chess with him when he was a mere bishop, spoke highly of him. As I recall, he was meant to be a compromise candidate, but he was much more than that.
[Just The News] NIH and medical research institutions funded or sponsored a dozen studies involving Facebook with targets include Latinos, African Americans, holiday travelers, states with lower COVID vaccination rates and even Mayan-language speakers.
Legislation that would use federal agencies to "nudge" social media platforms to reduce the spread of "harmful content" isn't going anywhere in the waning days of the 117th Congress.
As evidenced by the ongoing release of the "Twitter Files," however, that's no impediment to the government — and the research universities that so heavily depend on federal funding — enlisting Big Tech to promote favored narratives and throttle competing arguments on contentious topics.
Federal agencies and U.S. universities together have funded or sponsored a dozen studies mentioning Facebook and COVID-19, according to the National Institutes of Health's ClinicalTrials.gov database.
While some concern behaviors and health outcomes affected by the early pandemic, such as ways to increase cancer screening and "help-seeking behavior" for mental health problems, others promote government-approved messages on COVID interventions such as vaccines, testing, mask-wearing and social distancing.
NIH, for instance, funded studies targeting the Oregon Latino community as well as the 19 states with first-dose COVID vaccination rates under 60% as of fall 2021.
The 3,600-participant Latino study, started in February 2021 and is estimated to close June 30. It is currently marked "active, not recruiting." Run by the University of Oregon, it says Latinos represent 13% of the Beaver State but 44% of COVID cases.
The Facebook element of the study is part of the control group, which receives Facebook ads and other "strategies that are typically conducted by county and community-based organizations that serve under-represented groups to notify people of testing opportunities related to COVID-19."
[Breitbart] Angry Tesla owners have been sharing videos of their vehicles refusing to start during the massive winter storm that impacted both the United States and Canada.
The Daily Mail reports that numerous Tesla owners have reported being unable to access their vehicles due to frozen door handles during a severe winter storm in Canada and the United States. Rachel Modestino, a meteorologist from Ontario, experienced this issue firsthand on December 23 when temperatures reached a low of 5º F and her car’s door latch failed to function.
Modestino’s situation gained significant attention on social media, as a video she posted of her struggle with the frozen door handle has garnered over 10.1 million views on Twitter. In the tweet accompanying the video, Modestino quipped, "Bet ya didn’t think of ice in the Tesla design." The video shows the Tesla partially covered in ice, highlighting the severity of the winter storm.
I got zero sympathy for these folks. If I'm going to spend Tesla-level bucks on new technology, you can bet I'm going to investigate the hell out of it first, and that includes cold-weather issues.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/30/2022 4:53 Comments ||
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#2
Oh, our green "betters" were lied to. Or ignorant. Or swallowed the propaganda whole.
Yes, yes, I know that thing about and...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/30/2022 5:03 Comments ||
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#3
I just drove an EV yesterday. These things're like grown up versions of toys!
#12
I would deride them if I had not subsidized the entire endeavor.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/30/2022 12:01 Comments ||
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#13
None of this is new or surprising, but I notice there's more reporting about Tesla problems lately. Could it be that all of a sudden the media powers that be don't like the owner?
Posted by: James ||
12/30/2022 12:55 Comments ||
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#14
A great many NON-EVs have electrically operated door handles, too. Those can fail to operate in the exact same way those Tesla door handles have done. Zero publicity, of course, is given to those ICE driven vehicle exceptions.
I bought a 2023 Kia Carnival, which will probably be the last car I ever buy. It is standard ICE driven with all the electrically operated, encoded, restrictive and handy dandy options one could desire.
The Kia user's manual is 100s of pages long. I'm slowly, slowly going through it and finding all the "Easter eggs" the Kia's designers have flawed the system with.
One such flaw is, of course, the door latching mechanism. The battery driven key fob, when brought close to the front door, causes a light to go on at the door latch, signalling the latch's readiness to open. The trick is to then press the tiny black button on the latch, then pull back on the latch to open the door. If the key fob malfunctions in any way, this cannot happen. This new possible malfunction is in addition to the oldest possible malfunction, which would simply be an icicle getting into the works.
The key fob (which costs $450 to replace) has a hidden brass key inside its case (said key costing $110 to replace as a single item). This brass key is the only standard physical way to getting inside the Kia when all else fails.
A unnecessarily complex way to expose the slot on the driver's side door can then be used to allow the brass key to open the driver's door the old fashioned way. If an icicle is not at fall, the door can then be opened with the brass key.
Due to a lifetime's worth of experience, including the loss of similar security keys, I now wear the brass key to my Kia Carnival on a stainless steel chain around my neck, along with a spare key for my other vehicle. That brass Kia key can't be used to start the vehicle, the remainder of the fob being still necessary for that. But at least I would be able to get inside and ease the grip of Mother Nature endangering my physical existence in this season of our discontent.
#17
You know, maybe we should ask the federal government to assemble a blue-ribbon panel to research some sort of car propulsion system that will work in the cold weather?
[Jpost] The mother's DNA tests showed that she’s also the uncle of her daughter. Doctors realized that the mom was a human chimera with DNA from more than one fetus.
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.
[Mail] Time magazine has been ruthlessly mocked for an article saying the origins of exercise are rooted in racism.
Daily Mail, where America get its news] 
[Gateway] The price of eggs has hit a record high and is not showing any signs of going down in the near future.
[Breitbart] Goldman Sachs is preparing for more job cuts in the near future, according to CEO David Solomon.
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
[Just The News] NIH and medical research institutions funded or sponsored a dozen studies involving Facebook with targets include Latinos, African Americans, holiday travelers, states with lower COVID vaccination rates and even Mayan-language speakers.
