Most of the stories I was following this week have fizzled in one way or another.
Like the 64-year-old Houston woman who blocked traffic on I-45 for five hours last Thursday. After intentionally crashing her vehicle into a semi (apparently not badly enough to get injured), she pulled out a lawn chair and a gun and ‘sat herself down’ in the middle of the highway. But it turned out that she was known to be mentally ill, and that she was primarily threatening to kill herself. She was talked into surrendering and won’t be facing any charges (even her identity is being shielded). 😝
Then there’s the 20-year-old guy who killed two firefighters and injured a third on Sunday—after luring them in range by setting a forest fire near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho—before apparently killing himself. Aside from his name (Wess Roley), very little information in the case seems trustworthy. Not only have all manner of wild allegations about him been made on TwiX, many of the images of him look computer-generated, and Grok (the TwiX AI) appears to have hallucinated a non-existent criminal history. The only things known for sure at this point are that his parents were divorced when he was 10, that his grandfather says he always wanted to be a firefighter, and that a former roommate said had started to “go downhill” about six months ago. I feel like I simply can’t trust enough of what’s being said to write a full story on this incident. 🤔
As it turns out, a lot of stories this week were follow-ups to earlier news items. I’ll get to those at the end. But here’s my three features:
Ancient Egyptian DNA surprise
The bones of a middle-aged man who died in the Nile Valley sometime in the early Old Kingdom period or even before have revealed interesting information: at least some of his ancestors were from Mesopotamia.
The bones were actually discovered in 1902, inside a ceramic jar in a hillside tomb about 150 miles south of Cairo, at the Nuwayrat archeological site. They have been stored at the World Museum in Liverpool ever since. But this burial took place before mummification became common, which made the extraction of useful DNA feasible.
Even before the DNA results came back, the bones revealed fascinating things. The man—as shown by wear patterns on his bones—was very likely a potter. His neck bones show he spent most of his time looking down, and his seat bones show he spent most of his time sitting. But his arm bones show evidence of heavy back-and-forth muscle use.
However, an ordinary potter wouldn’t likely merit the kind of hillside tomb burial he got. His right foot shows another possible clue: severe arthritis. The use of the potter’s wheel—with a flywheel that was kicked to turn it—was just beginning in Egypt during this period. He may have been a craftsman using a new technology to create a better product, thereby earning a higher status.
Some believe that the potter’s wheel was invented in Sumeria. Only about 20 percent of the man’s DNA shows markers for a Mesopotamian origin, and the minerals in his teeth suggest that he grew up in Egypt. Could it be possible that an ancestor from that region came to Egypt to ply a valued new skill, intermarrying with locals?
Uber scuffle in Georgia
Two women are telling different stories about what happened when they argued about the air-conditioning in the Uber vehicle that one of them was driving.
Maricole Smith, the driver, alleges that her passenger—sports reporter Tabitha Turner—began yelling about the air-conditioning as soon as she got into the vehicle at the Atlanta airport. Finally, as they were going down I-85, Smith got fed up. She claims that she offered to take Turner back to the airport, but “that was not good enough for her.” So Smith pulled off in the emergency lane, and demanded that Turner exit the car. Smith claims that she only pepper-sprayed Turner because she thought the other woman was reaching “in her bag to get a weapon.”
Turner, on the other hand, says that she specifically requested “an Uber Comfort” (which allows passengers to make specific requests about the environment of the vehicle) and wanted “a cool Uber” because of hot temps in Atlanta. She alleges that when she got in, the A/C was not on and the windows were down, and that although Smith turned on the A/C after being asked to do so, she refused to roll up the windows. (Smith alleged both that she keeps the windows down because of passengers who get sick and that the windows were only open a crack.) Finally, she tried to make Turner get out of the vehicle on the highway, pepper-spraying her after first attempting unsuccessfully to pull her out of the vehicle.
Soon the two ended up fighting outside the vehicle: some of Turner’s hair was pulled out and her left arm was reportedly injured. Smith’s face was scratched; she claims to have needed stitches, as well as sustaining bruises. Although police did not arrest Smith at the scene, they later issued a warrant after deciding, based on video footage from Turner’s phone, that Smith had been the aggressor. Uber says it has removed Smith from their platform.
