Shooter Kills Ten People At Oregon Community College [UPDATE: 13 Killed]

In a shooting incident at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Oregon, 10 people have been killed and 20 others wounded.  The shooting reportedly started around 10:40 a.m. PDT.  The shooter, described so far only as being a man, has been taken into custody.

Read more at Q13 Fox, NBC News, KATU, CNN and Oregon Live.

UPDATE:  NBC, KATU and OL are now reporting that up to 13 people were killed.  CNN now indicates that the shooter is dead, and was 20 years old.

UPDATE 2:  The News Review, which serves Roseburg and Douglas County, reports what happened from the perspective of a student.

Kortney Moore, 18, from Rogue River, was in her Writing 115 class in Snyder Hall when one shot came through a window. She saw her teacher get shot in the head. The shooter was inside at that point, and he told people to get on the ground. The shooter was asking people to stand up and state their religion and then started firing away, Moore said. Moore was lying there with people who had been shot.

This link comes via Gateway Pundit, who gets kudos for finding a local source.

UPDATE 3:  According to the NBC and OL links above, the shooter has been identified as Chris Harper Mercer, who was 26.  The International Business Times likewise reports the shooter's identity, and also reports that the shootings occurred in at least two buildings on campus and that four guns were recovered at the scene.

Eight Men Found On Iranian Women's Football Team

It looks like Bruce Caitlyn Jenner is not the only athlete who wants to be a woman.  From the Daily Mail:

Eight of Iran's women's football team are men who are awaiting sex swap operations, it has been claimed.

The country's football bosses have been branded 'unethical' for fielding the genetically more powerful players.

Officials have now reportedly ordered the gender testing of the entire national team and the top players in their country's competitive league.

The game known as "football" (under various spellings) to most of the world is what we bloody Yanks call "soccer".   Read the full story.

Iraqi Christians Face Deportation From The United States

From Fox News:

Nearly two dozen Iraqi Christians who fled ISIS and crossed into the U.S. from Mexico seeking religious asylum have been denied protection and could be booted from American soil within days, a federal official said.

Some 27 Iraqi Christians, known as Chaldeans, were held at the Otay Detention Center in San Diego since entering the U.S. in April and May. Seven have already been extradited, and five more criminally charged with making false statements. In all, 22 have been ordered out of the U.S. and five still have asylum applications pending, according to Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in San Diego.

My reaction to this news is conflicted.  On one hand, it is easy to "root for the underdog", as the saying goes.  These Christians are part of a sect that has faced brutal treatment from fundamentalist Islamic groups such as ISIS, and thus would appear to deserve asylum.  On the other hand, they did not come directly to the United States, but traveled to Mexico and then crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.  Unless they stopped at an official border crossing and presented valid passports, their crossing was done in an illegal manner.  Those who allegedly made false statements didn't exactly help their cause, either.  (According to the Fox News story, some of them had German passports.)

NASA Finds Evidence Of Salty Water On Mars

Today, NASA announced that they have found evidence of flowing salty water on Mars.  Dark streaks, called "recurring slope lineae", found on steep Martian slopes are reportedly caused by salts precipitating out of the water.  The salts are not the sodium chloride present in Earth's oceans, but instead chlorates and perchlorates.

Read more at Space(dot)com, CBC News, IFL Science!, CBS News and Wired.

Boy Roller Skates Under Cars

Yes, he goes under cars.  In India, eight-year-old roller skater Devisri Prasad performs stunts that most people can only imagine.  In fact, if yours truly attempted had anything like this at age 8, an extended stay in the hospital would have been the best possible outcome.  From the New York Post:

This boy is nimble and quick.

Not only can Devisri Prasad, 8, can roller-skate under 53 cars - he can do it backwards.

Prasad is hoping to clinch four world records for his flexible stunts - devoting hours to perfecting his routine.

Read the full story, and please don't try this (or let your children try this) at home.

Sunday Links

As much of the world awaits tonight's lunar eclipse, here are some things going on here on Earth:

From CNN, people travel to see Pope Francis.

From ABC News, the pope meets with victims of sex abuse by priests.

From ESPN, at the Rams-Steelers football game, pyrotechnics sets part of the field on fire.

From Pantagraph, a Kenyan runner wins the Berlin Marathon.

From The Washington Free Beacon, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton admits that much of the story about her use of a personal email server is out of her control.

From WUIS, Iraq will share anti-ISIS intelligence with Iran and Russia.

