[Hurriyet Daily News] An elderly Australian man serving time for killing his wife and two grandchildren was charged on Jan. 3 with the murder of a fellow inmate after an apparent attack with a sandwich toaster.
John Walsh, 77, is alleged to have beaten Frank Townsend in their shared cell at a correctional facility for aged prisoners near Sydney. Local reports said he used a sandwich toaster.
A guard was alerted to the injured inmate late on Jan. 2 after hearing noises coming from their cell.
"The officer switched the cell light on and saw the 71-year-old had been assaulted," a spokeswoman from New South Wales Corrective Services said, adding that Townsend was rushed to hospital but later died.
In 2008, Walsh was sentenced to life in jail for the gruesome murder of his wife and young grandchildren.
He beat his wife and seven-year-old grandson to death and drowned his five-year-old granddaughter in the bath, while attempting to kill his daughter with an axe.
There were no known problems between Walsh and Townsend, NSW Corrective Services said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2017 00:00 ||
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#10
There's better uses for rope in Aussieland than hanging. I'm sure the prisoner would serve better as an experimental subject for learning more about spider bites. For instance, how many bites does it take before the antivenom stops working?
Since 2001, Lockheed Martin and US military planners have been putting together the F-35, a new aircraft that promises to revolutionize aerial combat so thoroughly as to leave it unrecognizable to the general public.
Detractors of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have long criticized the program as taking too long and costing too much, though overruns commonly occur when developing massive, first-in-class projects like the F-35.
But perhaps the most damning criticism of the F-35 came from a 2015 assessment that F-16s, first fielded in the 1970s, had handily defeated a group of F-35s in mock dogfight tests.
According to Lt. Col. David "Chip" Berke, the only US Marine to fly both the F-22 and the F-35, the public has a lot of learning to do when assessing a jet's capability in warfare.
"The whole concept of dogfighting is so misunderstood and taken out of context," Berke said in an interview with Business Insider. "We need to do a better job teaching the public how to assess a jet's capability in warfare."
"There is some idea that when we talk about dogfighting it's one airplane's ability to get another airplane's 6 and shoot it with a gun ... That hasn't happened with American planes in maybe 40 years," Berke said.
"Everybody that's flown a fighter in the last 25 years -- we all watched 'Top Gun,'" said Berke, referring to the 1986 film in which US Navy pilots take on Russian-made MiGs.
But planes don't fight like that anymore, and comparing different planes' statistics on paper and trying to calculate or simulate which plane can get behind the other is "kind of an arcane way of looking at it," Berke said.
Unlike older planes immortalized in films, the F-35 doesn't need to face its adversary to destroy it. The F-35 can fire "off boresight," virtually eliminating the need to jockey for position behind an enemy.
The F-35 can take out a plane miles beyond visual range. It can pass targeting information to another platform, like a drone or a US Navy destroyer, and down a target without even firing a shot.
While US Air Force pilots do train for classic, World War II-era dogfights, and while the F-35 holds its own and can maneuver just as well as fourth-generation planes, dogfights just aren't that important anymore.
Berke said dogfighting would teach pilots "great skill sets" but conflict within visual range "doesn't always mean a turning fight within 100 feet of the other guy maneuvering for each other's 6 o'clock." Berke also made an important distinction that conflicts within visual range do not always become dogfights.
Also, "within visual range" is a tricky term.
"You could not see a guy who's a mile away, or you could see a guy at 15 miles if you got lucky," Berke said, adding that with today's all-aspect weapons systems, a plane can "be effective in a visual fight from offensive, defensive, and neutral positions."
"We need to stop judging a fighter's ability based on wing loading and Gs," Berke said of analysts who prize specifications on paper over pilots' insights.
Furthermore, Berke, who has several thousand flying hours in four different airplanes, both fourth and fifth generation, stressed that pilots train to negate or avoid conflicts within visual range -- and he said no plane did that better than the F-35.
Even in the F-22 Raptor, the world's most lethal combat plane in within-visual-range conflicts and beyond, Berke said he'd avoid a close-up fight.
"Just because I knew I could outmaneuver an enemy, my objective wouldn't be to get in a turning fight and kill him," Berke said.
