Via Weasel Zippers:
Three people have been killed and two more injured after a shooting incident at an oceanfront motel in Myrtle Beach, one of South Carolina's most popular tourist destinations.
The shootings took place around 11 p.m. on Saturday in front of crowds of tourists at the Bermuda Sands Motel along the beach's new boardwalk, Myrtle Beach Police Capt. David Knipes said.
The area attracts between 350,000 and 400,000 people each Memorial Day Weekend for the annual Atlantic Beach BikeFest, which is held just 15 miles away from Myrtle Beach.
The three-day event, also known as Black Bikers Week, is the largest African American motorcycle rally in the U.S. although in recent years it has evolved to include many non-bike events such as concerts and streets festivals.
Officers draped towels over the balcony of a breezeway just outside the doors to the rooms of the motel to shield two of the bodies from people on nearby Ocean Boulevard.
#2
The problem with this, and Kappa weekend, and others, is a blast of low-level crime, not so much major stuff. Kappa used to run in Galveston, til all the small businesses decided they were losing money on the deal (re snatch and grab) and started closing all weekend when the kids were in town. So it moved.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/27/2014 7:54 Comments ||
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#3
...The media is sitting on the fact that at least two of the departed were serious gangbangers and the third may have been a wanna be.
MB tried to ban Black Bike Week a couple years ago, and got hammered for it. I'm hearing now that after a decent interval they're gonna try again....
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/27/2014 19:26 Comments ||
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[An Nahar] Two members of the all-female Japanese pop group AKB48 and one staffer have been injured by a saw-wielding man at a fan event.
Japanese media reports and a statement on the group's official blog say that 18-year-old Anna Iriyama and 19-year-old Rina Kawaei were cut on their hands and head. A male staff member also was cut on the hand.
They were taken to a hospital late Sunday afternoon for treatment.
Police tossed in the slammer Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! the attacker, a 24-year-old unemployed man.
The incident happened in Takizawa city in northeastern Japan.
AKB48 is a wildly popular song and dance troupe that has spawned affiliates across the country and in Indonesia, China and Taiwan. It has a rotating cast of more than 90 young women known in Japan as "idols."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2014 00:00 ||
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[The Peninsula] Competitors tumbled down Coopers Hill in pursuit of a round Double Gloucester cheese during the annual 'Cheese Rolling and Wake' near the village of Brockworth near Gloucester in western England yesterday. With a disputed history dating back to at least the 1800s, the annual Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling involves hordes of fearless competitors chasing an eight-pound Double Gloucester cheese down a steep hill. The winner of the race down the hill wins the cheese.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
So some twit with an impressive degree, I'm sure, decided rather than get commercial floor-dry (clay kitty litter), sent down to Target for a couple of bags of Fresh-Step (and put one of them in my trunk while you're at it), and we have a level 3 reaction due to chemicals (deodorants in the cat litter).
Contrary-wise, it could be leftover from Atomic Kitty.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/27/2014 8:02 Comments ||
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#2
If true, WIPP is absolved from causing the problem, and Los Alamos National Lab is to blame. There have been similar bonehead missteps up there in the past.
From an online news item at the Santa Fe New Mexican 14 March 2012 (link has gone dead since):
Hazardous waste workers inside a sealed enclosure at Los Alamos National Laboratory drilled into an old container releasing an unknown gas that flashed on contact with the air, according to Kevin Roark a laboratory spokesperson, who had just returned from the site. He said the containers under investigation at the time looked like old fire extinguishers.
A hazardous materials team was dispatched to Material Disposal Area B, LANLs oldest hazardous waste area on the east edge of the town site. A Los Alamos County emergency official sent out a reverse-911 telephone call warning residents. DP Road across from the dump was closed, and occupants of businesses along the road were asked to stay inside. No injuries were reported and an all-clear was sounded about two hours later.
The unknown contents will be identified by lab chemists as part of a routine process for remediating the containers.
