Intruder shot multiple times, gravely wounded in predawn home invasion

An intruder was shot multiple times during a predawn home invasion Monday in Elmore County.

The ordeal began just before 5 a.m. in the 200 block of Clemons Road in the Flatwood community. Sheriff Bill Franklin said the scene is a residential area that consists of about a dozen or so mobile homes.

A man, who along with his wife and young child, were awakened at 4:55 a.m. by a loud banging at the front door. The homeowner grabbed his 9 mm handgun and went to investigate.

When he got to the front door, he came face to face with 39-year-old Charles Bowne, who lives nearby. At that point, the sheriff said, Bowne told the homeowner, “Give me your (expletive).”

Bowne then reached toward his pocket and the homeowner said he feared the intruder was going for a gun. The homeowner fired four to five rounds, shooting Bowne in the head, bicep, shoulder and left leg, and then called 911.

Try for the torso next time, dude…T-O-R-S-O.
Somewhere in right in the middle, between the Collar bone to Belly button.

Bowne was airlifted to a Montgomery hospital where he is in critical condition. The sheriff said a crack pipe was retrieved from Bowne’s sock.

Franklin said Bowne spent time in prison in Indiana and has previously had at least one other confrontation with another neighbor. He said he does not expect any charges to be filed against the homeowner.

“We don’t have that many home invasions in Elmore County,’’ the sheriff said. “It’s not every morning you wake up at 4:55 a.m. to somebody inside your front door. That’s pretty rough.”

Locusts Could be the Next Plague to Hit China

HONG KONG—Swarms of desert locusts have devastated crops in East Africa, hit the Middle East and moved into South Asia. They’re breeding fast thanks to changes in global climate patterns that have brought about major cyclones and heavy rains, and they are feeding off human food supplies across continents.

So far, India has managed to prevent a swarm of biblical proportions from spilling over into Bangladesh, Burma, and then China—where the coronavirus has already paralyzed much of the country’s activity. But it’s not clear how long that line will hold.

Eastern Africa has been hit the hardest by the xanthic bugs, with fields in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia ravaged by 360 billion locusts. Swarms can be city-sized, and one of the largest—located in Kenya—covers about 37 miles by 25 miles. It is so dense that it turns daylight to darkness for anyone caught within.

Alarmist headlines are proliferating, too, many of them drawing parallels with the plagues in scripture. “Bible coming to life?” asked the Jerusalem Post. The swarms appear in the Old Testament, most notably in Exodus as one of the plagues Moses calls down on Egypt, which also is referenced in the Quran. In the New Testament locusts are associated with Revelation 9:3, where they emerge in ferocious swarms that also have the sting of scorpions.

Allusions to the Apocalypse aside, the real life potential for disaster is huge…..

For now, the Himalayan range is acting as a natural barrier for China, insulating its southwestern border from the scourge that is in Pakistan. But the locusts could bank into Southeast Asia, flowing through Bangladesh and up into Burma, landing in China’s Yunnan province, hitting a country that is already locked down because of the coronavirus’ rapid spread.

As fears rise, the state-run media outlet Global Times has been offering ludicrous consolation to the public, claiming that the desert locusts are “eaten by ducks, fried for food,” and “not a threat to China.” And the international arm of state-run CCTV even released a bizarre video of “duck troops” amassing at the border. But the species of locust that is on the country’s doorstep emits phenylacetonitrile, a foul-smelling secretion that is meant to deter predators. Birds typically do not seek them out as a food source.

Spokespersons for China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs claim that there is a “very low risk” of locust plagues hitting China, but a researcher at the Beijing-headquartered Institute of Plant Protection of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences suggests more caution.

The agriculture expert, Zhang Zehua, said that Yunnan province (which borders Burma), Guangxi (an autonomous region east of Yunnan), and Sichuan province (north of Yunnan) could be affected in June or July if the plagues are not brought under control in neighboring countries.

Zhang may be right, at least according to India’s Ministry of Agriculture, which issued a notice saying that it expects 200,000 square kilometers (77,200 square miles) of farmland to be blanketed by locusts in June during the onset of monsoon season—when conditions are perfect for ravenous insects to breed.

For now, whether the summer may bring another catastrophe to China depends chiefly on Delhi and Karachi’s efforts to exterminate a storm of insects in a race against the seasons.