Though it might be news to fans of "Top Gun" and the gritty, "Star Wars"-style air-to-air combat depicted in TV and films, the idea of a "dogfight" long ago faded from relevance in the world of aerial combat.
A newer, less sexy term has risen to take its place: situational awareness. And the F-35 has it in spades. So why did they give it a gun?
#1
"The whole concept of dogfighting is so misunderstood and taken out of context,"
Nope. Just those who live to fly another day. War is like that. You live or you die. All the rest is Monday morning quarterbacking or excuses by the 'experts'.
Actually, a question deserving of an article or two by itself, but the short version is that the USAF and USN embarrassed themselves badly in Vietnam when the F-4 Phantom II - our #1 front-line fighter around the world - was incapable of shooting down North Vietnamese aircraft with the miserable missiles of the time, and they Didn't. Have. A. Gun. Modern missiles (the AIM-9X and AIM-120) are not quite one-shot/one-kill, but they're damned close, and if we deleted guns today you could make a good argument for it - but the services are never going to forget the fact that they couldn't bring down the enemy because they didn't even carry the fighter's most basic weapon.
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/04/2017 17:19 Comments ||
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#4
Why this is complete BS, we need 1500 more A-10 and force the Marines, the RAF and the Navy to adapt to the past. Throw in 1200 Thuds and you got a mans Air Force.
#5
And as far as the guns are concerned... the F-35c and F-35b mount them in pods for easy removal. The F-35a recess it's gun in the nose, out of the airstream except when actually shooting, hidden rest of the time.
#6
Second Times is the Charm, eh?
The US bought the "missiles only: beyond visual range" theory going into the Vietnam War dropping onboard cannons. Unfortunately they way, WAY overestimated the lethality of the AIM-7 Sparrow:The Pk (kill probability) of the AIM-7E was less than 10%; US fighter pilots shot down 59[Note 1] aircraft out of the 612 Sparrows fired.[4] Of the 612 AIM-7D/E/E-2 missiles fired, 97 (or 15.8%) hit their targets, resulting in 56 (or 9.2%) kills. Two kills were obtained beyond visual range.[5]
Large increases in the price of gas in Mexico has people up in arms and concerns are growing that shifting fuel prices will increase the cost of everything else.
Deregulation of gas prices in Mexico has many concerned and, on the first day of the year, drove some to stockpile gas and join protests as prices jumped by as much as 20 percent in some parts of the country.
The Mexican government ended some gas subsidies and raised the maximum price of fuel across the board, allowing regular gas to increase by as much as 14 percent, premium to increase by 20 percent and diesel went up by 17 percent.
The deregulation of gas prices is one of a set of reforms pitched as part of changes to energy laws in 2013, with the start of a gradual end to price controls one of the more visible efforts. The Mexican government has controlled gas prices since 1992, as a method of controlling inflation.
Relaxing controls on gas prices is part of a larger energy program Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's energy program to open the country up outside oil investment for the first time since 1938, when the Mexican government took control of the country's oil industry and kicked out foreign companies.
Government officials say that despite the annoyance of price increases to many -- some gas stations were blocked as protesters aired their grievances -- but that long term relaxing controls on the industry would make prices more manageable, and potentially help spur a shift to renewable resources in the country as it will now be affected by global oil controls.
The officials say initial jumps in price were to be expected as the government capped its own ability to increase prices at the end of 2016 and private companies reacted to the ability to charge more per gallon. As new gas companies show up in the country, however, officials say new import terminals, pipelines and suppliers will spur competition that will theoretically be good for consumers.
"We didn''t consider it good public policy to maintain an artificially low price for fuels," said Deputy Finance Minister Miguel Messmacher. "These things always generate annoyance. We're quite clear that it's an unpopular measure."
On Dec. 31, a gallon of standard-grade unleaded fuel cost roughly $2.60. On New Year’s Day, as a new policy took effect, it jumped more than 14% to about $2.95. The price of premium fuel rose by as much as 20%.
#4
The price the oil company can get for its product has dropped, so they can't afford to subsidize domestic consumption like they used to.
Interestingly, according to AAA, today the retail gasoline price per gallon in Texas averages in the $2.12 - 2.20 range. A second reason for the Mexicans to be annoyed.
