[Business Insider] Earlier this week, Mexican federal police in Sonora came across a panel van with modifications and additions that allowed it carry a "cannon" possibly used to launch drugs over the border into the US.
According to a release from the federal police, officers came across the van while it was parked in northwest Sonora state's Agua Prieta municipality, which borders Arizona and Texas. The van was found without license plates and its doors were open.
Inside the vehicle, authorities found "an air compressor, a gasoline motor, a tank for storing air and a metallic tube of approximately 3 meters in length (homemade bazooka)."
The "unit," as the release referred to it, also had a cut in the end that could have allowed the metal tube to be hooked up to launch projectiles, possibly across the border.
Russian president Vladimir Putin's United Russia coalition won big in Sunday's parliamentary vote winning a total of 54.1 percent of the vote with 75 percent of the votes counted, according to Russian language news accounts.
Despite a suffering economy, buffeted by a recent oil price drop, economic sanctions imposed by Ukraine, the EU and US, United Russia has managed to shift some votes away from their next biggest opponent, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which won 13.89 percent of the vote.
Vladimir Zhirinovskiy's nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia currently maintains a very close third place with 13.42 percent of the vote.
[Business Insider] - Department store operator Kohl's Corp said it would hire more than 69,000 extra workers in the United States for the holiday selling season, the same as last year.
Kohl's, which has more than 1,100 stores in 49 states, said the seasonal workers would be added in its distribution and e-commerce fulfillment centers as well as in its credit operations.
The company last year hired more than 69,000 workers for the holiday season - up about 3 percent from 2014.
Kohl's said the seasonal hiring started last month, adding that it expects most jobs to be filled by mid-November.
Retailers make nearly a third of their annual sales and generate nearly 40 percent of their profits during the selling season that starts a day after Thanksgiving and continues into early January.
Target Corp said last week that it would hire 70,000 workers in its stores for the season, also the same number as last year.
[Reuters] An adviser to U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign said on Sunday that Trump will meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday during the United Nations General Assembly, just as Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, is also scheduled to do.
Clinton, who faces Trump in the Nov. 8 election, announced last week that she would meet both with Sisi and Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko in bilateral sessions expected to take place late on Monday. A foreign policy advisor to Trump, Walid Phares, told Reuters on Sunday that Trump would also have talks with Sisi on the same day.
For Trump, a New York real estate magnate and reality-TV show host who has never held political office, it marks the second time in recent weeks he has tried to burnish his foreign-policy credentials to compete with Clinton, the former Secretary of State under President Barack Obama and a U.S. Senator from New York.
#7
A foreign policy advisor to Trump, Walid Phares
It's been a day, what with the various jihadi excitements, so I'm finally reading this closely before doing articles for tomorrow. Mr. Trump is developing an interesting advisory team.
From Wikipedia: Walid Phares (Arabic: وليد فارس IPA: [waˈliːd ˈfaːres]) is an American scholar of Lebanese Maronite Christian descent.[1] He is a commentator on global terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs.
Phares has testified before committees of the U.S. State, Justice, Defense and Homeland Security, the United States Congress, the European Parliament, and the United Nations Security Council. Since 2007, he has served as an expert on terrorism and the Middle East for Fox News since 2007 and was a terrorism expert for NBC from 2003 to 2006.
In 2011, Phares was appointed by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney as an adviser on foreign affairs. He was subsequently recommended to and chosen by the 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump, as an expert on terrorism, counter-terrorism, and Middle Eastern Affairs. Phares is a Senior Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
[ARDEC] Engineers at Picatinny Arsenal are working on the first new lethal hand grenade in more than 40 years, which is designed to give greater flexibility to the warfighter. The multi-purpose hand grenade design will provide both fragmentation and blast overpressure more effectively and safely than its legacy counterparts. Once fielded, Soldiers will be able to select and use a hand grenade with different effects simply by flipping a switch. Over the past five years, Picatinny engineers have been collaborating with Infantry School representatives, hand grenade cadre, as well as active duty Soldiers and Marines, to determine warfighter needs regarding hand grenades. I'm still awaiting ARDEC's fielding of the jet powered snowshoe. How long must our soldiers wait ?
#1
...While in theory this isn't a bad idea, I'm concerned that we're going to 'improve' something that doesn't need improvement to the point where it doesn't freaking work. Not to mention the almost certain discovery that the designs needed to accomplish this will turn out to be singularly unsuited for the pounding the average 11Bravo is going to put them through before he needs them.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/19/2016 5:58 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Good for doing house to house: in Dar, where it full of human shields, you could use frag and claim to have intended to use blast.
#3
Doesn't matter what kinds of bells and whistles they put on grenades, when commanders and JAG lawyers don't trust their soldiers enough to issue them.
Otherwise, I think it is actually a nifty idea, a vt/prox fuse for a hand grenade. Wonder if there will be a "Glory/boobytrap" setting?
#9
In order to prevent atrocities by our warfighters, the grenade will have a safety interlock that can only be released via WiFi by the local zampolit JAG officer.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Business Insider] Earlier this week, Mexican federal police in Sonora came across a panel van with modifications and additions that allowed it carry a "cannon" possibly used to launch drugs over the border into the US.