Give Me Liberty: A History of America’s Exceptional Idea

Nationalism is inevitable: It supplies feelings of belonging, identity, and recognition. It binds us to our neighbors and tells us who we are. But increasingly — from the United States to India, from Russia to Burma — nationalism is being invoked for unworthy ends: to disdain minorities or to support despots. As a result, nationalism has become to many a dirty word.
In Give Me Liberty, award-winning historian and biographer Richard Brookhiser offers up a truer and more inspiring story of American nationalism as it has evolved over four hundred years. He examines America’s history through thirteen documents that made the United States a new country in a new world: a free country. We are what we are because of them; we stay true to what we are by staying true to them.
Americans have always sought liberty, asked for it, fought for it; every victory has been the fulfillment of old hopes and promises. This is our nationalism, and we should be proud of it.

 

The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free

It is one of our most honored clichés that America is an idea and not a nation. This is false. America is indisputably a nation, and one that desperately needs to protect its interests, its borders, and its identity.

The Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump swept nationalism to the forefront of the political debate. This is a good thing. Nationalism is usually assumed to be a dirty word, but it is a foundation of democratic self-government and of international peace.

National Review editor Rich Lowry refutes critics on left and the right, reclaiming the term “nationalism” from those who equate it with racism, militarism and fascism. He explains how nationalism is an American tradition, a thread that runs through such diverse leaders as Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan.

In The Case for Nationalism, Lowry explains how nationalism was central to the American Project. It fueled the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution. It preserved the country during the Civil War. It led to the expansion of the American nation’s territory and power, and eventually to our invaluable contribution to creating an international system of self-governing nations.

It’s time to recover a healthy American nationalism, and especially a cultural nationalism that insists on the assimilation of immigrants and that protects our history, civic rituals and traditions, which are under constant threat. At a time in which our nation is plagued by self-doubt and self-criticism, The Case for Nationalism offers a path for America to regain its national self-confidence and achieve continued greatness.

Why Democratic presidential candidates’ obsession with banning guns is not the answer

With less than a month to go until voting is held in Super Tuesday primaries, Democratic presidential candidates may want to consider how their positions on gun control will affect their chances at the ballot, particularly in Virginia. At a minimum, they can expect a grilling on the topic during any campaigning in the Commonwealth.

The evidence from the peaceful, non-partisan Second Amendment protest in Richmond strongly suggests that voters there are passionate, vocal and well-informed on the issue. And you can bet the national audience will be listening intently as they answer difficult questions not much raised elsewhere so far in their campaigns for president.

For example: What are these politicians trying to achieve with their gun control legislation? Perhaps it is to stop mass shootings (certainly a worthy goal), but 9 out of 10 mass shootings take place in “gun free” zones. Perhaps it is to reduce crime, but Virginia already has the fourth lowest violent crime rate in the nation — some 40 percent below the national average — so additional firearms restrictions seem unlikely to be of benefit.

In fact the only safer states are Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire — all of which have gun laws as lenient or more so than Virginia at the moment, while neighboring D.C., Maryland, North Carolina and Tennessee all have higher violent crime rates. And Virginia’s violent crime and murder rates have fallen consistently over the last 20 years, while at the same time the population has grown by 10 percent and gun ownership by almost 50 percent. This would strongly suggest that tighter gun control brings no benefits but plenty of problems, and there is much additional data to suggest this holds true across the nation.

One of the avenues the candidates are all pursuing is to ban certain types of gun, which they have labelled as Assault Weapons. This despite the fact that the federal Assault Weapons ban of 1994-2004 showed no benefits and, on a thorough examination of the data, may even have increased the criminal use of such weapons. Any such policies would not affect automatic weapons, which are very tightly controlled at federal level. Instead they seem to be centered on AR-15 style rifles, despite the fact that rifles tend to be used in less than 5 percent of all criminal shootings, and would do nothing to limit criminal access to the handguns which feature in over 95 percent of shootings.

And a ban, which would affect around 1,000,000 Virginians and over 45,000,000 Americans by requiring surrender, confiscation and/or registration, is not limited to AR-15 style weapons (and one must wonder if they choose the features of such weapons because they incorrectly believe that AR stands for either Assault Rifle or perhaps Army Rifle instead of the Armalite Rifle company who originally designed it specifically for hunting) but any rifle with any single one of a number of similar features. Such a ban would therefore affect vastly more than just AR-15 style rifles.

In the wake of horrifying mass shootings such as the Virginia Beach and Virginia Tech shootings such a ban might seem reasonable to many, but in addition to the points made above, it would also fail to address additional substantial legal problems. For example the Supreme Court has ruled on more than one occasion that Second Amendment protections extend to weapons “in common use for lawful purposes.” With the sheer quantity of AR-15 style firearms involved, this most popular of rifle styles can certainly be considered to be “in common use for lawful purposes.” So what is the point in proposing policies which may be neither constitutionally permissible nor enforceable?