[AyPee] United Nations observers are in hot water in Colombia over a video showing them dancing with leftist rebels while deployed to watch over the guerrillas as part of a peace deal.
The short video was shot by Spanish news agency EFE from inside a jungle camp in northern Colombia during a New Year's Eve party. It shows two men wearing blue vests with U.N. insignia dancing hip-to-hip with female guerrillas.
The images, dismissed by some as a folkish display of Colombians' love for revelry in even the most adverse circumstances, drew sharp rebuke from opponents of the peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The U.N. mission in a statement late Monday said it would take appropriate measures.
"This behavior is inappropriate and doesn't reflect the values of professionalism and impartiality of the mission," it said without identifying the officials by name or nationality.
In New York, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday, "They're not happy with what they've seen and corrective action has been taken." He did not elaborate.
As part of a peace deal ratified last month hundreds of U.N.-sponsored observers, mostly from Latin American nations, are being deployed across Colombia. The U.N. mission is charged with receiving the weapons and providing periodic reports on the two sides' adherence to the peace deal that seeks to bring to an end decades of bloody fighting.
[Bretbart Texas] Halliburton is set to hire 200 oilfield hands in the Permian Basin region. The move follows a recent increase in crude oil prices.
Halliburton spokeswoman Emily Mir said there will be job opportunities in various parts of the basin, FuelFix reported. The oil services company predicted that 200 new jobs will be created in a report published in the Current-Argus. Mir stated jobs will be available in several areas of operation.
"The Permian Basin is an important area for Halliburton and we’ll continue to make adjustments to our workforce based on business demand as needed," Mir said in a statement published by the USA Today affiliate.
The new jobs were attributed to increased support of the industry expected from the Trump Administration, according to Shannon Carr, development coordinator with the Department of Development. Carr also attributed the growth to new deals made with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
The Brent benchmark rose from around $57 per barrel to over $58 per barrel in early Tuesday's trading, reaching the highest level since July 2015. WTI crude went past the $54 per barrel and $55 per barrels marks before hovering at just below $55 per barrel after an almost 2.3-percent rally. The North American benchmark also hit the highest levels since July, Sputnik International reported.
Only helps American oil producers: get fracking!
Brent crude March 2017 futures were up almost 2.2 percent and stood at over $58 per barrel, while WTI February 2017 futures rose a similar amount to around $54.90 per barrel.
The rally comes as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) member states and 11 major non-cartel oil producing countries, including Russia and Mexico, begin to curb output in an effort to stabilize the oil market. The production cuts, agreed on in late November by OPEC and finalized in December by several major non-cartel producers, kicked in on January 1.
OPEC members promised to abide on a voluntary basis by the production ceiling of 32.5 million barrels per day, which was preliminary agreed in Algiers in September. This is a 1.2-million barrel per day production cut. Russia agreed to cut its production by 300,000 barrels a day, while Mexico, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are reducing oil output by 100,000, 35,000 and 20,000 barrels per day respectively. The collective non-OPEC pledge is a 558,000 barrels per day cut.
The measure, which was under discussion for over a year before implemented, is expected to curtail the glut in global oil supply and bring oil prices to the level of $55-60 per barrel in 2017, compared with 2016 average of $34 dollars per barrel.
Oil market turbulence caused oil prices to plunge from $115 per barrel in June 2014 to less than $30 per barrel in January 2016, causing hardship for oil exporters. Prices have partially recovered and hovered at around $50-55 per barrel before Tuesday's rally.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/04/2017 00:00 ||
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[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.LB] Britannia’s ambassador to the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... , Ivan Rogers, has resigned less than three months before the UK is due to trigger the process to leave the bloc, a source told AFP.
The BBC reported last month that Rogers had told UK ministers that EU countries believe a trade deal with Britannia might take 10 years to achieve -- a report rejected by Prime Minister Theresa May’s front man.
Rogers had been in his post since November 2013, having been prime minister David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... ’s Europe adviser.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Clearly they need a soon to be available Community Organizer.
[Hurriyet Daily News] The Turkish Chess Federation (TSF) stated on Jan. 3 that it has launched legal proceedings against a Turkish televangelist who recently claimed that playing chess is more sinful than gambling.
