[THESMOKINGGUN] A South Carolina woman told police yesterday that her former boyfriend stole her "Obama phone" during a confrontation yesterday morning, according to an incident report.
Tasha Mallory, 29, said that she was on her phone when Desmond Ty'Quan Gray, 22, "entered her apartment uninvited" Monday morning and "began to ask her who she was on the phone with." Mallory and Gray "are not dating but have one child in common," cops noted.
According to Mallory, Gray tried to grab her phone, but she held it close to her chest "so Mr. Gray could not get to it." Gray, Mallory alleged, then pushed her to the floor, bit her shoulder, and scratched her arm. He also allegedly wrested her phone away and then fled the residence in a green vehicle.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/29/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Is the theft of something stolen from U.S. taxpayers actually a theft ?
[ONLINE.WSJ] Lowe's Cos. is introducing robotic shopping assistants at an Orchard Supply Hardware store in San Jose, Calif., in late November. Lowe's, which acquired Orchard Supply last year, says this is the first retail robot of its kind in the U.S.
The OSHbot will greet customers, ask if they need help and guide them through the store to the product. Besides natural-language-processing technology, the 5-foot tall white robot houses two large rectangular screens--front and back--for video conferences with a store expert and to display in-store specials. The head features a 3-D scanner to help customers identify items. OSHbot speaks English and Spanish, but other languages will be added.
OSHbot, co-created by Lowe's and startup Fellow Robots, is "solving a big problem," said Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe's Innovation Labs. It is a way to bring more shopping convenience and some of the benefits of e-commerce into a physical store. The company will have two robots working, he said.
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10/29/2014 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/29/2014 6:38 Comments ||
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#4
It was inevitable. Have you ever tried to find a human employee in a Lowe's?
Now, if the robots actually know how to find what you're looking for when you don't know what to call it. Or will be capable of helping me sort out 2 dozen straight pressure treated 16' 2X6's. (See what I mean?)
Posted by: ed in texas ||
10/29/2014 7:59 Comments ||
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#5
ed i T, don't know about Texas but here in central Mass Lowe's employees are not only easy to find but very knowledgeable and helpful. Now, since I'm retired I'm not going in on a weekend so that maybe why, but it really isn't bad at all.
One question though. Do you really have 2 dozen straight 2x6s in one store??????
Brilliant piece by James Hamblin in The Atlantic. Worth reading the whole thing. Here are some highlights
"I want to be pleasant through this whole thing," California Representative Darrell Issa said on Friday, unpleasantly, to a panel of medical experts at a congressional oversight-committee hearing. "But," he continued, scolding from his perch, "we have the head of CDC--supposed to be the expert--and he's made statements that simply aren't true."
During the tense four-hour session, the subcommittee challenged almost every element of the United States' response to its domestic Ebola cases so far. Most pointedly, chairman Issa criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's messages to the public.
"Doctor," Issa said, turning slightly to address Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Nicole Lurie, "You can get Ebola sitting next to someone on a bus if they, in fact, throw up on you, can't you? That's reasonable?"
Lurie responded deliberately, after a brief pause, "The way you get Ebola is by exposure to bodily fluids, yes."
This week I received a "monograph" for review from an unlikely, politically removed scientist. It was plainly titled "Summary of Ebola Virus Disease," and written in exhaustive scientific detail. The author was Steven Hatfill. national hero
If the name rings a bell--I don't want to dwell on this, but it's germane to the context of his perspective I'm sharing here--it's because he was very publicly, very falsely accused of killing several people with anthrax in 2001.
One of the oddest things about the whole ordeal was that Hatfill knows relatively little about anthrax. Even though he was touted as an international expert with unique access and knowledge to the bacterium, he has always been primarily a student of deadly viruses. What he does know, at a depth that can rival any scientist's knowledge, is Ebola.
For one objection, Hatfill wants it known that, while it must be emphasized that airborne droplet and particle transmission between humans has not been evident in this outbreak, aerosol droplet transmission of Ebola virus has been shown in animal studies. "It is therefore irresponsible for government health officials to emphatically state that aerosol transmission does not occur," he writes. He also believes the argument against a national quarantine is "inexcusable in light of the size of the current West African epidemic."
There was one other Ebola outbreak in the United States, for which the country was well prepared. It happened in 1990, when a shipment of macaque monkeys from the Philippines fell ill in the laboratories of Hazelton Research Products in Reston, Virginia. The company sent tissue samples from the animals to nearby Fort Detrick, where tests showed antibodies to Ebola virus. The macaques were evacuated to Fort Detrick by its highly trained Aeromedical Isolation Team. There they were euthanized and studied. No humans there contracted the virus, despite handling the extremely contagious tissue.