Such facts might lead town hall participants to ask Democratic presidential candidates how many law-abiding citizens they are prepared to criminalize and demean in their pursuit of gun control? Do they seriously intend to make felons of millions of residents of the Republic? How many casualties are they prepared to inflict on ordinary folks (and law enforcement) who would see themselves as standing up for their constitutional rights and might forcibly resist any attempts at confiscation? How many criminals (or criminally insane) would such legislation deter? And, perhaps most importantly, what benefit would actually derive from a ban on assault firearms?

It might be that what these politicians truly fear themselves is encapsulated in these questions. It may be symptomatic that Gov. Northam’s declaration of a state of emergency to ban guns around the Virginia Capitol on Lobby Day the other week (thus statistically increasing the risks to the crowds and despite much historical evidence of peaceful gun lobbying to the contrary) was because of his own fear of guns in the hands of angry citizens who might refuse to submit to his agenda. It could be that what politicians who advocate gun control truly fear is not violent crime or mass shootings but a future well-armed rejection of their own legislative over-reach.

The ISIS Plot in Kansas City You Heard Nothing About

A few years ago, Robert Lorenzo Hester, Jr. of Columbia, Missouri met “several young men who suggested that Islam was a religion that valued men like him.” That was when his troubles began: prosecutors announced Wednesday that they want Hester to serve twenty years in prison and be under supervision for the rest of his life for plotted a jihad massacre in Kansas City. His case shows yet again how politically correct willful ignorance regarding the motivating ideology and magnitude of the jihad threat renders us all vulnerable.

True to form, federal prosecutors are already busily ignoring the possibility that Hester was inspired to try to kill non-Muslims by Qur’anic exhortations such as “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89; cf. 9:5). According to the Columbia Tribune, they claim that “mental health issues combined with a mockery of his race and intellect by fellow soldiers led him to extremists ideologies.” Federal public defender Troy Stabenow also notes that Hester suffered from an “abusive childhood” and engaged in “drug use at an early age.” He “wanted to feel accepted and do something to make others proud, so he joined the Armed Forces,” but he didn’t stick.

Man tried to rob another man at knifepoint in Allouez, but the would-be victim had a gun

and the crim, not liking the odds, suddenly decided to be elsewhere.

ALLOUEZ (Wisconsin)– Police are looking for a man they say tried to rob another man at knifepoint while he was plowing snow on Saturday.

According to the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, a man was plowing snow around noon in the 2100 block of Webster Avenue when another man came up to him and asked him for money. When the victim said he wouldn’t give the man money, the man pulled out an 8-inch kitchen knife and demanded money. The victim then pulled out a gun and the suspect ran north.

The victim, who has a legal concealed carry permit, then called 911, according to the sheriff’s office. Deputies attempted to track the man using a  police dog but could not find him.

Police say the suspect is a clean-shaven black man between 35 and 40 years old. He was wearing a Chicago Bears winter hat, a black hoodie, blue jeans and tan work boots that looked new.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Situation Report – 34

• No new countries reported cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.

SITUATION IN NUMBERS
total and new cases in last 24 hours
Globally
78 811 confirmed (1017 new)
China
77 042 confirmed (650 new)
2445 deaths (97 new)
Outside of China
1769 confirmed (367 new)
28 countries
17 deaths (6 new)

Pandemic Seems Likely as Coronavirus Outbreaks Worsen in Several Countries.

On Friday, the head of the World Health Organization offered a stark warning about the chances of containing the global spread of the novel coronavirus amid ominous new outbreaks of the disease outside of China. “The window of opportunity is still there, but our window of opportunity is narrowing,” explained WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. By Sunday, it seemed clear that window may have already closed.

Authorities are now struggling to contain — and understand — escalating outbreaks in three countries, South Korea, Iran, and Italy, while additional countries, like Lebanon and Israel, have recently reported their first cases as well.

 

February 23, 1945 Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima island, Tokyo Prefecture.
Yes, Iwo Jima is part of the Tokyo metropolitan area, which is as good an explanation as any as to why the battle was so hard fought.

The first flag raising, which at the time, everyone was so enthusiastic about.

And the much more famous second flag raising, which was filled with controversy for years afterwards.

In any event, the carnage on that little patch of sulfurous hell on earth had just begun and many of the men you see in these pictures were killed there.

Just something to consider today.

MILESFORTIS will return.

Two Dead, 79 Infected as Italy’s Government Fights Coronavirus Outbreak

Cases of the new coronavirus in Italy, the most affected country in Europe, rose on Saturday to nearly 80, killing two people and prompting the government to close off the worst hit areas in the northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto.