[An Nahar] Kuwait's appeals court Monday commuted the death sentence of an Iraqi fisherman who killed a coast guard to life imprisonment, according to the court verdict.
Taha Mahmud Sabhan was handed the death sentence by the lower court in November 2012 for killing a Kuwaiti coast guard in a shootout in January last year.
The shooting took place after an Iraqi fishing boat with Sabhan and seven others aboard crossed into Kuwaiti waters and refused to stop, according to Kuwait's interior ministry.
Two of the seven were handed three-year sentences by the court and a third, who is a minor, was jailed for a year. The remaining four received life terms in absentia after they fled.
But the appeals court on Monday commuted all the life terms to three years in jail and upheld the other sentences.
The sentences have to be reviewed by Kuwait's supreme court to become final.
Kuwait's coast guard often seizes Iraqi fishing boats and detains fishermen for illegally entering Kuwaiti waters.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2014 00:00 ||
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[BUSINESSWEEK] Nigel Farage, the triumphant leader of the U.K. Independence Party, referred to the historic defeats he inflicted on Britannia's older parties as an "earthquake." As its victims got back to their feet, 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 ... had the greatest cause for optimism.
While the May 22 European elections saw Cameron's Conservatives come third in a national poll for the first time ever, they finished within 250,000 votes of the main opposition Labour Party in a vote in which governments are usually punished. As the premier pointed out, the Tories are the only main party to be offering voters a referendum on European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... membership, a key UKIP demand.
Labour leader Ed Miliband has ruled out such a move. Any attempt to win UKIP voters by campaigning on Farage's other key theme, cutting immigration, would risk a backlash in the one place Miliband's party performed well, multicultural London.
"How do you combine an approach that seems to be working in London but clearly isn't working elsewhere?" Mark Wickham-Jones, professor of politics at Bristol University, said in an interview. "The London results suggest that Britannia has an image of itself as a tolerant and pluralistic society. Some of the other results suggest people have a number of major concerns and insecurities that Labour and others have not addressed. Forging a coherent program from this is by no means straightforward."
Farage played up that difficulty yesterday by announcing that he'll publish the outlines of his program for the May 2015 general election at UKIP's party conference in Miliband's electoral district in Doncaster, northern England.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Meanwhile, David Cameron said "Oh, was Thatcher an actual person? I thought she was a character in a telly show. That's different."
(sarcasm... I think)
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/27/2014 8:14 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
At an economic forum in Russia, European, Russian and Indian space industry leaders plead to keep international tensions from scuttling joint programs and business arrangements. Missing? NASA and U.S. space companies.
#1
Been thinking about the whole shebang.
The government should have 3 interests in space.
1) Fostering companies to exploit space in some way. Not a new frontier for government exploration and voyages. Help capitalistic firms move into space and make money off it. In the process providing jobs, product, science and revenue for the nation (if not the government)
2) National Defense
3) Science in the national interest that is too hard to do on Earth.
So the ISS space station should have some lessons about building space habitats. The first is that big tin can space stations are likely too expensive and not useful and flexible enough for private enterprise or the military. Perhaps they are only doing little science to justify Big Science positions and organizational structures much the same way that university research fiefdoms have made college too expensive for the masses.
Perhaps it would be better to subsidize a few launches of Bigelow's small inflatable stations so he can create a business renting or selling them to corporations. This would eventually bring the price down and instead of needing stuff the ISS for research space the gov could just rent or buy space when the project is important enough for the project. Let the mining companies and exploration companies and research companies then make money in space doing what the market says is right to do up there. Not what some bureaucrats or scientists or politicians decide is right and proper to do in space. It should be a Wild West style free for all in space. Think about it!
#3
Consider the New World. There is good evidence all sorts of peoples and cultures visited it over the Millenniums.
What was the difference with Christopher Columbus?
He had Plans!
He had plans to Exploit the New World using Old World slaves if required!
After Sundayâs elections in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin may turn his attention westward toward Moldova, where Russia is sending spies, beaming in propagandaâand threatening economic strangulation. Itâs all part of an effort to help the Communists there defeat the Liberal Democratic government.
