The 2015 ISIS video showing the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians on a beach in Sirte, Libya was one of its most brutal. It featured an English-speaking spokesman who sounded American. One of the big mysteries was his identity -- and which beach the killings occurred on.

Libya police have now identified him as Abu Amer al-Jazrawi. He is deceased. (Once again, the U.S. got it wrong, as I suggested here).

The "full details" of the slaughter seem to mostly have been supplied by detainees under interrogation. One says he was located behind the camera as it was being filmed. The story is available on the group's Facebook page, in Arabic. The translation on FB is terrible. The beach is the one behind the Mahari hotel in Sirte (the same one where 50 plus Gaddafi followers were killed in 2011.)

Yesterday, prosecutor's office in Libya announced that detained ISIS members disclosed the location of the graves and details of the massacre. They were arrested the last week. Authorities went to the site and uncovered the bodies.[More...]

Trump's latest tweet about North Korea is causing a fuss:

President Donald Trump on Saturday lamented decades of "failed" foreign policy with North Korea, saying "only one thing" will work.

"Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid ... hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!," Trump wrote on Twitter.

There is a lot of media speculation that John Kelly will be resigning and leaving the Trump Administration. This is very disconcerting to many because it leaves no one to babysit the man with the desk in the Oval Office.

Hurricane Nate is on track to make landfall this evening.

The storm is now packing maximum sustained winds of 90 mph. It is moving speedily to the north at 26 mph.

Hurricane warnings are in place from Grand Isle, La., to the Alabama border with Florida. This includes the city of New Orleans, which has prompted the mayor of the Crescent City to issue mandatory evacuations for parts of the area.

What a brutal year for hurricanes. Here is the 10:00 am forecast.

The New York Times has released an extensive report with sexual harassment allegations against media honcho Harvey Weinstein. He has taken a temporary leave.

The New Yorker reports that Donald Jr. and Ivanka were facing a possible Indictment in New York.

ISIS is still claiming responsibility for Las Vegas. No one is listening to them.

I've been reading everything on the Las Vegas shooter, his girlfriend and her family here, in Australia and in the Philippines, ISIS claims about it, and even the Manila casino massacre in June, one of ISIS' few false claims.

There's obviously something missing, nothing adds up, and once I have a theory that makes sense, I'll write about it. One interview I don't see mentioned much is this one in the Guardian by the former partner of Marilou's sister, who spent time in Nevada with the couple. He describes Paddock's views on guns and his algorithms for gambling.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

I'm off to see American Made. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Update: American Made was much better than I expected. Movie theaters sure are different these days. (I go to the movies about once a year or less.) When we bought our tickets at the window (not in advance) we got to pick assigned seats. All the seats were recliners where you pressed a button to extend and keep your legs raised. The seats had tray tables, not just drink holders. There were only about 20 people in the theater (and not many people milling around the 15 plex theater) so I guess 4pm on Mondays is a good time to go to the movies.

And yes, even if you are not a Tom Cruise fan (and I'm pretty lukewarm on him usually), he's really good in this film.

September 21, 2017(11 days ago) at the Hollywood Bowl:

Update: 10:20 pm MT: After a day of contradictory reports, Tom Petty's manager confirmed a few minutes ago that he has passed away.

Original Post

I can't believe it. Tom Petty has died after a sudden cardiac arrest.

RIP Tom, and thank you for the decades of fabulous music. You will be missed. [More...]

The Las Vegas shooter is down. There was only one shooter. There were no bombs at other hotels. 20 people are dead and up to one hundred are injured.

The shooter was a local resident. Police say he died. He was shooting from a room on the 32ndfloor of the Mandalay Bay. Police are looking for his companion, Mari Lou Daniely or Danelly, a 4'11" Asian female.

Police also searched two vehicles, associated with the shooter:a Hyundai Tucson Nevada/114B40 and a Chrysler Pacifica Nevada/79D401.

Authorities do not believe the motive is terrorism, despite ISIS threatening Las Vegas in a video in 2015.

Update: He'll live in Las Vegas for the "forseeable future," says the Nevada Dept. of Corrections.

O.J. Simpson has been released from prison on parole. He served 9 years before being granted parole. He received no special treatment while in prison or while being considered for parole. My view: Let him be. He's done his time for the robbery and related crimes for which he was convicted and sentenced. He's earned his freedom.

It's not clear where he will be living. It seems like it will be California or Florida, but for now he's in Nevada.

Tom Scotto, a close Simpson friend who lives in Naples, Florida, said by text message he was with Simpson following his release. Scotto did not respond to questions about where they were going or whether Simpson’s sister, Shirley Baker of Sacramento, California, or his daughter, Arnelle Simpson of Fresno, California, were with him.

