Collapsing Crane Kills 87 [Update: 107] People In Mecca

In Mecca, a crane being used in a construction project intended to expand the Grand Mosque killed 87 people and injured over 180 others when it collapsed and fell through the mosque's roof.  At the time, the area was undergoing bad weather, including wind, rain and lightning.  The construction is being done in preparation for this year's Hajj pilgrimage, which occurs later this month.  The Grand Mosque surrounds the Kaaba, a shrine around which the pilgrims walk during the Hajj.

Read more at BBC News, The Guardian, Russia Today, Al Jazeera and the Daily Mail.

UPDATE:  Most of the links are now indicating 107 people killed and 238 injured.

Thursday Links

As the NFL gets ready to kick off the new season, here are some things out there in the news:

From Reuters, the U.S. will accept 10,000 Syrian refugees next year.

From The Telegraph, an ISIS fighter is reportedly hiding in a migrant camp in Calais, France.

From the Washington Examiner, the House passes a resolution alleging that President Obama "ignored law" on the Iran deal.

From CNS News, a disabled veteran gives his (very negative) opinion of the Iran deal.

From Fox News, the NYPD commissioner offers an apology to wrongly arrested tennis pro James Blake.

From The Blaze, Wisconsin Governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker (R) promises that as president, he will prohibit mandatory union dues for federal employees.

From Tech Crunch, guitar maker Fender hires a new Chief Digital Products Officer.

From The Washington Times, when he starts his U.S. visit, Pope Francis will be welcomed at the White House by a religiously diverse group of people.

From Yahoo News, the head from a giant statue of Vladimir Lenin has been dug up in Berlin.

From Breitbart's Big Government, a video shows Nevada-based campaign workers for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton allegedly ignoring or violating the state's voter registration laws.

From One News Now, the legal standing of a pro-LGBT ordinance passed in Fayetteville, Arkansas has been questioned by the state's attorney general.

From News 4 Jax, a 20-year-old man from Orange Park, Florida has been arrested for distributing information on how to make a pressure cooker bomb.

And from The Hollywood Reporter, it won't belong before a certain news anchor comes back.

Enslaved Woman Kills ISIS Commander

According to a report by the Indian site Z News, an ISIS commander named Abu Anas was fatally shot by an Iraqi woman he was keeping as a sex slave.  The text is somewhat confusing because it includes the phrases "an Iraqi women" and "the women was", thus using the plural form "women" with the singular words "an" and "was".  The taking, keeping and selling of sexual slaves, and even the practice of giving slaves as "gifts" has reportedly been rather common within ISIS.

Read the full story.

Fake Race Change Gets White Poet Published

A library worker and amateur poet in Allen County, Indiana named Michael Derrick Hudson made over 40 unsuccessful attempts to publish a poem he had written, but then found success after he adopted the Chinese-sounding pen name Yi-Fen Chou.  The poem, entitled "The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve", was rejected 40 times under his real name and then 9 more times under his pen name, before being published by Prairie Schooner, and later being included in the anthology The Best American Poetry 2015.

Although Hudson never tried to pass himself off as Asian in any way analogous to Rachel Dolezal's attempt to appear black, he has understandably drawn some angry reaction from Asians.  As poet and Chapman University professor Victoria Chang told The Washington Post:

“And it diminishes categorically all of our accomplishments. He sort of implies that minorities are published because we’re minorities, not because of our work. That’s just insulting because it strips everything we’ve worked so hard for.”

I would beg to differ with Professor Chang.  I would submit that Mr. Hudson did not imply anything, but instead exposed a willingness within the publishing business to publish minorities because they're minorities, or at least a desire to include minorities in their publications out of fear of being accused of racism they don't.

Read more at The Washington Post (mentioned above), The Independent and The Guardian.  In their write-up, Hot Air includes an excerpt of Mr. Chou's, er, I mean, Mr. Hudson's poem.