Russia already has 2,500 troops in Moldovaâs breakaway territory Transnistria. But Moscow is also looking to take control of the rest of country by influencing the upcoming November elections, which could topple the current Western-friendly governmentâand replace it with political parties infiltrated and aligned with Moscow. Ever since the Russian successes in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Russian interference has only grown; the flow of Russian intelligence forces into Moldova is going up, according to the recently departed prime minister, who is in Washington this week to ask for help.
After five years of the federal government telling the public that despite a $3.5 trillion increase in monetary expansion, the inflation rate is below +2%, the Department of Agriculture (DOA) just warned the American public that the consumer price index for food is up by 10% this year.
The DOA tried to blame food inflation on the drought conditions in California, but last year's drought was worse and food prices fell by -6%. The real problem is Federal Reserve monetary stimulus is stimulating inflation. I reported in "Food Price Inflation Scares the Fed" two months ago that commodity food costs were exploding on the upside. Given the lag in commodity costs impacting prices on grocery store shelves, annual U.S. food inflation is now running at +22% and rising.
#1
the Department of Agriculture (DOA) just warned the American public...
Hell, we've watched it and witnessed it for the last five years. When you're rich enough, it doesn't get your attention like the rest of the population the rubes. Makes you a little slow in paying attention cause you have others pick it up for you. Too busy cooking numbers for the Big Guy to concern yourself with reality outside the Beltway.
#2
It's all good. Barack is going to make you sick to your stomach, and Michelle will give you some nice brussel spouts.
You needed to lose weight anyway.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/27/2014 8:08 Comments ||
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#3
All according to the Progressive plan--make everyone beholden to the state and then provide food lines or in the modern version, food stamps.
#7
Yeah, hamburger is hitting $5 a pound for the fatty kinds, the lean ones hurt even more. Course the lefties think the rubes eat too much meat anyway, so it's okay if meat prices hit skyhigh, just like gas prices.
[Iran Press TV] At least 35 people have reportedly been killed as a truck carrying injured people was hit by a grenade in Ukraine's eastern city of Donetsk.
The truck was attacked on Monday while intense fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine as government air and ground forces assaulted pro-Russian protesters.
The fighting erupted after gunnies who identified themselves as representatives of the Donetsk People's Republic seized the Sergei Prokofiev International Airport.
According to Donetsk's Governor Pavel Gubarev, a rocket propelled grenade hit the truck, marked as an ambulance, which was transporting injured people from the airport.
A Ukrainian security official confirmed that fighter aircraft started targeting positions of pro-Russia protesters in the airport on Monday, with two Sukhoi Su-25 jets carrying out strafing runs.
At least one person was also killed during festivities at Donetsk's main train station, and two people were reportedly killed in Slavyansk as government helicopter gunships attacked residential areas.
Reports say the fighting in Donetsk is still going on around the airport and the railway station.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Protesters? Yeah, Right! Trained, armed and paid by Putin. Though collateral damage is likely.
We might be seeing the end of an era of relatively moderate, centrist politics in major American cities, as teacher unions, minorities and more left wing activists flex their muscles in places like New York, Newark and now Chicago.
This poses questions for the Democratic party nationally. If highly-visible urban Democratic centers are moving sharply to the left while the rest of the country looks on in displeasure, it will be harder for national leaders to straddle the divide between left urban grassroots and the suburban and centrist voters (not to mention the Wall Street money) needed to prevail in national contests.
From a commenter at the AI site: Which major cities is the intern referring to that are "moderate and centrist"?
#1
Wishful thinking. The entire political system is predicated upon drawing the lower income (dependency) over the middle income (producers) for the retention of power which instead of seeking an equilibrium seeks dominance. Voila! You get more of what you subsidize. You get less of what you punish.
#2
Which major cities is the intern referring to that are "moderate and centrist"? Certainly not the large blue cities. If there were a swing towards sanity, it would only last through the next election and then back to corruptacracy (normal).
