Blog Heap of Links for the day 18 March 2015

Nineteen people, including 17 foreign tourists, have been killed in a gun attack on the Bardo museum in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, the PM says.

Those killed included citizens from Japan, Italy, Colombia, Australia, France, Poland and Spain, PM Habib Essid said.

Two Tunisians, one a police officer, were also killed, he said.

Security forces killed two gunmen and were searching the surrounding area for accomplices

A December blackout of North Korea’s Internet was retaliation for that nation’s hacking of computers at Sony Corp.’s Hollywood studio, a top U.S. lawmaker on cybersecurity issues said without identifying who was responsible.

Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, on Tuesday became the first U.S. official to link the outage as reprisal for disrupting computers at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

On January 16, Carlos and Erica Morales welcomed three girls and one boy — Carlos Jr., Tracey, Paisley and Erica. But after delivering four healthy babies via C-section, Erica, 36, went into hypovolemic shock, a condition that involves severe blood loss, and died a few hours after her children were born. Today, Carlos is raising the kids by himself in Phoenix, Ariz., though not without help from his mother-in-law, friends, and now, more than 9,000 strangers.

[Headline c/o The Black Sphere]

In Baghdad, a terrorist who was in the middle of conducting a training for future militants, accidentally blew up an entire class, killing 21 of his students, and himself. The group was part of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the terror group that has been participating in a string of attacks in the United States.

Mar. 16, 2015 – Today, the North Dakota state Senate gave final approval to a bill authorizing the farming, production, and sale of industrial hemp in the state, effectively nullifying the federal prohibition on the same.

A bill introduced in the Minnesota state Senate would prohibit state and local law enforcement from acquiring certain military equipment provided through the Pentagon’s 1033 program, helping block federal attempts to militarize local police.

The never-before seen image shows a microscopic metal globe spewing out biological material feared to be an infectious agent.

Though the origin or purpose of the mysterious sphere is uncertain, experts say it could contain genetic material - the precursor to life.

They sensationally claim it could have been designed by an intelligent species to “seed” and propagate alien life on Earth.

It is the first time anything like this has been seen and points not only to the existence of extra-terrestrial life, but to complex and civilised beings watching our planet.

[Um… but probably not. However, for contrast, here's Urantia paper 65, Overcontrol of Evolution.]

The commandant of the Marine Corps told lawmakers that Marines who disarmed before departing Sanaa, Yemen during an embassy evacuation last month did so on the orders of U.S. Central Command and State Department officials.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent from the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas told lawmakers today that his fellow agents are punished for reporting illegal alien groups of more than 20. “Agents who repeatedly report groups larger than 20 face retribution. Management will either take them out of the field and assign them to processing detainees at the station or assign them to a fixed position in low volume areas as punishment,” Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrera told a Senate panel. “Needless to say Agents got the message and now stay below this 20 person threshold no matter the actual size of the group.”

[Video, 1:41:06, C-Span]

[Video, 1:40:33, Howard Meyers, YouTube]

…Researchers at Brigham Young University studied 3 million people.

They found people who said they were lonely, felt socially isolated or lived alone, had a 30 percent increased likelihood of death. …

…one of only three built by pioneering industrial designer Brooks Stevens… same guy who built the Weinermobile…

[Interior pictures - beautiful vehicle!]

Brett Kimberlin’s lawsuit against Mandy Nagy and other conservative bloggers has been, for the most part, dismissed in federal court.

He will be allowed to file in state court if he chooses.

[Here's a good article in Hillsdale College's Imprimus]

Race Relations and Law Enforcement
by Jason L. Riley, Editorial Board Member, Wall Street Journal

…Underprivileged blacks have become playthings for intellectuals and politicians who care more about revelling in their good intentions or winning votes than advocating behaviors and attitudes that have allowed other groups to get ahead. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement has become an industry that does little more than monetize white guilt. Martin Luther King and his contemporaries demanded black self-improvement despite the abundant and overt racism of their day. King’s self-styled successors, living in an era when public policy bends over backwards to accommodate blacks, insist that blacks cannot be held responsible for their plight so long as someone, somewhere in white America, is still prejudiced.…

[Pretty good speech, Senator. Video, 37:09]

Vic corrals all the wild and stray news and marks it with his own brand, starting here today.

"On this day in 1314 Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the Knights Templar, was burned at the stake for the crime of loaning King Phillip IV of France more money than he could pay back."