In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Shooting; deaths] There isn't a whole lot of new information on the shooting in Chattanooga yesterday. Some information is starting to trickle out about the shooter, 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdul­azeez. He was Muslim, and he was a naturalized US citizen born in Kuwait, and he had traveled to the Middle East, and he had no obvious links to terrorist groups. We also now know the name of one of the victims: Thomas Sullivan, a Marines gunnery sergeant and Iraq war veteran, who had received a Purple Heart. The names of the other victims will reportedly be released later today or tomorrow.

[CN: Police brutality; racism; death] Care of Breanna Edwards at The Root, here is a good piece about Sandra Bland, who died in police custody on Monday (or possibly before). Edwards also includes some relevant background on Waller County, Texas, where Bland was arrested, and its "bleak history of racial intolerance." Color of Change has a petition urging US Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate Bland's death, and not leave it up to the police who may have killed her to investigate themselves.

[CN: Terrorism; death; misogyny] Fucking hell: "[Bombs strapped on to girls] have killed more than 60 people in multiple blasts in the north-eastern towns of Gombe and Damaturu, scaring people into staying home during the Muslim Eid al-Fitr celebration. At least 13 people were killed in Damaturu on Friday in three [redacted] attacks carried out by girls as residents prepared for the Eid festival at the end of Ramadan, police said. ...There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts but a market, bus station and stadium in Gombe, the capital of Gombe state, have all in recent months been targeted by bomb and [redacted] attacks. In February, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for an attack on Gombe during which hundreds of insurgents, armed with heavy weapons, invaded the town for a few hours. Gombe state's neighbours, Borno, Yobo, and Adamawa, have been most affected by the Boko Haram insurgency that has killed more than 15,000 people in Nigeria since 2009." [Note: I refuse to call these "suicide bombs" when it is likely the girls to whom the bombs were strapped were abducted and forced to deliver these attacks.]

[CN: Shooting; deaths; death penalty] James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 70 others when he opened fire in a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012, has been found guilty "on 24 counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder... He had pleaded not guilty due to insanity—his defence said he was controlled by his schizophrenia [but the claim was rejected by the jury]. Prosecutors have said they will now seek the death penalty."

[CN: Climate change; malnutrition] "New research, led by Samuel Myers, a senior research scientist at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, suggests that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere will only make global zinc deficiency worse, putting some 138 million people at risk of malnutrition by the year 2050." Damn.

[CN: Homophobia] Come on, Kentucky legislators! Jesus Jones: "A bill has been introduced in the Kentucky House of Representatives that would allow county clerks in the state to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds." To quote my friend Ana Mardoll: "Epic rage yawn."

[CN: Misogyny] Under the "bury the lede, whydontcha?" headline "Hillary Clinton sounds the alarm on meteorites," there is this amazing anecdote from Clinton's youth: "'When I was a little girl, I guess I was a teenager by then … 14, I think, and the space program was getting started, and I wanted to be an astronaut, and I wrote to NASA,' she recounted. 'And I said, 'What do I have to do to be prepared to be an astronaut?' And they wrote back and said, 'Thank you very much, but we're not taking girls,'' she remembered. 'That, thankfully changed with Sally Ride and a lot of the other great women astronauts,' she said. But 'to be fair,' she added, 'I never could have qualified anyway, so you know, not something I spent a lot of time losing sleep over, but I really, really do support the space program.'"

Ian McKellen calls Superman a "nerd who changes his underpants" and James Bond a "silly, stupid, British twit." LOL!

And finally! Lucy the Golden Retriever is not in the mood for kisses, thankyouverymuch!