#3
[The modern Democrat party] was built by Martin Van Buren with the purpose of gaining power without being tied down to principles or ideals in order to avoiding the brewing Civil War over the institution of slavery. Source: Wikipedia.
The Donks are staying true to their origins; no principles or ideals.
[Dhaka Tribune] Ten days after his right-wing party won the first electoral majority in three decades, the 63-year-old former tea boy took the oath of office
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Pakistain launched a fresh polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... vaccination drive in its restive tribal belt Monday, but officials warned that nearly 370,000 children are likely to miss out because of security problems.
At the start of May, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global "public health emergency" after new polio cases began surfacing and spreading across borders from countries including Pakistain.
Pakistain's seven semi-autonomous tribal areas along the Afghan border are the epicentre of the country's polio cases and the government has set up checkpoints to ensure anyone leaving the belt is immunised.
A three-day vaccination drive began on Monday in four tribal areas, a senior government official in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. , the region's main city, told news hounds, with more than 620,000 youngsters on course to receive polio drops.
But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... , warned that children in three of the four targeted areas "would not be able to receive polio drops because of the militancy and opposition to the immunisation".
Violence has badly hampered the campaign to stamp out polio in Pakistain, where bad boy groups with strongholds in tribal areas, including the Pak Taliban, see vaccination campaigns as a cover for espionage.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
So they die, proves Muslims are wrong.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/27/2014 3:51 Comments ||
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Chinas BeiDou will accelerate the pace of its development, even as the worlds other three GNSS systems are experiencing delays and difficulties, according to speakers in the opening session of the China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC 2014) today (May 21) in Nanjing.
Ran Chengqi, director of the China Satellite Navigation Office, announced that with the launch of a new generation of satellites beginning next year, BeiDou expects to complete its planned Phase III several years ahead of schedule by 2017 rather than 2020.
The faster completion of Chinas GNSS seems less surprising in the context of its rapid development of its ground and space segment since announcing BeiDou in 2007.
Meanwhile, launch of the first GPS III satellite with the L1C signal will not occur until 2016,
GPS Block IIF's should hold down the fort till then.
and completion of the next-generation operational control segment (OCX) is now slated for 2017, a couple of years later than originally planned. OCS handles the block IIF birds so again, no biggie. BTW, I wonder how that JPL Kaliman Filter is working out for OCX.
And Galileo has reduced its expectations for launch of its full operational capability (FOC) satellites to four by the end of this year, with the first launch date slipping from June to August and the second now expected in the November/December timeframe.
In a brief update on Russias GNSS, Sergey Karutin, head of the GLONASS PNT Information and Analysis Center, said GLONASS an interface control document (ICD) will be published this year describing the full family of CDMA signals in all three [frequency] bands that will be broadcast as part of the systems modernization. One of those bands will be centered at the same 1572.42 MHz slot as GPS L1, Galileo E1, and Phase III BeiDou B1, while the legacy FDMA signals will continue in a relatively wide swath of spectrum at 1602 MHz and higher.
The second GLONASS K1 satellite will launch before the end of this year and the first of the K2 generation that will transmit the CDMA signals is now in production, Karutin said.
David Turner, deputy director of the U.S. State Departments Office of Space and Advanced Technology, reported that the United States and China had established a bilateral working group on GNSS cooperation as one of the outcomes of a meeting of delegations from the two countries in Beijing on Monday (May 19, 2014). The working group will address such issues as civil service provision issues such as interoperability, service monitoring, interference detection, spectrum protection, and civil aviation applications.
The Atlas V--always the less expensive of ULA's fleet (partly owing to the Russian engine sourcing), the most competitive in the commercial market, and the nearest peer to Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) new Falcon family--is effectively over, an industry source says. This longtime player in the space industry preferred talking on background. The convergence of a Russian threat to cut off RD-180 supply, SpaceX's impending certification to compete with the Falcon 9v1.1 and the lawsuit filed by SpaceX April 28 claiming ULA's sole-source deal with the U.S. Air Force was anticompetitive has put so much pressure on the Atlas V that it is unlikely to survive, the source says.
