Blog Heap of Links for the day 23 July 2011

The Secret Scrapbook of Barry Soetero Barack Obama

Police arrived at an island massacre about an hour and a half after a gunman first opened fire, slowed because they didn't have quick access to a helicopter and then couldn't find a boat to make their way to the scene just several hundred yards (meters) offshore. The assailant surrendered when police finally reached him, but 82 people died before that. ... The shooting came on the heels of what police told The Associated Press was an "Oklahoma city-type" bombing in Oslo's downtown: It targeted a government building, was allegedly perpetrated by a homegrown assailant and used the same mix of fertilizer and fuel that blew up a federal building in the U.S. in 1995. In all, at least 92 people were killed in the twin attacks that police are blaming on the same suspect, 32-year-old Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik.

A three-metre great white shark breached into a vessel carrying marine researchers yesterday. While none were injured, they said it gave them "the fright of our lives".

The BBC was criticised by climate change sceptics yesterday after it emerged that their views will get less coverage because they differ from mainline scientific opinion. In a report by its governing body, the BBC Trust, the corporation was urged to focus less on opponents of the "majority consensus" in its programmes. It said coverage should not be tailored to represent a "false balance" of opinion if one side came from a minority group.

a 20-year-old Norwegian girl raped by a 15-year-old North African asylum-seeker in downtown Oslo... on the steps of the Norwegian parliament, facing the Castle. To make matters even worse, as the young culture-enricher worked his will on the victim, he was being observed live via a video surveillance camera by security guards inside the parliament building — who did not leave the building to help the young woman. It seems that interrupting a rape on the front steps was not part of their job description — that task rightly belonged to the police, who unfortunately arrived too late to interrupt the crime. ...

Figures seen by the Daily Mail show that 155 'admixed' embryos, containing both human and animal genetic material, have been created since the introduction of the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act. This legalised the creation of a variety of hybrids, including an animal egg fertilised by a human sperm; 'cybrids', in which a human nucleus is implanted into an animal cell; and 'chimeras', in which human cells are mixed with animal embryos.

A La Mesa man who posted racial epithets and a call to "shoot" Barack Obama on an Internet chat site was engaging in constitutionally protected free speech, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in overturning his criminal conviction. Walter Bagdasarian was found guilty two years ago of making threats against a major presidential candidate in comments he posted on a Yahoo.com financial website after 1 a.m. on Oct. 22, 2008, as Obama's impending victory in the race for the White House was becoming apparent. Bagdasarian told investigators he was drunk at the time.