Authorities in the two regions, where the outbreak is concentrated, have cancelled sports events and closed schools and universities, while companies from Ray-Ban owner Luxottica to the country’s top bank UniCredit have told workers living in the affected areas to stay home.

Iran Now Says 6th Person Dead of New Virus

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian officials Saturday reported a sixth death from the new virus that emerged in China.

The governor of Markazi province told the official IRNA news agency that tests of a patient who recently died in the central city of Arak were positive for the virus.

Ali Aghazadeh said the person was also suffering from a heart problem.

Earlier on Saturday, health authorities reported a fifth death from the coronavirus and said the fatality was among 10 new confirmed cases in Iran. It was not immediately clear whether the sixth fatality was among those 10.

Coronavirus Cases Triple in South Korea; Who Keeps Eye on Africa, Iran

The number of new coronavirus cases nearly tripled in South Korea on Saturday, the fourth consecutive day that tally has seen a major spike. Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the total number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 433 — less than 24 hours after the sum stood at 156.

As of Tuesday, the number of confirmed cases was just 31.

Many of the new patients Saturday were located in or near Daegu, South Korea’s fourth-largest city, where dozens of people linked with a Christian sect known as the Shincheonji Church of Jesus have shown symptoms of respiratory illness. The church, which has about 150,000 adherents, says it has shared with authorities the names of members who may have been exposed to the virus, and it is encouraging them to enter quarantine.

 

Slovakia Effectively Bans Islam From Country, Forbids Mosques

Another eastern european country seems to have had enough of their islamic invasion

Slovakia has adopted measures making it difficult for Islam to become one of the country’s officially recognized religions, making it the European country with the toughest laws against Islam in all of Europe.

In 2016, two-thirds of deputies, including opposition ones, voted in favor of a legislation submitted by the governmental Slovak National Party (SNS) that required religious groups in the country to have 50,000 followers to run their schools, open religious establishments or qualify for government subsidies. The law previously required only 20,000 signatures.

According to official sources, Islam, which was primarily targeted by the law, has a maximum of 5,000 followers in Slovakia.

In 2016, then Prime Minister Robert Fico said in an interview, “I’m sorry, Islam has no place in Slovakia. It is the duty of politicians to talk about these things very clearly and openly. I do not wish there were tens of thousands of Muslims.”

Based on the last census, religions with the required population threshold include the Roman Catholic Church, to which almost 70 percent of the Slovak population claim allegiance, the Protestant Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession which makes up 7 percent, the Greek Catholic Church at 4 percent, the Christian Reformed Church at 2 percent, and the Orthodox Church at 1 percent.

During the height of the migrant crisis, the Slovak interior minister at the time said, “We want to help Europe with the migration issue. We could take 800 Muslims, but we don’t have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?”

Other politicians have also been open about the fact they do not want the Muslim population to grow in Slovakia.

“Islamization begins with kebab and is already under way in Bratislava. Let’s realize what we can face in five or ten years,” said SNS Chairman Andrej Danko in 2016.

“We must do everything we can to ensure that there is no mosque in future Slovakia,” Danko added.

Until now, Slovakia is the only EU Member State where there is no official mosque. Instead, the Muslim community in the country meets in rented houses or temporary prayer rooms.

At the same time, Slovakia is not the only country to carefully choose which religion it will recognize in its territory.

In the neighboring Czech Republic, for example, the Community of Buddhism, which mainly the local Vietnamese community follows, recently applied for registration. However, the Czech Ministry of Culture did not comply with the application for the third time.

Compared to Slovakia, there are significantly fewer Catholics in the Czech Republic. According to the latest data, there are about one million Catholics in Czechia, which corresponds to about one-tenth of the population.

But there are only a few Muslims in both countries; in the Czech Republic, Muslims accounted for less than 0.1 percent of the total population.

Pew: Only Half of Americans Think Colleges Have Positive Effect on Society

I’m surprised it’s that high.

A new poll from Pew Research revealed that only half of Americans believe that colleges and universities have a positive effect on society. Now, a George Mason University professor has some theories as to why higher education has become so unpopular with Americans.

According to a column published this week by the Daily Signal, Americans have an increasingly negative attitude towards colleges and universities. The column, which was penned by George Mason University Professor Walter E. Williams, makes the case that Americans are turning on higher education.

Williams highlighted a poll by the Pew Research Center that revealed that only half of Americans believe that higher education has a positive effect on society.

It’s not perfectly clear why so many Americans distrust academia. The rising cost of attending college has become a regular concern for Americans around the country. However, Williams has some theories as to why the poll results were so unfavorable for colleges and universities.