But the story doesn’t end there. Smith went on TikTok to tell her side of the story, and the video went viral, getting over 2 million views. Now Turner says that she is receiving threats. She plans to pursue legal action.
Karma bites WaPo video editor
Back in 2018, Thomas Pham LeGro (age 48) “was part of a team of reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore’s sexual misconduct allegations involving underage girls.” But last Thursday, LeGro was arrested by the FBI for possession of child pornography.
When a search warrant was executed at his home, agents discovered that his work laptop had “11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material.” Additionally, they found shattered pieces of what appeared to be a hard drive. Apparently LeGro was linked to an account that was connected to child porn purchasing as long ago as 2005, but the FBI only got approval to track his internet usage in May.
LeGro has worked for The Washington Post for 18 years, and currently holds the position of deputy director of video. But a spokesperson for the paper said that LeGro has been “placed on leave.”
Updates
Fertility clinic bombing
Daniel Park (age 32) was arrested last month (he actually had to be extradited from Poland, where he had fled) for supplying the ammonium nitrate for the car bomb used to blow up the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California in May. Park was found dead of “blunt force trauma” in his cell last week, although the cause was ruled as “suicide.”
NOLA escapee captured
Antoine Massey (age 33) escaped with nine other men from the Orleans Parish Jail in New Orleans back in May, but he was captured last Friday in “a New Orleans home.” Only one of the escapees, Derrick Groves (age 27), is still at large.
Guilty plea from Idaho college murderer
Bryan Kohberger, who was charged over two years ago with the 2022 stabbing murders of four University of Idaho students, has pleaded guilty to the murders in exchange for being sentenced to life in jail with no possibility of parole. His trial was due to begin in August; he had been facing the death penalty if convicted.
Victim of Boulder terror attack dies
Karen Diamond (age 82) has died from the injuries she sustained a month ago when an illegal immigrant from Egypt threw Molotov cocktails at a group of people protesting for the release of the hostage held by Hamas since October 7, 2023. Diamond was a member of the Bonai Shalom congregation in Boulder, Colorado.
Super Bowl protester finally arrested
Remember the dancer who pulled out a Palestinian flag during the Super Bowl half-time show? Zul-Qarnain Kwame Nantambu (age 41) was finally arrested for the February incident last week on charges of “resisting an officer and disturbing the peace by interruption of a lawful assembly.” But the story gets weirder: it turns out Nantambu is also the same man that former Tampa Bay wide receiver Antonio Brown (age 33) shot at back in May at a boxing event in Miami. Brown—who accuses Nantambu of stealing from him and attacking him in the past—is now charged with attempted murder. Their conflict appears to go back even further, to an incident in Dubai in 2022, where Brown is alleged to have kept jewelry designed by Nantambu that he had only been temporarily loaned, then attempted to have Nantambu arrested for theft.
Got news?
Weird indeed. The LeGro case plays into where my own thoughts have been recently--the prevalence of sexual abuse and misconduct seemingly endemic to our modern world. Last nite I listened to a recent interview with Catherine Perez Shakdam, the Mossad spy who infiltrated the highest ranks of the Iranian government. She talked about the sexual assault tactics the Iranian regime uses to maintain control over people. She said the Iranian psychologists found that the threat of rape for women is more effective as a means of control than the actual act itself, whereas with men, threatening rape isn't an effective control but actually raping them and then threatening to rape their whole family is effective. All I could think was- what kind of sickness does it take to create a government agency to study and implement this kind of horror? But of course sexual abuse seems to be happening everywhere now with LeGro as only the latest of many.
Thanks for this rundown. The world can be a weird place.
The MS-13 gang leader found guilty of the murders of two young high school girls and six others on Long Island in 2016 has been sentenced to 68 years without parole. It's reported that he has an IQ of 72, and that he's very, very sorry indeed for what he did.
It's really too bad about his IQ, but intellectual incompetence or emotional disability is no excuse for taking a machete to people.