From Epoch Times, President Obama and other world leaders will address a United Nations summit.

From Newsmax, soon-to-be-former Speaker John Bo(eh)ner (R-Ohio) calls his more conservative opponents "unrealistic".

From Gatestone Institute, the German government has been enacting some coercive measures in order to accommodate incoming migrants.

From the Sunday Express, ISIS crucifies Christians.

From France24, almost 30,000 foreigners have gone to Iraq to join ISIS.

From Yahoo News, French airplanes attack ISIS, but just for show.

From Bloomberg Business, in Catalonia's regional election, parties favoring separation from Spain are close to winning a majority of votes.  (via Zero Hedge)

From The Washington Post, presidential candidate Jeb Bush (R-FL) faces "make or break time".

From The Hill, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson are running a very close first and second among Republicans.

And from Fox News, in Spearfish, South Dakota, someone stole a 100-pound pumpkin.

Speaker Boehner To Resign

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has been so disappointing to conservatives that we sometimes like to mispronounce his name in a way that ignores the "eh", has announced his resignation as both Speaker of the House and as a congressman, effective on October 30.  He was elected Speaker after the Republicans took the House in the 2010 election, and had previously held the post of Minority Leader.  Boehner was first elected to Congress in 1990.

Read more at Fox News, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Politico and The Hill.

UPDATE:  NBC News presents some information on how GOP voters feel about Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Stampede Kills Over 700 Hajj Pilgrims

At the Hajj pilgrimage near Mecca in Saudi Arabia, a stampede took the lives of at least 717 pilgrims and injured at least 805 more, according to various reports.  The disaster occurred a few miles east of Mecca in Mina, where pilgrims traditionally perform a ritual in which they throw rocks at three stone pillars in a symbolic stoning of the devil.  Two large crowds reportedly converged on their way to the site of this ritual.

Read more at Reuters, BBC News, Al Jazeera, The Indian Express and Rappler.

Yogi Berra 1925-2015

Yogi Berra, the baseball Hall of Famer also known for his witticisms, has died of natural causes at the age of 90 at his home in New Jersey.  He had lived at an assisted living center in West Caldwell since 2012, when he moved from Montclair.

Lawrence Peter Berra was born on May 12, 1925 to parents who had immigrated from Malvaglio, Italy, and grew up in an Italian neighborhood in St. Louis known as "The Hill".  One of his childhood friends was future major league catcher Joe Garagiola.  Another friend gave Berra the knickname "Yogi" after they had watched a movie travelogue about India.  After dropping out of school in the eight grade and working odd jobs to help his family, he was signed by the New York Yankees, who unlike the St. Louis Cardinals or St. Louis Browns were willing to give him a $500 bonus.  After some time in the minor leagues, Berra joined the U.S. Navy and took part in D-Day and the Allied assault on Marseilles, where he earned a Purple Heart.

In 1946, Berra returned to baseball and joined the Yankees' farm team the Newark Bears, getting called up to the major league team in September.  He played with the Yankees from then until the end of 1963.  As a player, he because a notorious "bad ball hitter" who rarely struck out despite hitting for power.  He also became an excellent defensive catcher and was regarded as an expert handler of pitchers.  He sometimes played outfield to give himself a break from catching, and during his late 30's was still patrolling then-notoriously large left field in Yankee Stadium.

Adams Falls & The Paden Twin Bridges

After taking a ride on the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern Railroad, I found two other places in Pennsylvania to stop and look around.  In Ricketts Glen State Park, from a parking area just off State Route 118, I took a short hike to Adams Falls, which are on Kitchen Creek.

Just south and downstream of Adams Falls are these rocks.  It looks like a stream of water at one time might have eroded a channel between the two formations.

Continuing southwestward, I turned onto State Route 487 and eventually found the East and West Paden Twin Bridges, near Forks.  The West Paden bridge is next to a small parking area on a side road that connects to Route 487.  From this angle, the East Paden bridge is in the background on the right.  Both bridges are intended only for pedestrian traffic and house several picnic tables.

On the concrete support between the bridges is this historical marker.

After walking through the bridges (and hopefully not disturbing a bunch of picnickers who were there), I took this shot of the east bridge.

The west bridge spans Huntington Creek.  In order to get all of it into the picture, I had to also include a large tree.

From the west bridge, I took a shot of Huntington Creek, of which the above-mentioned Kitchen Creek turns out to be a tributary.

For more on the Paden Twin Bridges, go here, here and here.