If Atlas V goes away, the industry source says, the U.S. could eventually be left with a SpaceX/Falcon and ULA/Delta IV fleet for assured access.
The problem is the latter's high cost, due in part to Boeing's decision to build the RS-68 LOx/hydrogen first stage during its development, and to a lower volume of launches than hoped. This would trigger a need for a new rocket and, thus, a new engine to fulfill the assured access policy--the very engine recently garnering such swift support.
The "Mitchell Commission," led by Air Force Maj. Gen. (ret.) Howard Mitchell, a longtime Air Force space insider who is now a vice president at the Aerospace Corp., is backing the idea of a new liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon engine. And so is Shelton. "I would love to see us produce an engine; our industrial base has kind of withered," Shelton said at the Space Symposium. "Personally, what I would like to see us pursue is hydrocarbon boost," Shelton says. "I don't think LOx/kerosene is the way to go. Certainly LOx/hydrogen is a thing of the past." LOx/hydrogen requires big tanks owing to its low density and cryogenics, yet it is highly energetic. Kerosene is more dense, like a liquid, but not as effective. Engineers are now exploring whether methane--with qualities between the two--can balance these trades. It can be located on the rocket adjacent to the LOx tanks and is expected to produce good thrust, but work remains to make the technology operational.
Shelton says a new engine project is apt to be only slightly more expensive than the $800 million it would cost to establish U.S. RD-180 production.
#2
Just a for-instance... we used to produce the RL-10 (which is on the upper stage of both the Delta and Atlas) for much less money than it costs today. WE could try producing it for the original price, and maybe also try to make the RS-68 more cheaply.
#3
ULA is a duopoly and hence not conducive to competition. A competitive marketplace will always produce a better, more cost effective product than a monopoly. Just look at the VA.
I have no doubt that if Boeing and LMCO were allowed to compete, better products would be the result.
#5
Part of the problem is that a VP of Boeing's was caught doing some unethical stuff with a bunch of Lockheed's cost estimate stuff, so as "punishment" of Boeing and its own nose they decided to give most of the EELV contract to Lockheed, so that Atlas got economy of scale but Delta didn't, since the Delta was only kept around for those use cases that Lockheed couldn't fulfill because they didn't build an Atlas V heavy the way they said they would.
(There seemed to be a recurring pattern of Lockheed being allowed to violate the contract rules but Boeing not being allowed the same leeway over the fifteen year or so length of the program).
#6
Basically, in response to real misconduct the Air Force cut off its nose to spite its face, and said Boeing couldn't be competitive anymore, only Lockheed could, which Lockheed used as leverage to get ULA off the ground.
Their position is stronger than ever. They've got the Contract, they've gotten everyone to ignore that they've outsourced the engine to Russia, they just can't build any more rockets.
#7
This is what Boeing has to beat in a new rocket engine design.
The Merlin 1D has a vacuum thrust-to-weight ratio exceeding 150.
The pintle-style injector at the heart of Merlin was first used in the Apollo program for the lunar module landing engine, one of the most critical phases of the mission.
Propellant is fed via a single-shaft, dual-impeller turbopump operating on a gas generator cycle. The turbopump also provides the high pressure kerosene for the hydraulic actuators, which then recycles into the low-pressure inlet. This design approach eliminates the need for a separate hydraulic power system and means that thrust vector control failure by running out of hydraulic fluid is not possible. A third use of the turbopump is to provide roll control by actuating the turbine exhaust nozzle (on the second-stage engine).
Combining three functions into one device that can be verified as functioning before the vehicle is allowed to lift off provides a significant improvement in system-level reliability.
#8
Part of the problem is that a VP of Boeing's was caught doing some unethical stuff with a bunch of Lockheed's cost estimate stuff
I recall when that happened. I was still tangentially involved in the biz. The military holds the top commander responsible for lapses in the chain of command. The top commander picks the sub-commanders and is responsible for the consequences of that choice.
