Blog Heap of Links for the day 19 August 2016

Isis has claimed its first terror attack on Russian soil after two supporters attempted to murder police officers near Moscow.

Both of the men were killed during the assault at a traffic post on a motorway in Balashika on Wednesday, when they were armed with a gun and two axes.…

An al-Qaeda-linked Libyan prisoner, currently held at the U.S. military detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been declared too dangerous to release by President Barack Obama’s parole-style board, according to the Pentagon.

The decision by the Periodic Review Board (PRB) to declare the 48-year-old Libyan detainee, Ismael Ali Faraj Ali Bakush, unsuitable for release does not necessarily mean he will remain imprisoned indefinitely.…

A senior Muslim cleric in Russia has suggested that universal female genital mutilation (FGM) would be a positive development, after a rights group released a report denouncing the practice earlier this week.…

An Oklahoma college student visiting Washington D.C. on a school trip, says he was beat up for wearing a Redskins Jersey. And the person he got into a fight with was a White House official in charge of American Indian education.

Barrett Dahl is Native American and a member of both the Choctaw and Sac and Fox Nations. He is also autistic.…

[William] Mendoza is the Executive Director of the White House Initiative of American Indian and Alaska Native Education… “Where are you from? You’re so stupid and uneducated. You don’t understand Redskins is offensive? And I tell him I’m from Oklahoma as I’m very proud to be and that’s when he spits on me…”

Actor Tom Arnold penned an essay on Thursday…

Glenn Beck reacted to the news of Stephen K. Bannon joining Donald Trump’s presidential campaign…

Billie Joe Armstrong, frontman for rock band Green Day, became the latest celebrity to…

…in the early 20th century a local group in Rio called the Catholic Circle saw a need to reclaim the city for Christ.

“In the wake of World War One, [Catholic Circle] feared an advancing tide of godlessness. Church and state had been separated when Brazil became a republic at the end of the previous century, and they saw the statue as a way of reclaiming Rio – then Brazil’s capital city – for Christianity.…”

A host of workers started construction on the massive statue in 1922 and completed it in 1931. It was built using metal scaffolding and cranes with the materials being carried up the mountain by railway.

The statue was officially opened to visitors on October 12, 1931…Philip Kosloski

In an astonishing breakthrough, patients left paralysed by severe spinal cord injuries have recovered the ability to move their legs after training with an exoskeleton linked to their brain – with one even able to walk using two crutches.

Scientists developed the Walk Again Project, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, thinking that they could enable paraplegics to move about using the exoskeleton controlled by their thoughts.

But they were surprised to discover that during the training, the eight patients all started to regain the sense of touch and movement below the injury to their spine.… researchers now believe that a few nerves survived and these were reactivated by the training, which may have rewired circuits in the brain.…

…Firefighters learned the child was trapped on the second floor of the home. …Firefighters …found Poremski's dog, Polo, in the room with her and he was covering her with his body. "She only had burns on her side because of it… He stayed with her the whole time in the bedroom and wouldn't even come downstairs to get out the door." …Viviana …has severe burns on her face, arm and side. But Polo did not survive the fire.…

The junta that tried to seize power in the Soviet Union on August 18-21, 1991, is one of the most inept in the history of palace coups. Not only did it fail to take power, but it also brought about the opposite of its aims – the collapse of the USSR.…

…The country its currently updating its very longitude and latitude to correct a divergence with global satellite navigation systems. Geoscience Australia, a part of the Australian government, is behind the project of getting the Geocentric Datum of Australia, the country's national coordinate system, up to code and bring it in line with international data.…

The phrase “wrong house” has never been more appropriate. An entire family participated in the shooting of an intruder who broke into a house less than a mile from his own residence.…

Twitchy: Trump Makes #WhereIsHillary #1 Trending Topic On Twitter…
Da Tech Guy: A Godless Olympics…
Shot In The Dark: Faith And Law…

France has closed its border crossing with Italy at Ventimiglia, leaving thousands of migrants stranded, without a way to continue their journey north. Many of those migrants have devised the strategy of crossing the Alps via foot trails in an attempt to get into France through less secure border crossings.

In other news, a 15-year-old “Dutch” girl in Maastricht was convicted and sentenced to eight months in juvenile detention for attempting to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State.…

People ignore software security warnings up to 90 percent of the time…
What Great Listeners Actually Do…
DNA traces origins of Iceman's ragtag wardrobe…

WTF? Heads should roll…
Clintons & Ethics, that's like water & oil…
1890s smallpox outbreak coming back to life?…

…On this day in 1692 in Salem, Province of Massachusetts Bay, five people, one woman and four men, including a clergyman, were executed by hanging after being convicted of witchcraft.

Dustbury: Gratification Still Delayed…
JustOneMinute: We’re From The UN And We’re Here To Help…
Power Line: …The Trump Speech That Will Win Him The Presidency…

…Based on MSM headlines, the most important news stories during our absence seem to concern Donald Trump. He did some bad things or has bad characteristics that frighten people, including racism, xenophobia, fascist tendencies, and taking inconsistent policy positions. I didn’t read the details, but it sounds very alarming.

Also: there have been Islamic terror attacks and police raids in Russia, Germany, and Belgium. A woman was gang-raped by migrants in Austria. More and more cars are being torched every night in Sweden. And Anjem Choudary was convicted.…

Without Global Warming, Civilization Would Never Have Been Possible…
Here’s How “President Hillary” Will Destroy Your Gun Rights Without Repealing The Second Amendment…
OKWU joins suit alleging Obama admin sex assault rules violate due process…

Say, remember just a couple weeks ago when Barack Obama smugly declared Donald J. Trump “wholly unfit to serve as President?”

Well, today, the man who is allegedly unfit to serve shamed the sitting President into acting like a, well, President.

Irony can be so ironic.…