“The remarks of the person in question on chess in a video are unacceptable and have drawn a reaction from our community. Legal proceedings have been launched into the baseless comments and evaluations that affect thousands of our players and families, at a time when we most need the unity, peace and the philosophy of chess,” the TSF said in a written statement.
It also pointed to the history of chess in Turkey by giving examples of support from a number of statesmen.
“Chess is a sport that has been played by many statesmen and leaders on this soil throughout history. Our precious statesmen have provided the biggest support to make Turkey a chess country, and they continue to contribute to spread this love with their words, the chess sets they deliver, and the events they attend,” it added.
The statement came in response to Ahmet Mahmut Ünlü, popularly known as “Cübbeli Ahmet Hoca” (Robbed Ahmet Hoca), who recently raised eyebrows by claiming that chess players were “cursed” and that “most people who played chess are liars.”
“Playing chess is worse than gambling and eating pork ... People who play chess are more prone to lying than others. People who play chess may not say the shahada [declaration of Islamic belief] while they are dying,” Ünlü said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Just call the 'evangelist' a Gulenist - he'll be dead within a week.
Turkish parliament on Tuesday voted to support the government bill to extend the state of emergency prompted by the failed coup attempt for another three months, Daily Sabah reported. The state of emergency has been extended for the third time, effective from January 19.
On July 15, 2016, a military coup attempt took place in Turkey. It was suppressed the following day. Over 240 people were killed during the coup attempt and an estimated 2,000 were wounded. Thousands of people, including military officers, high-ranking civil servants and teachers have been detained or sacked in the country since the attempted overthrow of the Turkish government.
On December 27, 2016, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Turkish authorities could lift the state of emergency in January 2017.
They could but they won't...
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/04/2017 00:00 ||
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[Daily Caller] The NAACP’s Alabama chapter stormed the Mobile office of Republican Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions Tuesday demanding he withdraw as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee.
NAACP President Cornell Brooks stated the organization has no plans to leave the senator’s office until Sessions "withdraws as AG nominee or we’re arrested."
Arrest and be damned to you. Have you not been paying attention to the many Black Democratic politicians and other eminent African-Americans who have stood up to speak about their positive interactions with the gentleman in question, and how they're ashamed they didn't speak up when the Democrats smeared him so successfully last time?
Brooks released a statement following the tweet of their sit-in protest at Sessions’ office saying in part: "Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is among the worst people who could serve as our nation’s Attorney General." Doing what they do best. Sitting on their indolent arses and doing nothing.
#1
the NAACP certainly knows that many Blacks in Alabama have testimonials saying that Sessions is an honorable and decent person. Those people who have made these testimonials are probably getting intimidating letters and emails from the NAACP and various leftist thugs.
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/04/2017 0:09 Comments ||
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#2
Proving to many people that they did the right thing in voting for trump.
#3
Ironically the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hasn't been for the actual Advancement of Colored People for a number of decades.
Like the Congressional Black Caucus and the KKK its just another racist Democrat Party Organization.
#8
They got the publicity they wanted and further smeared one of the few men in Alabama who stepped up and fought for their rights. Bugwits.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/04/2017 15:12 Comments ||
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#9
...I dealt with the NAACP once, in 1991, when I was an Air Force recruiter. The USAF was panicking about not having enough AA recruits, so we were told to drum up some business. Among other things, I contacted the NAACP and the Urban League to see if I might speak to them as what we called 'Centers of Influence'.
The UL never did call me back. The president of the local NAACP chapter called me back (while my flight supervisor, who was black) was in the office, and proceeded to rip me a new one. He could never recommend to young AA men and women that they join an organization that not only treated them disrespectfully but would also send them to their deaths so white kids could go to college.
The boss - who had been giving me grief about dealing with these organizations and how much help they would be to us - never said another word.
So you can imagine my attitude towards this particular group of Useful Idiots.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/04/2017 17:27 Comments ||
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[Hurriyet Daily News] An Indian minister faced a severe backlash on Jan. 3 after he criticized women for dressing "like westerners" at a New Year’s eve celebration where a mob allegedly carried out a series of sex assaults.