Williams cited a study published by the National Association of Scholars that studied the political activity over 12,000 professors. The study revealed that only 22 of the professors included in the study donated to Republican candidates for office.

Langbert and Stevens conducted the new study of the political affiliation of 12,372 professors in the two leading private colleges and two leading public colleges in 31 states.

For party registration, they found a Democratic to Republican (D:R) ratio of 8.5:1, which varied by rank of institution and region.

For donations to political candidates (using the Federal Election Commission database), they found a D:R ratio of 95:1, with only 22 Republican donors, compared with 2,081 Democratic donors.

Williams cited other crises in higher education as reasons for the poll results such as universities failing to disclose millions of dollars in funding from foreign governments.

Gov. Andy Beshear signs bill requiring school resource officers to carry guns

Despite calls from civil rights groups to veto the legislation, Gov. Andy Beshear on Friday signed a bill requiring school police to carry guns.

All Kentucky schools are now required to have at least one armed police officer under state law, effective immediately.

While understanding opposition to the measure, Beshear said at a press conference Friday he could not allow officers to not have the weapons they may need in confronting a school shooting.

“I simply cannot ask a school resource officer to stop an armed gunman entering a school without them having the ability to not only achieve this mission, but also to protect themselves,” Beshear said. “We must be able to stop the worst of the worst.”

Signing Senate Bill 8 is best for the state as a whole, he continued.

Moving forward, Beshear said his administration will work on training officers to “start addressing the reason some kids might not feel safe because of a police officer.”

Beshear’s decision comes after the bill passed the Senate and House with large bipartisan margins, making a veto almost guaranteed to be overridden.

Flint Man Shot by Home Owner for Attempting to Gain Entry while Armed with a Knife

FLINT, MI – On February 11th, 2020, Flint Police responded to the area of 1000 block of Garden for a shooting. On scene, the occupants of a home reported that a man, armed with a knife, was attempting to gain entry into their house.

One of the occupants shot the man then held him until police arrived.

During the same time frame, another report was received that a man had just robbed a teacher at knife point at a nearby elementary school. The school had just dismissed students and there were no children present at the time of the reported robbery.

The description of this armed man matched that of the one who was taken into custody on Garden.

The suspect, Jacob Sword, 30-years-old, was transported to a local hospital and treated for his non- life threatening injury.

Jacob Adam Sword has been charged and arraigned in this case for Armed Robbery, Home Invasion 1st Degree & Assaulting Police.

Judge temporarily halts transfer of coronavirus patients to quarantine facility in California city.

A city in California won a battle against the state Friday, at least temporarily, when a judge halted the transfer of people diagnosed with the coronavirus to its community for a quarantine site.

Costa Mesa, California, filed a legal action after it learned federal officials planned to use its Fairview Development Center to house and quarantine several patients who tested positive for the COVID-19 virus.

The city said it was given little notice, and without input, about the plan.

“We have received no information regarding how the facility will be prepared, what precautions will be taken to protect those in the facility as well as those who live nearby, and other important planning measures,” Costa Mesa Mayor Katrina Foley said in a statement.

Judge Josephine Staton, according to the city, issued the temporary restraining order late Friday night. An expedited hearing is expected to be held Monday afternoon.

One key indicator will tell us when the coronavirus outbreak is winding down — but we’re not seeing it yet.

It has been more than seven weeks since the coronavirus outbreak started in Wuhan, China. Since then, at least 2,250 people have died and more than 76,000 have gotten sick.

The virus’ continued spread prompts an obvious question: When will this end?

A recent study from the Chinese Center for Disease Control found that illnesses in China may have peaked on February 1, when the largest number of patients started showing symptoms. That could be a sign that the outbreak is already tapering off, but the researchers also warned that it could rebound once Chinese residents return to school and work.

“The data from China continue to show a decline in new confirmed cases,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said at a press conference on Thursday. “We’re encouraged by this trend, but this is no time for complacency.”

Lauren Ancel Meyers, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, told Business Insider that one important figure can tell us when the outbreak has run its course. It’s the average number of people that a single patient is expected to infect. Epidemiologists call it the “basic reproduction number,” and it indicates how contagious a virus is.

When the outbreak is winding down, Meyers said, the basic reproduction will be below one.

“That means, on average, every person is infecting fewer than one other person and then the outbreak should burn out,” she said.

That’s not the case yet. A recent study of nearly 140 hospitalized patients in Wuhan estimated that the basic reproduction number for the coronavirus is 2.2, meaning that patients have been spreading the virus to more than two other people, on average. A study in the Journal of Travel Medicine estimated that the reproduction number was slightly higher: around 3.3.