KEMAL ATATURK WEPT: Turkey Acquits 2 Men in Berlin ‘Honor Killing’ of Their Sister.

The sister, Hatun Surucu, 23, was killed at a Berlin bus stop 12 years ago when her youngest brother fired three bullets into her head. The brothers said the family’s honor had been offended because she divorced the man her family had forced her to marry at age 16, and then began dating and refused to wear a head scarf.

Though her family is ethnically Kurdish, and originally from Turkey, Ms. Surucu had been born and raised in Germany. Her murder, after a series of similar so-called honor killings of Muslim women in Germany, sent shock waves through the country.
…
Ms. Surucu’s youngest brother, Ayhan, admitted that he had killed her and he was jailed for nine years in a German prison.

But his brothers — Mutlu, now 38, and Alparslan, now 36 — have been acquitted twice of helping him: first in Germany in 2006, and again on Tuesday when a separate trial in Istanbul found them not guilty because of a lack of evidence.

Mutlu Surucu had previously spoken approvingly of his sister’s death. But a crucial prosecution witness who might have been able to offer evidence that the brothers had cooperated in the killing — Ayhan Surucu’s ex-girlfriend — did not appear to testify in the Istanbul trial, according to Leyla Suren, a lawyer with the Initiative Against Femicide, a Turkish rights-advocacy group, who attended the hearing.

The potential witness, known in court records only as Melek A, could not be found at her last known address in Germany, and no other witnesses were able to provide clear evidence to buttress the prosecution’s case. The Initiative Against Femicide was also denied the right to testify, Ms. Suren said.

It certainly looks like the fix was in at the Turkish court, but the real shocker is that the killer was made to serve only nine years by German authorities.

BILL WHITTLE: Weaponized science.

THIS IS A GOOD IDEA: Handshake-Free Zones Target Spread Of Germs In The Hospital.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Annual CNN host* Kathy Griffin Beheads Donald Trump in Shocking Photo Shoot.

(The photo is exactly what you think it is. You’ve been warned if you click on link.)

Insert obligatory reminder that anyone on the right holding a representation of the severed head of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would be absolutely crushed by social media and the DNC-MSM, and find his or her career at an end. Funny though, how what Michelle Malkin calls the left’s “assassination chic” is always given a pass — if not outright ignored — by the “objective” media when the president has an (R) after his name.

In response to Griffin, Twitchy notes the left’s freakout in 2013 over a Missouri rodeo clown donning a goofy Obama mask. Shortly afterwards, CNN’s Website ran the headline, “After Obama-mocking rodeo clown, Missouri fair requires ‘sensitivity training.’”

That’s just from someone wearing the image of the 44th president. But we’ll see what sort of sensitivity CNN themselves will show this year. Will the network, which during the brief “new civility” pose by the left after the Tucson massacre in early 2011, saw newsreader John King flipping out on-air when a guest used the word “crosshairs,” and replying, “We’re trying to get away from using that kind of language,” allow Griffin to continue to co-host their annual New Year’s Eve train wreck with anchor Anderson Cooper?

Over to you, Jeff Zucker.

* As per the WFB style guide.

UPDATE: “You would think Griffin and the photographer would at least have avoided mimicking an ISIS pose to make things a little harder for critics, but I guess if you’re going to wade into this pool, you might as well dive in,” Allahpundit writes, noting that although Donald Trump, Jr. has weighed in on Twitter, “This won’t truly be a story until Trump [Sr.] tweets something insulting about [Griffin’s] plastic surgery.”

Flashback: “To Hell with you People.”

AT AMAZON, save big in Kitchen and Dining.

Plus, deals in Grills and Outdoor Cooking.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Did Obama Hack The Election? The Obama administration’s illegal spying may have been worse than Watergate.

CHARLIE MARTIN: The Rise of Jack D. Ripper, Democrat.

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: VA hospitals’ vanishing drugs problem persists: “Federal authorities have launched dozens of new criminal investigations into possible opioid and other drug theft by employees at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, a sign the problem isn’t going away despite new prevention efforts.”

THEY’LL DO IT AT NIGHT: NASA to announce launch of first ever probe to ‘touch the sun’

The story says the probe will travel “a mind-boggling four million miles,” but it would seem the reporter misunderstood something.

PROCUREMENT: Air Force Tests Bolt-On Aircraft Laser Weapon.

Given that an external POD would add shapes to the fuselage which would make an aircraft likely to be vulnerable to enemy air defense radar systems, the bolt-on defensive laser would not be expected to work on a stealthy platform, he explained.

However, a heavily armed B-52, as a large 1960s-era target, would perhaps best benefit from an ability to defend itself from the air; such a technology would indeed be relevant and potentially useful to the Air Force, as the service is now immersed in a series of high-tech upgrades for the B-52 so that it can continue to serve for decades to come.

Defending a B-52 could becoming increasing important in years to come if some kind of reconfigured B-52 is used as the Pentagon’s emerging Arsenal Plane or “flying bomb truck.”

Lasers shooting down missiles is pretty much exactly the 21st Century I’d been hoping for.

