A Sasquatch's Double Dozen

Here on the third day of 2018, are 24 things going on out there:

From the New York Post, Tallahassee, Florida gets significant snowfall for the first in 28 years.  (To be blamed on man-made climate change, of course.)

From The Guardian, President Trump and a former employee of his aren't getting along very well these days.  (via Breitbart's Big Government)

From Breitbart's National Security, five lessons for Iran's protesters from Venezuela.

From Bloomberg, for the first time in two years, Norks and Souks talk to each other.  (via HotAir)

From the Los Angeles Times, a baby who died in Alaska 11,500 years ago was from an unknown population, as shown by her DNA.

From the NL Times, Dutch fighter jets are deployed to fight ISIS.

From Voice Of Europe, two Algerian migrants offer to buy a Greek girl.

From the Hungary Journal, Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki meets Hungarian Prime Minister Orban in Budapest.  (via Voice Of Europe)

From Deutsche Welle, Morawiecki and Orban acknowledge the obvious.

From Russia Today, an Egyptian man goes on a "street rampage" in Dundalk, Ireland.

From the Express, the Mayor of Lesbos, Greece thinks that Turkey will release illegal migrants in retaliation for Greece granting asylum to a Turkish pilot.

From Euractiv, Turkish President Erdoğan goes to Paris.

From Breitbart London, British MEP Nigel Farage tells London's mayor to shut up about Trump and fight crime instead.

From the Daily Mail, Israel offers illegal aliens money if they leave, or jail if they stay.

From the Evening Standard, winter storm Eleanor batters the United Kingdom.

From Sputnik International, a French recruiter for ISIS is found in a Kurdish refugee camp in Syria.

From National Review, once upon a time, Democrats weren't so concerned about sexual misbehavior.

From FrontpageMag, a look at illegal aliens and crime.

From Townhall, good riddance to Senator Hatch.

From the Daily Post, Muslims in Nigeria allegedly attacked women and vandalized a church on New Year's Day.

From SBNation, four colleges join the "Blue-chip ratio" list in football recruiting.

From Fox35, more on the snow in northern Florida.

From Twitchy, guess who hasn't said a thing about the protests in Iran.

And from Space(dot)com, I'm not saying it's aliens, but.......

Senator Hatch To Retire, And Other Stories

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who was first elected in 1976, has announced that he will retire at the end of his current term.  He is currently the longest serving (to the extent that the term "serving" is even applicable) Republican member of the Senate.  Some media outlets are reacting by suggesting that former Massachusetts Governor and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who now lives in Utah, might run for Hatch's seat.

Read more at The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, The Hill and KUTV.
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In other news and opinion (with some of my own commentary and contextual information):

From RedState, don't oppose President Trump just to oppose him.  (The article points out, correctly in my opinion, that the mixture of oppression, religious zealotry and tyranny which the left thinks that Trump and his allies wish to impose in the United States is actually what's going on in Iran.)

From AhlulBayt News Agency, Iran's supreme leader blames "the enemies of Iran" for trying "to hurt the Islamic establishment".  (This is the only thing I've found recently on ABNA that even hints at the present unrest.  Since Iran has no real freedom of the press, I'm sure that this site can only say so much.)

From FrontpageMag, unlike Obama in 2009, "Trump sides with the protesters".

From Townhall, what no one, not even the right-wing media, are telling us about Iran.

From The Washington Post, a yuuuuge winter storm is expected later this week.  (H/T Gulf Dogs, for putting this into the BTR chatroom of Southern Sense)

From the New Statesman, "how Germany's refugee dream soured".

From the Evening Standard, a man has been charged in the murder of a barmaid in the Finsbury Park area of London.

From Breitbart London, several types of violent crime have "massively" increased on Mayor Khan's watch.

From the Hungary Journal, Hungary's State Secretary for Government Communication Bence Tuzson says that those who attack his country want to tear out its roots.  (This story comes via Voice Of Europe.  If you read Hungarian, you can read it at Magyar Hirlap.)

From the Express, the president of the European Parliament urges his fellow Italians to vote against populism.

From Voice Of Europe, police and firefighters are attacked in migrant-dominated suburbs.

From The Local FR, France was "shocked" by New Year's attacks on police.  (This story comes via Voice Of Europe, who note that more than 1,000 cars were torched.)

From Defend Europa, in Italy, a Somali migrant tries to rape a woman in labor.  (If you read Italian, you can read it at Libero Quotidiano.)

From Russia Today, a German MP gets blocked on social media and investigated for an "anti-Muslim" Tweet.

