Category: Breaking News

GMA reports that the 44-man crew of the Argentine submarine, ARA San Juan, is feared to be lost.

The news came as Argentine naval officials said that a sound detected during the desperate search for the sub, which vanished last week in the southern Atlantic Ocean, was consistent with an explosion.

The vessel was last heard from Nov. 15, and officials feared that it would run out of oxygen soon.

According to the Argentine navy officials, the sound, described as “consistent with a nonnuclear explosion” that was “abnormal, singular, short, violent” was detected three hours after the last known communication.

The sound, which originated about 270 miles east of the Gulf of San Jorge in the southern part of the country, was picked up by U.S. sensors and international agencies that are capable of detecting nuclear explosions.

From the Associated Press;

Argentina’s navy says it’s too early to say what might have produced the sound detected by U.S. and international monitors. They describe it as “short” and “violent.”

But some experts say there’s a fearsome possibility.

The search location straddles the edge of the continental shelf and depths reach about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters).

Retired Navy Capt. James H. Patton Jr. says that if a submarine went too deep, “it would just collapse.”

He says “It would sound like a very, very big explosion to any listening device.”

At around 11:30, a gunman started shooting up a crowd of folks as they left their Sunday worship at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Numbers vary by news reports, but it look like more than 20 were killed and about the same number were injured. The gunman was killed after a brief pursuit by the police. News also varies on whether police killed him or he shot himself.

The Daily Beast identifies the gunman as Devin Patrick Kelley, but who knows.

The pastor’s 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle Renee Pomeroy, is among the dead.

I know who the shooter isn’t, though. It isn’t Samir Al-Hajeed like this article claims;

If you google the name Samir Al-Hajeed, you’ll discover that he’s been blamed early and often in the reportage for every mass shooting of the last few months, including the Las Vegas shooting. Poor guy.

But making him a recent Muslim convert and a former Marine makes it easy to understand for the journos, I guess.

Beware of fake news.

The Hill reports that Republican Senator Rand Paul was assaulted at his Bowling Green, Kentucky home yesterday by his neighbor, 59-year-old Rene Boucher;

“Senator Paul was blindsided and the victim of an assault,” Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for Paul, said in a statement. “The assailant was arrested and it is now a matter for the police. Senator Paul is fine.”

Fox News reports that Boucher is a registered Democrat and that some posts on his Facebook page were of the anti-Trump variety.

A…neighbor told local news station WNKY said that the Senator was mowing his lawn around 3 p.m. on Friday when Boucher assaulted him. The neighbor also confirmed that the two share a corner adjacent to their homes and have been embroiled in an ongoing feud.

I’m not a Rand Paul fan because of his support for IVAW’s Adam Kokesh when Kokesh was running for Congress in New Mexico, but that doesn’t mean that Paul deserves to be assaulted by anyone.

According to the AZCentral, President Trump has pardoned former Sheriff Joe Arpaio from the charges that he had racially-profiled criminals in Arizona;

The White House announced the pardon Friday evening in a news release that recounted Arpaio’s lengthy career of “admirable service” in federal and local law enforcement and called him “a worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon.”

Reached moments after the announcement, Arpaio said he had not spoken to
Trump, but “I’m very appreciative of the president issuing that pardon. It shows how he backs up law enforcement.”

Arpaio told The Arizona Republic he learned of the president’s action from his lawyer, who visited him Friday at about 4 p.m. at Arpaio’s Fountain Hills home.

I am pleased to inform you that I have just granted a full Pardon to 85 year old American patriot Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He kept Arizona safe!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 26, 2017

From the New York Times;

The criminal conviction grew out of a lawsuit filed a decade ago charging that the sheriff’s office regularly violated the rights of Latinos, stopping people based on racial profiling, detaining them based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally and turning them over to the immigration authorities.

A federal district judge hearing the case ordered Mr. Arpaio in 2011 to stop detaining people based solely on suspicion of their immigration status, when there was no evidence that a state law had been broken. But the sheriff insisted that his tactics were legal and that he would continue employing them.

I’m sure this won’t endear the President to his political opponents because it was the last administration that hounded Arpaio. It’s just Trump being the anti-Obama.

The UK’s Sun is reporting that London Bridge has been closed because a van plowed into a large crowd;

Armed police are at the scene while people have been seen fleeing the central London landmark near Borough Market.

Eye witnesses confirm that several people are lying on the ground and are receiving CPR after being stabbed.

There are have also been reports of gun shots being fired.

A Sun journalist at the scene tweeted that he saw one man being led away by police in cuffs.

The Guardian says that police are releasing no details.

BBC calls it a “major incident” and confirms that a van mowed down pedestrians

BBC reporter Holly Jones, who was on the bridge at the time of the incident, said the van was driven by a man and was “probably travelling at about 50 miles an hour”.

About five people were being treated for injuries after the vehicle mounted the pavement and hit them, she said.

From Fox News;

As many as three different incidents, one described as terror-related, were unfolding in London late Saturday, including a van crashing into a crowd at London Bridge and a series of stabbings reported at nearby Borough Market.

Police also urged people to stay away from the Vauxhall area — more than a mile away — as they looked into another “incident,” without elaborating. Gunfire erupted at the bridge, though witnesses said it could have come from police.

“Anti-facist” demonstrators in Paris threw bottles, set off firecrackers and burned cars as they discovered that centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen seem to be the two contenders in the May 7th presidential election, according to Fox News;

“We have come here to protest against the pantomime of this election,” a protester told AFP.

After the results came in, protesters who gathered at the square waved red flags and sang “No Marine and No Macron!” among other chants, The Telegraph reported. Nearby, about 300 peaceful demonstrators gathered at Place de la Republique to condemn the election results. Several danced around bonfires.

The current French President socialist Francois Hollande has urged his constituents to vote for Macron, so has a senior French Muslim leader.

Le Pen has taken advantage of recent terrorist attacks in France to build her following.

The media seems to like Macron, though. Even though his personal life is a bit odd, according to Yahoo News;

His wife, Brigitte Trogneux, is a stylish woman, with blond hair and a warm smile. She also happens to be 24 years Macron’s senior. They met when he was a high school student and she was his teacher.

Then known as Brigitte Auziere, she was married with three children and teaching French literature and drama when she encountered Macron, then just 15 years old. They bonded writing a play together, but when Macron told his parents of his interest, they sent him away to school in Paris. The two kept up a correspondence, and by the time Macron was 18, Trogneux had divorced her husband and moved to Paris to be with him. They were married in 2007.

“Nobody will ever know at what moment our story became a love story. That belongs to us. That is our secret,” Trogneux said of the origin of their relationship.

In other words, they boinked while he was underage.

Other than using a cheeky nickname for Macron, “chouchou,” or teacher’s pet, the French press seems to treat Macron and Trogneux as a couple more closely resembling John and Jacqueline Kennedy in Camelot than Vili Fualaau and Mary Kay Letourneau.

Imagine that – the media looking the other way for a liberal (small “l”) candidate.

Yeah, if the roles were reversed, the male would be a giant perv – you know like the guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Thomas, recently. But, see the French are more sophisticated than us colonials.