I HOPE SO, BUT I’D SETTLE FOR AN EXTRA 20 YEARS OF HEALTHY MIDDLE AGE: Can Human Mortality Really Be Hacked? Backed by the digital fortunes of Silicon Valley, biotech companies are brazenly setting out to “cure” aging.

PATRICK POOLE: German Police Arrest Syrian Teen Refugee Who Planned Suicide Bombing in Berlin.

THAT WAS COOL: The photos of ‘Human Fly’ George Willig climbing the World Trade Center are beautiful and intense.

MAIL BAG: Eugene Volokh responded to yesterday’s item about suicide and veterans.

Veterans have double the suicide rate of Americans generally only if you don’t control for sex and age — which isn’t that helpful, since both veterans and suicides generally are overwhelmingly male. Controlling for sex and age, there is still an elevated rate for veterans, but not by that much: “After adjusting for differences in age and gender, risk for suicide was 21 percent higher among Veterans when compared with U.S. civilian adults.”

Interestingly, the risk was 18% higher for male veterans, but 2.4 times that of civilians for female veterans — I have no idea why this would be so.

Me, either — but it certainly bears looking into.

A TRILLION HERE AND A TRILLION THERE… World’s Major Economies to Come up $400 Trillion Short on Retirement Savings.

“We’re really at an inflection point,” Michael Drexler, head of financial and infrastructure systems at the World Economic Forum, said in a phone interview. “Pension underfunding is the climate-change moment of social systems in the sense that there is still time to do something about it. But if you don’t, in 20 or 30 years down the line, society will say it’s a huge problem.”

A shortfall of about $400 trillion could be reached by 2050, the World Economic Forum said. The figure is derived from the amount of money government, employers and individuals would need to provide each person with a retirement income equal to 70 percent of his or her annual earnings before leaving the workforce.

The gap is partially driven by an aging world population. Life expectancy has risen on average by about a year every five years since the middle of the last century, and half of babies born in the U.S. and Canada in 2007 may live to 104, according to the report. In Japan, the figure is 107 years.

“In the long run, we are all dead” is starting to sound dated.

SHE’S LOVELY, BUT A REAL CHALLENGE TO PHOTOGRAPH: Meet The Beautiful Sudanese Model Nicknamed The “Queen Of The Dark.”

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Thousands of Foreigners Registered to Vote (and Voting) in Virginia.

SUSPENDERS AND A BELT: ‘Shocked’ South Korea leader Moon orders probe into U.S. THAAD additions.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has ordered a probe after the Defence Ministry failed to inform him that four more launchers for the controversial U.S. THAAD anti-missile system had been brought into the country, his spokesman said on Tuesday.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system battery was initially deployed in March in the southeastern region of Seongju with just two of its maximum load of six launchers to counter a growing North Korean missile threat.

During his successful campaign for the May 9 presidential election, Moon called for a parliamentary review of the system, whose deployment has also infuriated China, North Korea’s lone major ally.

“President Moon said it was very shocking” to hear the four additional launchers had been installed without being reported to the new government or to the public, presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan told a media briefing.

Moon had campaigned on a more moderate approach to Pyongyang, calling for engagement even as the reclusive state pursues nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and threats of more sanctions.

Moderation in pursuit of missile defense is no virtue.

NOTHING GOOD: What Happens After ISIS Goes Underground.

Taking away territory from ISIS is a temporary stopgap that will merely push the group toward more clandestine activity in the near term, as Craig Whiteside, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and other terrorism experts have repeatedly noted. In conjunction, the group will probably shift the locus of its activities to other enclaves where it continues to hold power and can remain capable of resupplying its organization with weapons and other materiel. And, the organization will undoubtedly redouble its efforts and presence in cyberspace, where for years it has enjoyed relative sanctuary in the conduct of offensive and support operations.

How else might ISIS seek to regain momentum once its caliphate is gone?

One concern is that a successful attack on American soil could invite a prompt military response, further galvanizing ISIS and its supporters and making it seem both more powerful and relevant than it actually is. The recent attack in Manchester, England demonstrates ISIS’ reach—it retains a remarkable capability to inspire or direct attacks abroad, including in the West.

ISIS has also proved highly adept at capitalizing upon sectarian tensions in the Muslim world to burnish its image as a protector of Sunnis. This is part of its strategy in Egypt, where recent ISIS attacks have targeted Coptic Christians. If this strategy is deemed successful, there is little doubt that ISIS will replicate this behavior in other countries where it retains a presence, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Still, if ISIS is close to being defeated—as many analysts have claimed in recent months—why is there heightened concern about its potential to conduct attacks?

Indeed.

THIS HAS LONG BEEN TRUE OF BOTH CLINTONS: Hillary Clinton is making fools out of feminists.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Did Obama Hack The Election? The Obama administration’s illegal spying may have been worse than Watergate.

Note that unlike lefties making election-hacking claims, I cite actual evidence.

FLEW IN FROM MIAMI BEACH BOAC, DIDN’T GET TO BED LAST NIGHT: Forget Russian Collusion. We Are Russia, Roger Simon writes.

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Oil slips on oversupply worries despite OPEC deal.