From Deutsche Welle, German doctors reject mandatory age testing for refugees.

From the Daily Mail, in the United Kingdom, only one out of five asylum seekers who lie about their age is deported.

From National Review, those who accuse Poland of being "anti-pluralist" are hypocrites.

From The New Indian Express, a Hindu girl is targeted by a fatwa for reciting the Bhagwad Gita.  (The Gita is part of an epic poem called the Mahabharata, which recalls a war between a set of five brothers called Pandava against their cousins, a set of 100 brothers called Kaurava, and consists mainly of a dialogue between Arjuna, the strongest of the Pandava, and his charioteer Krishna, who is an incarnation of the god Vishnu.)

From The Sun, an ISIS supporter takes selfies around New York.

From The Sasiat Daily, an Indian mufti disagrees with a recent decision to allow women to attend the Hajj without a male guardian.

From Gatestone Institute, if you want to see real female freedom fighters, look to Iran or to a certain chess player.  (The author has - or at least uses - the same first name as the first wife of Mohammed.  The last four stories were linked at The Religion Of Peace.)

From the New York Post, in Hertford, England, a woman lends police a helping foot.

And from Space(dot)com, the mystery of Jupiter's jet stream may have been solved.

Stories To Start The Year, And An Addendum

As the new year starts, so do the stories that I find worthy of linkage here.  But first, I must correct an oversight.  In making yesterday's end-of-2017 post, I somehow overlooked the events collectively known as #MeToo.  This movement has brought about the comeuppance of some misbehaving male celebrities, brought about the resignation of a Senator from Minnesota, and prevented a judge from Alabama from joining the Senate.  (Whether this judge will accept his loss before the end of 2018 is currently a matter of speculation.)  In my very unhumble opinion, the #MeToo movement should have started in or around 1992.

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Before I set forth today's links, here's a story published yesterday (and thus last year), which I found linked to The Corner at National Review.  As reported by the Metro, an airplane took off in 2018 and landed in 2017.  This is not because it flew into a time vortex or acted like a Tardis, but because it crossed the International Date Line.

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Here are some stories from today, or maybe very late yesterday:

From the New York Post, neither the cold nor the lack of facilities prevented revelers from welcoming 2018 in Times Square.

From the Daily Mail, in London, the New Year's celebration included bongs from Big Ben, fireworks, and a salute to the 100th anniversary of women voting in the U.K.

From BBC News, in London, four people were fatally stabbed during New Year's Eve and night.

From Voice Of Europe, the safe space for women in Berlin was "a total failure".

From The Washington Times, in Madeira, Ohio, two men deserve to be thanked for their service.

From CBC News, Bitcoin is sexist.

From the Express, Greece faces a possible "triple-dip" recession.

From Haaretz, a seal made by the Governor of Jerusalem, from the First Temple era, has been found near the Western Wall.

From Pakistan Today, an activist in the Maldives is investigated for blasphemy.

From WION, a Pakistani terrorist calls for jihad against the United States.

From Gatestone Institute, "the Islamization of Britain in 2017".

From FrontpageMag, President Trump has voiced support for the protesters in Iran.

From Townhall, a columnist based in Alaska sheds some light on the current cold snap.

From The Daily Signal, a history of American fake news.

From the Los Angeles Times, the Rose Parade includes a flyover by a stealth bomber.

And from Quartzy, the muscles you build up when you're a new father.

Happy New Year

To all who read this blog, I hope that so far today you've had a

2017 Comes To A Close

In a few hours, the year 2017 will come to its end, and 2018 will start.  Before writing this post, I took a brief look at what I wrote a year ago, in which I hoped that this year would be somewhat less interesting than last year.  I'd have to admit that on that count, I might have been frustrated.  If anything, the interesting times in which we live have continued.

In January, Donald Trump, a man who had never before held political office was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States.  A day later, there were large rallies opposing the new president in many American cities, in which many participants wore "pussyhats" or vagina costumes.  I must give the organizers of these events credit for what they pulled off, even though I obviously disagreed with their purpose.  Putting together these protests and keeping them all peaceful was probably no easy task.

President Trump has had some success in his first year in office.  He appointed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court to replace the late Antonin Scalia, and other judges to various federal courts.  His policy of scaling back regulations appears to have helped the economy.  His tax reform plan was passed by Congress earlier this month, In the Middle East, ISIS has lost most of its territory on Trump's watch.  On the other hand, he has had a whale of time trying to establish a ban on travel from some dangerous places in the world.  His most audacious act might be the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, something opposed by much of the world, but in reality is little more than acknowledging reality.