Somebody at Boeing put that VP into that job. Of course the people at the bottom who were doing their best also suffer the consequences and that isn't fair. But actions have consequences which is a lesson I continually try to teach my kids.
#9
The problem is the Air Force doesn't understand the concept of Free Markets and Capitalism even though they are sworn to defend the USA. They are much more comfortable with Fascist or Socialist state industries where of course it is right and proper that they should be giving good jobs at after working hand in glove with them to create the captive markets.
SpaceX told the Air Force procurement officer to take a hike when he asked for a job before granting the contract. Next he went to PWR who imports the Russian engines and they said "Glad to have you aboard and thanks on the side for the bulk buy contract."
Somebody needs to remind the military what system they are defending. It's not Nazi system and not a Soviet one.
#10
For Nasa it's just as much of a problem. For so many years their guiding light was a real wunderkind NAZI of Hitler's. That's got to twist a few organizational standard behaviors.
A billionaire businessman has been executed in Iran for his part in a $2.6 billion state bank scam following the largest fraud case since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, also known as Amir Mansour Aria, was put to death at Evin prison, just north of the capital, Tehran, according to Iran's state television. The execution came after Iran's Supreme Court upheld his death sentence, but Khosravi's lawyer, Gholam Ali Riahi, claimed it was done in secret, and he was not given any notice his client's death.
The fraud involved using forged documents to get credit at one of Iran's top financial institutions, Bank Saderat, and dated back to 2007. The credit was then used to purchase assets including state-owned companies such as major steel producer Khuzestan Steel Company.
According to Iranian media reports, the bank fraud began in 2007. A total of 39 defendants were convicted in the case. Four received death sentences, two got life sentences and the rest received sentences of up to 25 years in prison.
The trials raised questions about corruption at senior levels in Iran's tightly controlled economy during the administration of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Mahmoud Reza Khavari, a former head of Bank Melli, another major Iranian bank, escaped to Canada in 2011 after he resigned over the case. He faces charges over the case in Iran and remains on the Islamic Republic's wanted list. Khavari previously admitted that his bank partially was involved in the fraud, but has maintained his innocence.
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.
[An Nahar] Two members of the all-female Japanese pop group AKB48 and one staffer have been injured by a saw-wielding man at a fan event.
[The Peninsula] Competitors tumbled down Coopers Hill in pursuit of a round Double Gloucester cheese during the annual 'Cheese Rolling and Wake' near the village of Brockworth near Gloucester in western England yesterday. With a disputed history dating back to at least the 1800s, the annual Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling involves hordes of fearless competitors chasing an eight-pound Double Gloucester cheese down a steep hill. The winner of the race down the hill wins the cheese.
David Cameron
After five years of the federal government telling the public that despite a $3.5 trillion increase in monetary expansion, the inflation rate is below +2%, the Department of Agriculture (DOA) just warned the American public that the consumer price index for food is up by 10% this year. 
[DAWN] Pakistain launched a fresh 
Chinas BeiDou will accelerate the pace of its development, even as the worlds other three GNSS systems are experiencing delays and difficulties, according to speakers in the opening session of the China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC 2014) today (May 21) in Nanjing.
The Atlas V--always the less expensive of ULA's fleet (partly owing to the Russian engine sourcing), the most competitive in the commercial market, and the nearest peer to Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) new Falcon family--is effectively over, an industry source says. This longtime player in the space industry preferred talking on background. The convergence of a Russian threat to cut off RD-180 supply, SpaceX's impending certification to compete with the Falcon 9v1.1 and the lawsuit filed by SpaceX April 28 claiming ULA's sole-source deal with the U.S. Air Force was anticompetitive has put so much pressure on the Atlas V that it is unlikely to survive, the source says.
A billionaire businessman has been executed in Iran for his part in a $2.6 billion state bank scam following the largest fraud case since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
