The FBI admits it failed to heed a tip that Nikolas Cruz, who killed seventeen people at a Florida school in February, had access to guns, a “desire to kill,” and possible plans for an attack. The agency also knew about a YouTube comment posted last year by “Nikolas Cruz” which proclaimed, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” According to an Associated Press account, “The FBI investigated the remark but did not determine who made it.”
Anals [sic] of Recycling
A NASA-funded study at Penn State University has developed a system for turning human waste into an edible product that could feed space crews on long missions. “How would it be for the astronauts?” asks study coauthor Christopher House, a professor of geosciences. “It doesn’t sound that great.”
BFFs
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte recently advised soldiers to shoot female anti-government rebels in their genitals, saying this would render them “useless.” This drew no rebuke from President Trump, who has praised Duterte for doing “an unbelievable job” combating drug trafficking, including summary executions of thousands of suspected dealers.
Where Blame Is Due
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling party, insists a new law making it a crime to accuse Poles of complicity in the Holocaust is “being interpreted totally wrong.” He says it penalizes blaming Poland as a nation but not “someone who says that somewhere, in some village, some place, a Jewish family or one Jewish person was murdered.” About six million Poles, half of them Jewish, were killed during the Nazi occupation.
Jobs Fabricator
Since his election, Donald Trump has made thirty-one specific claims about companies creating new jobs, identifying a total of 2.4 million new positions, according to ProPublica. But just 206,000 of those jobs have been created, and only 136,000 of these were genuinely new, as opposed to already planned before the election.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Fourth-graders at Our Redeemer Lutheran School in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, were given an assignment to name “3 ‘good’ reasons for slavery and 3 bad reasons.” “I feel there is no good reason for slavery,” one student wrote in reply. Give that kid an “A.” The school apologized.
A Terrible Problemwith Stupidity
Florida state Senator Dennis Baxley, in the wake of the Florida school shooting, fretted about seeing this “politicized into a gun debate,” adding that efforts at gun control were doomed to fail. “We have a terrible problem with obesity, but we’re not banning forks and spoons.”