The use of vehicles to deliberately run over pedestrians, in what might be called "low level terror attacks", has continued from last year, in Europe, Australia and the United States.  The deadliest attack during the year, however, was the shooting in Las Vegas, in which a man fired from the Mandalay Bay Hotel on concert attendees across the street.

Over in Europe, migrants continued to enter the continent by crossing the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.  This led to a conflict between the European Union and the countries of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, which have refused to admit them.  The Prime Ministers of Poland and Hungary had no reluctance to point out their reasons.

In Europe and America, a movement calling itself Antifa, for "anti-fascist", showed itself to be the true fascists, such as by shutting down at least one speech by someone they with whom they disagree.  On the other side of the aisle was the "alt-right" movement, which tangled with Antifa when they tried to hold a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Numerous NFL players, starting with Colin Kaepernick, decided to kneel for the National Anthem instead of standing, as their way of protesting police brutality and other alleged injustices.  As a result, NFL attendance and TV ratings appear to have gone down.

The above stories, of course, are just the ones that I can recall off the top of my head.  There are obviously many other things that are worth remembering.  In my own life, I've been able to travel to the Netherlands and Belgium, the latter including some places I first saw in 2005.  Back here in the United States, I was able to travel westward to Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, whose mayor has four legs and a wagging tail, and southward to Philadelphia, Tennessee, to see the solar eclipse which ran from coast to coast.  It literally might be the most awesome thing I have ever seen.

I'd love to see 2018 be less interesting than 2017, but I've learned not to expect it.  I'm sure that the upcoming year will see some of the above trends continue, and will produce other stories that I can't yet anticipate.  To all reading this, see you next year.

Deputies Shot In Colorado, And Other News

Before I make a post recalling some of the significant events of 2017, I must first relay some of today's events in the news.  To start, earlier today in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, a man shot five police deputies who were responding to a domestic disturbance, one fatally.  The gunman also shot two civilians and is reported to be have been shot dead.  One of the wounded deputies is the son of the Boulder County sheriff.

Read more at The Denver Post, 9News, KDVR and CBS Denver.  The TDP link comes via HotAir.

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In other stories:

From Chron, police arrest a man staying at the Hyatt Regency in Houston and find a stash of weapons and ammo in his room.

From The Daily Caller, Oregonians just can't get used to the idea of self-service at gas stations.

From The Washington Times, the best-selling movie of 2017 is......(click to find out).

From Reuters, one third fewer migrants arrived in Italy by sea in 2017 than in 2016.

From Voice Of Europe, 2017 was the year when Europe lost its freedom of the press.

From The Sun, in the U.K., New Year's Eve party-goers will be protected by SAS snipers.  (via Breitbart London)

From Focus Information Agency, Turkey detains 20 suspected ISIS members.

From Flanders News, unlike in Ostend and Bruges, fireworks in Brussels will go on as planned.

From Russia Today, Germany paid 230 million Euros to provide jobs for Syrian refugees stranded in Middle Eastern countries.

From the NL Times, a Maltese man is arrested after making a false bomb threat targeting a train.

From Deutsche Welle, 2017 ends with German Chancellor Merkel still not having formed a governing coalition.

From Sputnik International, the head of the German Bundestag rejects the creation of a "United States of Europe".

From the Sunday Express, President Putin sends President Trump a telegram.

From Defend Europa, Antifa (again) shows us their true fascist nature.

From Khaama Press,  in eastern Afghanistan, Taliban terrorists execute a lecturer and a student.

From The Asian Age, Muslim Indian women will be allowed to go on the Hajj without a male guardian.

From New York Magazine, what's going on in Iran?  (The fact that they actually noticed something going on is a good sign, I would think.)

From Free Malaysia Today, a video made by an ISIS terrorist from Singapore "jolts" his home country and taunts Prince Harry.

From National Review, some New Year's resolutions.

From Politico, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) blames former President Obama for the troubles in Iran.  (via Townhall)

From the Mirror, fans of the Arsenal don't like their uniforms.

And from the Page Six, the "stars we lost in 2017".

Stories For A Slightly Snowy Saturday

We got a small dusting of snow this morning in Maryland.  It was so powdery that I could use a broom instead of a shovel to clear my section of the sidewalk.  So as the New Year gets closer, here are some things going on:

From the New York Post, if you're going to Times Square, it's best not to drink.