Although police have yet to charge anyone in connection with the violence on Dec. 31 night in Bangalore, local media have carried testimony and photos of victims cowering from their attackers or fleeing for safety.
Police say they are now trawling through CCTV footage to see if they can identify any of the attackers.
But a minister with responsibility for policing in the southern state of Karnataka, whose largest city is Bangalore, said the "unfortunate" attacks were a consequence of women wearing western clothing.
"A large number of youngsters gathered -- youngsters who are almost like westerners," Karnataka’s Home Minister G Parameshwara told The Times Now television network, speaking in English.
"They try to copy westerners not only in mindset, but even the dressing, so some disturbance, some girls are harassed, these kind of things do happen."
Parameshwara, who later claimed to have been misquoted, was widely condemned for his televised comments, with the central government’s junior home minister Kiren Rijiju describing them as "irresponsible."
"We can’t allow the shameful act of #MassMolestation go unpunished," he said on Twitter, adding that women’s safety is a "must in a civilized society."
Lalitha Kumaramangalam, who heads India’s National Commission for Women, said Parameshwara should resign over his comments.
"I want to ask this minister: are Indian men so pathetic and weak that when they see a woman in western clothes on a day of revelry, they get out of control?
"When will the Indian men learn to respect women? The minister should apologize to the women of the country and resign," Kumaramangalam told the Press Trust of India news agency.
India has been shamed by shocking levels of sexual assault against women, which came into sharp focus in December 2012 when a student was gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi and later died of her injuries, leading to the official cancellation of that year’s New Year celebrations.
Some of the country’s most senior politicians have been accused of casual misogyny, with the leader of one political party widely condemned for brushing off the December 2012 attack by saying "boys will be boys."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2017 00:00 ||
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Via Boris Rozhin:
[WashingtonPost] Video games are everywhere. Forty percent of U.S. adults own game consoles; many more play on their mobiles. According to some reports, most gamers are women. Digital games now rake in more annual revenues than movie box-office ticket sales.
So are games affecting the way humans think about the world and about each other?
Researchers have shown that entertainment media, like movies, can shift public opinion and shape behaviors. But there is much less research on the impact of video games. There’s some political science research on the link between the military and the entertainment industry, dubbed the “military-entertainment complex.” There’s also work on game play during the 2014 Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But our knowledge of how digital games influence public opinion, public policy or political culture is limited. So we investigated.
The first step in answering this question is to look at the enemies that players encounter in digital games. To use a more precise term, we look at how enemies are “framed” — how games package information that resonates with audiences. In an article (currently ungated) published in International Studies Review, we turn to a popular genre, First Person Shooters (FPS), in which a player armed with a weapon seeks to destroy an enemy. FPS players experience conflict and violence firsthand, albeit simulated. But representations of the bad guys in video games could shape players’ perceptions of who is a threat. More at the link
#2
They use Russians, who are white and often blond, because they dare not use jihadis. In a simiilar vein, a recent PJ Media piece suggests Muslim money is blocking Hollywood interest in acquiring Daniel Silva's best selling Gideon Allon thrillers from reaching the screen. If so, the continued low price of oil may soon make such thought-control efforts unaffordable.
#3
All true comments, but on the other hand even saying "God bless you" in Russian sounds evil, so of course the game producers jump on board... that and the Russians are the only worthy opponents out there.
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.
[Hurriyet Daily News] An elderly Australian man serving time for killing his wife and two grandchildren was charged on Jan. 3 with the murder of a fellow inmate after an apparent attack with a sandwich toaster.
[Bretbart Texas] Halliburton is set to hire 200 oilfield hands in the Permian Basin region. The move follows a recent increase in crude oil prices.
The Brent benchmark rose from around $57 per barrel to over $58 per barrel in early Tuesday's trading, reaching the highest level since July 2015. WTI crude went past the $54 per barrel and $55 per barrels marks before hovering at just below $55 per barrel after an almost 2.3-percent rally. The North American benchmark also hit the highest levels since July, Sputnik International reported.
David Cameron
[Hurriyet Daily News] The Turkish Chess Federation (TSF) stated on Jan. 3 that it has launched legal proceedings against a Turkish televangelist who recently claimed that playing chess is more sinful than gambling.