Here are his parole conditions.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump devotee who has been tweeting about her recent visits to the Oval Office doesn't want him in Florida. What grounds are there to refuse Nevada's request for the transfer? None, as far as I can tell. [More...]

It's almost sundown which means Yom Kippur will begin. Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, is the holiest day of the year for Jews. From sundown to sundown tomorrow, there is no work and no food.

Here is a link to the services live-stream from the Reform congregation at the 92nd St Y in Manhattan.

For those not observing, here's a new open thread, all topics welcome.

Trump cabinet member Tom Price has resigned as director of Health and Human Services. FlightGate proved too much.

The work-related travel, which was first reported Sept. 19 by Politico, cost taxpayers nearly $1 million, or about $400,000 for private charters and $500,000 in military airplane costs. Most of the trips were between cities where inexpensive commercial flights were also available. The revelations had sparked a flurry of criticism from government ethics watchdogs.

For now Trump will stick with a deputy assistant director as acting secretary:

Melania Trump attended a White House "roundtable" on opioid abuse with Ms Most Unimportant Person in the World.

Melania met with experts and people who have been impacted by drug addiction, including opioids, on Thursday The mother-of-one stated that she wanted to 'listen and learn' from their stories, and she sat alongside White House counselor Kellyanne Conway

...Melania stated at the meeting that she wanted to 'listen and learn' from their stories, and she sat alongside White House counselor Kellyanne Conway who reportedly did most of the talking.

According to USA Today, Melania organized the event.

Melania Trump invited experts and people affected by addiction to opioids to the White House for a listening session and discussion about the epidemic.

..."I'm here to listen and learn from all of your stories," she said. And listen she did, leaving White House counselor Kellyanne Conway to do most of the talking.

It's my birthday, they seem to be coming round faster than ever.

Yes, happy birthday wishes (and even donations for a birthday drink or other trinket are welcome.)

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Thousands of shipping containers are in stand-still mode in Puerto Rico, preventing their contents with much needed supplies and food from reaching the people.

Nearly 100 percent of the island remains without power, and about 91 percent of cell sites are out of service, according to the most recent Department of Energy and FCC reports.

More on the distribution problems from NPR here. They can't distribute fuel. [More...]

I've been looking forward to the reviews of "Made in America" which opens Friday, starring Tom Cruise as real life cartel pilot Barry Seal. Most reviews says it's fun, typical Cruise, light-hearted and bears little resemblance to the real life events surrounding Seal. The director says they didn't want to do a biopic.

In real life: Barry Seal was gunned down in a parking lot outside the Salvation Army half-way house in Louisiana he'd been ordered to stay at during his probation in a federal case, when a car drove up with two men and shot and killed him. The U.S. insists it was a cartel hit. Others say it was ordered by the CIA. The truth will probably never be known.

The director of the movie is the son of the lawyer who was chief counsel for the Senate in the Iran Contra investigation. In an interview, the director acknowledges that He says he ordered the screenwriter to change a part of the script about Seal, drugs and the CIA, because his father maintained there was no such connection. connection.

There were things in the original script that contradicted my father's work. ... The screenwriter had in the original script some allegations about the CIA's actions that I checked with my father's deputies, and they said my father had actually looked into those allegations and they weren't true. They weren't in my father's reporting anywhere because my father actually found them to be so unsubstantiated that he didn't even want to bring them up to disavow them and give them that kind of credibility. ...I said we have to take it out of the script.

And the screenwriter was arguing back, and I was like, 'This is almost Shakespearean! You're asking me to put something in a movie that goes against my dead father's work.' You're never going to win that fight!

I wonder what the movie would have been like if Ron Howard hadn't bailed. He had initially signed on to the project when it was called "Mena", after the town in Arkansas where Seal flew a lot of drugs.

Here is the story of Barry Seal, according to a Louisiana state appeals court, in a 1991 opinion upholding the murder convictions of three men tried for killing him. [More...]

For those who don't mind stepping into a pile of varmint, here are the transcripts of the Howard Stern interviews with Donald Trump. I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole. Not only don't I care, I won't waste my time. We all knew what he was during the campaign. If Americans were too steeped in Hillary-hatred to care then, it won't make a bit of difference now.

A much more productive way to spend your time: It's 15 minutes until Senor de Los Cielos starts. I hope they don't kill Monica Robles tonight. It's on Telemundo, with English subtitles, 9pm and again at midnight. Comcast's English captions for the show this season have been so awful I started watching via my indoor antenna last week. The captions, which come through my Sony TV rather than Comcast that way, are complete and accurate, so it's not the show's fault, it's Comcast's.