From the Evening Standard, 12 ways to celebrate New Year's Day around the world.

From LifeNews, 13 pro-abortion celebrities to boycott.

From Russia Today, in Sweden, Jesus gets a new pronoun.

From Voice Of Europe, left-wing Austrians call their new government "heirs of Nazism", and a record number of car fires have occurred in the Netherlands in 2017.

From Reuters, Greece seeks to cancel asylum given to a Turkish soldier.

From UAWire, the Polish government says that only Poland decides whether to accept refugees.  (via Voice Of Europe)

From the Express, British police search for terror suspects in Sheffield.

From Total Croatia News, a migrant entering Croatia hiding on the underside of a bus is returned to Serbia.  (Sounds like he literally threw himself under a bus.  If you read Croatian, read the original story at Večernji List, the title of which translates to "evening letter", if an educated guess from my knowledge of the related Polish language is correct.)

From New Europe, Turkey claims that E.U. funds for Syrian refugees are not all being used correctly.

From Sputnik International, GDP and wages have grown in the U.K. "despite" worries about Brexit.  (Or maybe the Brexit itself, or at least the anticipation thereof, helped a little.)

From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Bosnia charges 29 people with war crimes.

From The Japan Times, ISIS claims responsibility for the supermarket bombing in St. Petersburg.

From News(dot)com(dot)au, a man has died from injuries sustained in the car-ramming terror attack in Melbourne, Australia, becoming its first fatality.

From India TV, in India, 51 girls have been rescued from a madrasa where they allegedly were sexually abused.

From the Luxora Leader, an Egyptian-born Muslim woman spews hate for Coptic Christians - from her home in New Jersey.

From The Straits Times, a Malaysian Muslim party leaders says that only Muslims may join the Malaysian cabinet or make policy.

From American Thinker, "how to fight terrorism the Russian way".

From Townhall, anti-government protests, including hijab removal, sweep Iran.  (Two stories I found yesterday noted some of the protests.  This story could be considered a follow-up.)

From The Times Of Israel, three protesters in Iran have reportedly been shot dead.

From The Guardian, it's been the biggest unrest in Iran since 2009.  (The last two links come via BizPac Review, who note the U.S. media's general reluctance to report about these events.)

From Al Arabiya, in response to the protests, Iran cuts off Internet access in some cities.

From Autosport, Dale Jr. find retirement "weird".

And from Fox News, as Vice President Pence finds out, "MAGA" gets a new definition.

Links For The Year's Last Friday

It's the last Friday of the year, and even though the span between Christmas and New Year's might seem quiet, things still keep going on.

From The Telegraph, South Korea seizes a Hong Kong tanker after it delivers refined petroleum to a North Korean vessel.  (via The Blacksphere)

From Russia Today, an American-born investor is sentenced to nine years by a Moscow court, after being tried in absentia.

From BBC News, gunmen kill at least nine Coptic Christians in Cairo.  (via The Daily Caller)

From Reuters, police disperse protesters in Iran.

From American Thinker, something has been going on in Iran, which has been ignored by the Western media.

From FrontpageMag, unfavorable Western attitudes toward Islam did not start with the Crusades.

From National Review, we're in "the age of outrage".

From Townhall, President Trump says no wall, no DACA.

From Voice Of Europe, in Berlin, women need a safe space.

From the Express, Germany has their highest inflation rate in five years.

From the Evening Standard, two people are chemically attacked in the Isle of Dogs neighborhood in London.  (A woman was hit by acid, and an "Asian" man was "assaulted with an alkaline solution".  In U.K. codespeak, "Asian" often means "Muslim".)

From The Sun, acid attacks have become so common in London that delivery drivers have mapped their locations.  (via Brietbart London)

From The Local FR, two people in France, who have no known connection to each other, have been arrested on terror conspiracy charges.

From TRT World, the number of migrants entering Spain by sea will triple in 2017 from the previous year.

From the NL Times, in the Netherlands, murders have increased by 43 percent.

From Politico, according to former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's institute, populism had not yet peaked.

From LifeNews, it's easy to buy abortion pills online.

From Fox News, the Republic of Congo releases a naturalized American citizen after holding him for a year.  (The Republic of the Congo is a former French colony, not to be confused with the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was ruled by Belgium.)

From the Deccan Chronicle, a woman claims to be threatened because of her progressive interpretation of the Koran.

From the Kaplan Herald, the Pentagon will review their counter-terrorism training in response to a demand by CAIR.

