Blog Heap of Links for the day 11 April 2014

a Columbus family visiting the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force when four police officers in three cruisers drew guns and forced a grandmother and a mother to the ground as two young children screamed in fear from what authorities thought was a “stolen” vehicle. …

“My grandchildren are screaming,” Alice Hill recalled. “I mean they are hysterical, they saw the gun."

"My 5-year-old daughter is asking, ‘Is grandma going to get shot?’”

"Forget about me [specifically]. Look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee," Holder told the crowd. "What attorney general has ever had to deal withl that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"

H5N1 avian influenza has killed 60% of the 650 humans known to be infected since it was identified in Hong Kong 17 years ago… Dutch researchers have found that the virus needs only five favorable gene mutations to become transmissible through coughing or sneezing… The altered virus was much less deadly than the natural version. Only two of the ferrets in the study died, but neither death was caused by the flu….

The U.S. Interior Department announced Wednesday it was approving two large solar projects in the Mojave Desert that may displace or harm more than 2,000 desert tortoises.