[CNN] Seventy-five years after its last bombing run in World War II, the newly restored Memphis Belle is on display at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Ohio. The B-17F bomber was unveiled Wednesday at a private event honoring family members of the Memphis Belle crew. The airplane and displays of artifacts, including wartime uniforms, a flight suit, pilot wings and rare color archival footage, will be open to the public Thursday at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, the museum website says. The Memphis Belle returned to the United States after completing 25 combat flights over Nazi-occupied Europe, according to the museum. Its final mission was on May 17, 1943.
#4
...Just got back to my hotel room after spending the day there at the NMUSAF. Belle looks amazing, and the way they have her displayed, vandalism isn't much of a problem. (She's about ten feet in the air.)
Best part was when the B-17s flew in this morning, escorted by 6 P-51s....and followed by Air Force One, which spent a couple hours shooting touch-and-goes on the main base runways. (The museum is on the old Wright Field part of the base; the runways and flightline are on the Patterson side.) People were cheering for the Belle, but you should heard them cheer for AF1.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/17/2018 16:00 Comments ||
Top||
#5
People were cheering for the Belle, but you should heard them cheer for AF1.
Thanks Mike! Nicely done. My eyes are watering. Must be the Georgia humidity.
#4
Search Results -
Between 2015 and 2016, US median household income rose 3.2% from $57,230 to $59,039, according to a new report released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday.Sep 12, 2017
[GOLF] Since May 3, residents of Hawaii's Big Island have been struggling with the fallout from the recent and ongoing eruption of the Kilauea volcano. But that didn't stop a group of golfers from playing a few holes on Tuesday.
Photographer Mario Tama captured images of two men playing golf in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park with the massive ash plumes from Kilauea rising behind them, which you can see below.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The US Department of State will likely increase the cost of the helicopter trip for the US officials in Kabul from $1,350 to $2,250 for the 3 miles trip from the US Embassy in Kabul to the international airport in Kabul, it has been reported.
The State Department, which contracts with DynCorp International Inc. to provide flights from the embassy in Kabul for U.S. civilian aid workers and well as personnel from the Treasury Department, FBI and other agencies, is proposing to increase the cost of the trip to about $2,250 next year, up from $1,350 currently, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The US Specia Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko has said the proposed surge in cost is more than the $1,850 economy class round trip ticket from to Kabul to Washington on Emirates Airline.
Word of the fare hike came in a note from the State Department earlier this month, according to a spokesman for the watchdog office. One-way rates are up from $300 in fiscal 2016, the SIGAR spokesman has reportedly said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
... There's a wonderful 'Wizard of Id' cartoon from the era of $6K toilet seats that captures the proper response for this sort of thing - when faced with a guy who charged thousands for a simple hand tool, the king says, "Let HIM go - bring me the guy who wrote the check."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/17/2018 6:34 Comments ||
Top||
#2
It's not the toilet seat, it's the testing. Spectroscopic color check, CAT scan every hundredth for void, etc.
In this case $2,250 might not be bad for the pucker run.
[DAWN] US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... sounded a note of caution Wednesday about his much-vaunted summit with Kim Pudge Jong-un ...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished... , saying "we'll see" after Pyongyang threatened to cancel.
Trump said the US government had not received any official word of a change in plans for the June 12 meeting in Singapore.
"We haven't been notified at all. We'll have to see," Trump said in the Oval Office.
"We haven't seen anything. We haven't heard anything. We will see what happens. Whatever it is, it is."
After weeks of warm words and diplomatic backslapping, Pyongyang abruptly threatened to pull out Tuesday, over US demands for "unilateral nuclear abandonment."
In an angrily worded statement, the North warned "if the US is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue."
The statement was attributed to first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan and carried by state media KCNA.
In that case, he added, Pyongyang would have to "reconsider" its participation at next month's summit in Singapore.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
[DAWN] SHEIKHUPURA: A man hacked his three children to death and did away with himself in a fit of frustration over his wife’s second marriage at Kotla Kahloun in Nankana Sahib on Tuesday. The second marriage would be bigamous, natch...
The wife of Sarfraz Mahmood, a factory worker, contracted second marriage and he along with police tried to trace the woman but in vain.
He hacked his 10-year-old son Muhammad Hussain and daughters Zainab, 7, and Shazia, 3, to death after detaining them in a room. Later, he also did away with himself using the same weapon.
The Saddar police reached the spot when informed about the incident by neighbours and started investigation.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11131 views]
Top|| File under:
[DAWN] The Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 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. High Court on Tuesday gave one more month to the officials of Dera Ismail Khan ... the Pearl of Pashtunistan ... police for arresting prime accused in a case of stripping a teenage girl and parading her naked in her village last year.
The development came as an official of the DI Khan police told a bench consisting of Chief Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Syed Afsar Shah that the force had made every effort to arrest the prime suspect, Sajawal, but to no avail.
The bench later fixed June 26 for the next hearing into the case asking Kulachi deputy superintendent of police Khalid Usman to ensure the arrest of the key suspect before that.