From Arutz Sheva, a member of Hamas tells Trump, "Palestine will be your graveyard."  (The last three links come via The Religion Of Peace.)

From the National Post, seven weird scientific discoveries from 2017.

From ITV, the time U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to fly with a panda.  (via the New York Post)

From the New York Post, the current cold weather has produced a strange form of ice.

And from the Financial Times, some weird ways to celebrate the New Year.

Links For A Cold Thursday

It's the last Thursday of the year, and it's really cold out there.  Naturally, the cold will be blamed on man-made global warming, if such blame has not already been assigned.  So as I do my best to stay warm, here are some things going on:

From The Washington Times, immigration into the United States in 2016 may have matched the record set in 1999.  (If we Americans are xenophobes, we are the weakest, most ineffective xenophobes in the history of the world.)

From Philly(dot)com, the stories we missed while talking about President Trump.

From Sputnik International, South Korea drills to defend islands disputed with Japan.

From Fox News, Mexican smugglers go after an endangered fish.

From Fox News Insider, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) pardons 18 illegal aliens.  (via The Daily Caller)

From LiveScience, a new type of reactor "could revolutionize fusion energy".

From About Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán says that Hungarians have the right to see themselves as a Christian nation.

From the Express, a Finnish MP says that some E.U. politicians see Brexit as a "mortal sin", while Britain's business growth has been the best since 2015.

From Russia Today, a U.K. tribunal blocks the release of files on Julian Assange.

From EuroNews, more than 370 migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean since Christmas.

From The Local IT, Italy sends troops to Niger to stem the flow of migrants.

From France24, Turkish President Erdoğan offers an olive branch to Germany and the E.U.

From Voice Of Europe, a Somali refugee family are given an expensive British council house.

From the Washington Examiner, Judge Roy Moore still has not accepted his loss.

From CNN, a circuit judge in Alabama denies Moore's voter fraud complaint.

From PopZette, after putting out a video on Hillary Clinton, Vanity Fair "bows" to the left wing mob.

From Townhall, how Donald Trump lives in his enemies' heads.

From The Star, a Malaysian imam is criticized for saying that girls should be married at age 15.

From Tolo News, 41 people are killed in a suicide bombing at a cultural center in Kabul, Afghanistan.

From Dawn, misuse of blasphemy laws in Pakistan.

From The Northern Echo, a Muslim man in England is beaten after saying "Merry Christmas".

From Quadrant, likening current migrants to the Holy Family is nonsense.

From the Tampa Bay Times, weird news out of Florida.

And from Variety, the musicians we lost in 2017.

Western Wall RR Station, Explosion In St. Petersburg, And Other Things

Although I regard this development as good news, I still feel like stealing a line from Nancy Pelosi and asking, "Are you serious?"  The Israeli transportation minister as announced plans for a new railroad station close to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.  (To any readers on the left, please be sure to sit down, because you're not going to like this.)  The station will be named after none other than the current American president, Donald Trump.

Read the story at The Jerusalem Post and NOQ Report.
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In St. Petersburg, Russia, a bomb exploded inside a supermarket storage room, reportedly injuring 10 people.

Read more at the Mirror, Sputnik International and Russia Today.  (The Mirror story comes via The Blaze.)
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Some other things going on include:

From ZeroHedge, a new Trump EO targets people including "Clinton-linked" individuals.

From Shy Society, according to residents of Bradford, England multiculturalism has failed.

From Gatestone Institute, Palestinians are victims of apartheid - by other Arabs.

From Hungary Journal, the Hungarian government is aiding in the reconstruction of 5,500 churches and related buildings in the Carpathian Basin.  (The story comes via Voice Of Europe.  As a descendant of people, mainly Slovaks, who lived in the Carpathian Basin, I welcome this action.  However, this is only possible because Hungary does not have American-style separation of church and state.)

From Voice Of Europe, the Muslim mayor of the second largest city in the Netherlands claims to be a Salafist.

From The Local DE, one out of two Germans wants Chancellor Merkle to step down.

From Russia Today, U.K. Prime Minister May might not remain in office until next Christmas.

From Breitbart London, new Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Morawiecki lays out his policies.

From Sputnik International, in Sweden, a building being converted into a refugee asylum is torched for the third time.

From Deutsche Welle, the E.U. allocates 6 billion Euros to help refugees in Turkey.

From the Evening Standard, over half of British children are "exposed to illegal levels of air pollution".

And from The Times Of Israel, workers and volunteers in Tel Aviv have built a 118-foot-tall tower of Lego blocks.  (via Fox News)