Mumbai Bans Meat For Four Days

From Reuters:

Mumbai, India's financial capital, has banned the slaughter and sale of meat for four days this month following a demand from the strictly vegetarian Jain community, sparking outrage among meat-eaters already upset by a permanent beef ban imposed this year.

The ban has drawn quite a bit of flak, since it effectively forces non-Jains to follow Jain practice.  Some reaction:

From First Post, why should the Mumbai government "impose one religion's practice on everyone else"?

From Business Standard, the meat ban is the "latest step in state-sponsored intolerance".

From Daily O, vegetarians should not worry, because meat-eaters will not burn down your house of worship.

My opinion?  As I have said before, when lions and tigers and bears, oh my, stop eating meat, so will I.

Buried Stone Monument Found Near Stonehenge

Archaeologists in England using ground-penetrating radar and a mobile magnetometer have discovered a row of 90 buried stones at a site called Durrington Walls, one of the largest henge-style sites in Great Britain, located about two miles northeast of Stonehenge.  The stones are thought to have been put in place over 4,500 years ago.

Read more at The Guardian, BBC News and The Telegraph.

European Migration News

Some stories about the migration into Europe, and some tangential items:

From Channel NewsAsia, the Hungarian prime minister states that quotas on how many immigrants each European country must accept are meaningless as long as the EU's "outer borders" are not secure.

From Vice News, the Hungarian PM also says that since the migrants are not staying in the first EU country they reach, they should be seen as immigrants, not refugees.

From CNN, Germany and Austria say that they "can't keep up".

From The Telegraph, the French president tells the U.K. prime minister if you want reform, take care of some refugees.

From CP24, migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos face tensions and cause them, too.

From Ekathimerini, Cyprus offers to take in 300 preferably Christian refugees.

From The Austrian, an Australian bishop say that Christian refugees "should go to front of queue".

From The Last Refuge, an English translation of an article in Niezależna describing the behavior of migrants at the Italian-Austrian border, as witnessed by a Polish traveler.  Ostrzeżenie: to nie ładne.  (Warning: it ain't pretty.)

From Reuters, the United States has asked Greece to deny their airspace to Russian flights to Syria.  (From what I know about the geography of southeastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean area, I don't really see why Russia would need to overfly Greece on the way to Syria, unless Turkey has already closed their airspace to them.)

And from DEBKAfile, a Russian submarine armed with an arsenal of nuclear weapons is heading for Syria.

"In God We Trust" On Police Vehicles Draws Complaints

Like dozens of other police agencies around the United State, the police department of Childress, Texas have recently added the motto "In God We Trust" to their vehicles, but they have drawn complaints from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  From the Chicago Tribune:

A police department in a rural Texas Bible Belt community has placed large "In God We Trust" decals on its patrol vehicles in response to recent violence against law enforcement officers, but a watchdog group says the decals amount to an illegal government endorsement of religion.

The decision by police this month to unveil the phrase in Childress, an agricultural community of some 6,100 people at the southern edge of the Texas Panhandle, follows a similar move by dozens of other police agencies elsewhere in the country.

Read the full story, and if you have a problem with what the policemen are doing, please also read your coins and dollar bills.

Actor Sentenced For Killing Rabbit

Actor Dimitri Diatchenko, who appeared in Sons of Anarchy and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, has been sentenced to community service, probation and animal cruelty counseling after pleading guilty to animal cruelty.  His crime?  Skinning, cooking and partially eating his ex-girlfriend's pet rabbit.

This makes me think that Elmer Fudd might wish to reconsider his longtime desire to cook up some wabbit stew.

Read more at The Wrap, Sky News and Fox News.

West Point Cadets Injured In......Pillow Fight?

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY has acknowledged that during their annual freshman pillow fight this past August, 30 cadets were injured, 24 of them with concussions.  Some freshmen reportedly packed their pillows with hard objects such as helmets.  The pillow fight is a tradition that goes back at least to 1897.

Read more at The New York Times, Yahoo News and Russia Today.

UPDATE:  From ABC News, the pillow fight has been under investigation.