The DSP said eight of the nine accused had been enjugged ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... , while the police was going all-out to arrest the absconding accused, Sajawal, who criminal mastermind the crime.
He said the police had raided several places after receiving information about the presence of the accused but they didn’t find him there.
The computerised national identity card (CNIC) of the accused has already been blocked by Nadra, while his name has been placed on the exit control list.
On Nov 22, a high court bench headed by the chief justice had disposed of a petition filed by the alleged victim of stripping, asking the IGP to submit progress report of the investigation to the PHC’s Human Rights Cell director for the perusal of the chief justice.
In the petition, the girl had made several prayers to the court seeking protection, recovery of film of the incident allegedly made by a local resident, and the arrest of prime accused Sajawal.
So far, the police have claimed that no evidence could be found that a local resident Rehmatullah had recorded the incident on cellular phone.
The girl had claimed that around two years ago, the prime suspect had blamed her brother for handing over a cellphone to a female member of their family and despite his denial on oath, the panchayat (jirga)had ordered her brother to pay a fine of Rs300,000 to them.
She added that despite the decision of the panchayat, the accused led by Sajawal had paraded her naked in the village on Oct 27, 2017.
In her statement recorded with the magistrate, she had stated that she had gone in the morning to fetch water from a pond along with some other women and while returning back the nine accused persons forcibly ripped apart her clothes. She said that when the accompanying women tried to give a shawl to cover herself, the accused threw it away.
She said initially, the local police didn’t cooperate with his family members and even refused to register FIR but did it only after the local people protested.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[DAWN] The Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Assembly on Wednesday passed the Punjab Witness Protection Bill 2018 which aims to protect witnesses in criminal proceedings, including sexual offences and terrorism-related crimes, and ensure effective and speedy disposal of trials.
According to the bill, the government would create a Witness Protection Board ‐ to formulate policy and supervise its implementation ‐ and two witness protection units relating to offences of terrorism and other serious offences, respectively.
The units would assess whether a victim, witness or any other person related to the case requires protection and would be able to ensure their lodging at a safe house, temporary or permanent relocation, change of identity, concealment of identity for criminal proceedings as well as provision of financial assistance if they are "unable to undertake regular employment or when his freedom of movement is severely curtailed".
According to the bill, the examination of witnesses would become possible via video link or in-camera while their anonymity would also be maintained if need be.
It also stipulates rules for reporting of sexual offences and terrorism-related offences, and says that the identity of a "person connected with an offence of terrorism or a sexual offence" or their family members would not be reported in print, electronic or any other media if they are minors or if the court feels that it would affect the quality or voluntariness of evidence in the case.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
China launched its first privately developed rocket from a launchpad in northwestern China on Thursday, state media said, the latest milestone in the country's ambitious space exploration program.
Since coming to office in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has made becoming a "space flight superpower" a top priority for the Chinese government, which has a goal of sending a permanent manned space station into orbit by around 2022.
The launch of the "Chongqing Liangjiang Star" rocket, developed by OneSpace Technology, a Beijing-based private firm, marks the first time a non-state Chinese rocket has successfully entered orbit, the official Xinhua news agency said.
#4
I actually agree with the point Magpie's trying to make, as in I don't think "large technology" companies in China are really private, but they seem to have a balance of private/public ownership that works, unlike the United States, where you theoretically own your company, but (and even more so for a lot of publically traded companies) the law requires you to micromanage everything like a sociopath with amnesia and put everything out to bid and get victimized by the lowest bidder that's best at gaming the system.
So yeah, they're corrupt and authoritarian, and Marx and all that, but for a lot of industrial sectors they're doing better at it than SovietAmerica.Com is.
And SovietAmerica.Com has its own bubble areas. Watch as Elon Musk throws away the fortune he makes from SpaceX while he throws away the chance to make Tesla profitable because he's gong to attempt to make a self-driving car in incremental fashion and then proceed to get the company kicked off of NTSB investigations.
#2
I have always thought it ironic that more people recognize the name Chernobyl than Sayano–Shushenskaya (dam power station accident) or Ufa (natural gas pipeline accident), both of which killed more Russians than Chernobyl.
[RedState] A report coming out of Illinois states that a would-be school shooter — a former student at Dixon High School — was stopped in his tracks by an armed school resource officer, who shot the perpetrator in the shoulder and likely saved countless lives.
#2
Always beware when someone says they can an existing device work cheaper. It requires removing some function, somewhere.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/17/2018 9:02 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Many "first of their kind" tend to be over-priced disasters that quietly rust away into oblivion. Innovating doesn't necessarily mean it will be a good idea as seen with 20/20 hindsight.
There have been some innovations that, well, faded away. The Swedes had the 'S-Tank' that pie shaped tank destroyer that they have quietly walked away from. The French had the AMX-30 that has quietly disappeared -- it had a novel anti-tank round that became irrelevant when the British developed Chobham Armor. And so it goes...
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.
[DAWN] US President 
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 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.