Now infected materials have to be transported by a medical-waste company. That facility at Fort Detrick was the quintessential Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) containment lab. But it was shuttered in 2010, a casualty of what Hatfill understands to be imprudent budgetary cuts. The World Health Organization classifies the Ebola virus in the highest-risk category of infectious pathogens, Risk Group 4, denoting that infected people should be handled with BSL-4 precautions. But since its outbreak in the United States, Ebola guidelines from the CDC have treated the virus under the much less stringent BSL-3.
Many of the deadly emerging RNA viruses arise, as Hatfill makes clear in his work, from biodiversity hotspots--regions that house at least 1,500 species of vascular plants and have lost at least 70 percent of their vegetation. These biodiversity hotspots are home to more than half of the world's plant and non-fish animal species, as well as more than a billion of the world's poorest people. The regions also involve more than 90 percent of recent armed conflict. Refugees hunt for meat and build remote encampments, increasing pressure on local resources and interfering with wildlife, drawing people into the line of fire between the viruses and their animal reservoirs. And so it is there that Hatfill believes efforts to manage inevitable future outbreaks must focus.
Hamblin: So you're saying there is at least some evidence that a person could brush up against someone and contract Ebola virus?
Hatfill: People have touched the bed of a patient and caught this, after the patient died and was removed. They brushed up against the bed and caught it. [Ed: Such a bed would need to be grossly contaminated, according to the vast majority of evidence.]
Hamblin: You write that as few as 10 Ebola virus particles could cause human infection, though that number needs more research. Everyone is sticking very hard to the message that unless you've come in contact with the bodily fluid—
Hatfill: Here's the problem. You don't want to panic everyone. And [the CDC leaders] were at a loss that their [preventive] procedures didn't work and this happened and the leadership were shocked. You don't want to panic people, but people aren't stupid. You see people wearing semi-space suits taking these patients into hospitals, and everyone's telling you there's no aerosol transmission.
So we're talking about viral shedding, and the question is, how much virus is being secreted from what sites, what fluids? There are a lot of unknowns. Most particularly, when does viral shedding start?
Hamblin: And what we're hearing most commonly is that it's around when a person develops a fever.
Hatfill: Well, 12.5 percent of patients don't run a fever. In that New England Journal of Medicine study, where they just looked at several thousand of these cases in West Africa, the lead author of the paper is adamant. He says, I sat there, I monitored this patient's temperature myself until they died and they never ran a fever.
Hamblin: Travel-ban opposition is largely based on the claim that it would impede our ability to help stem the epidemic in West Africa.
Hatfill: You know, I went for a Department of Defense interview years ago. They wanted a scientist down at the Pentagon that could invent stuff that would support presidential policy. They just wanted a spokesperson that could kind of come up with a plausible explanation to explain a higher-up directive. And I think this is the same thing.
#3
Steven Hatfill fell out of favour with the U.S. Government during the anthrax investigations a few years back. His prior associations in South Africa made him a convenient target for Federal Law Enforcement. Everyone knows white, male, virologists and bio-weapons expert in Africa had to be up to no good.
#4
Focusing on Hatfill also let them ignore the evidence of a foreign source.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
10/29/2014 12:17 Comments ||
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#5
Per this article at the NEJM this week, 10% of fatal cases, and about 12% of non-fatal cases, of Ebola virus infection do not demonstrate a fever. See figure 2.
That fact alone means people who have been exposed need to be isolated: they may not run a fever.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/29/2014 17:09 Comments ||
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#6
I think aerosol transmission is a bit of a red herring.
It's persistence on surfaces that is the big unknown.
#7
glad everyone liked this article. It really is a cracker. Makes me so angry when government and compliant media sanctimoniously push "happy lies" on the people, telling themselves it is justified to prevent a panic. When people are not panicking! It is necessary to have an adjustment period where you talk about and make changes to accommodate the new threat. if you don't prepare properly and make the right choices, chances are you could die. The Kenyans aren't silly.
#8
To me, one of the greatest concerns is as follows:
FTA "The World Health Organization classifies the Ebola virus in the highest-risk category of infectious pathogens, Risk Group 4, denoting that infected people should be handled with BSL-4 precautions. But since its outbreak in the United States, Ebola guidelines from the CDC have treated the virus under the much less stringent BSL-3."
[Wash Times] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which has been downplaying the contagious aspects of Ebola — has now quietly admitted via a poster on its website that the virus can in fact be spread by sneezes.
"Drops spread happens when germs traveling inside droplets that are coughed or sneezed from a sick person enter the eyes, nose or mouth of another person," the poster reads, the New York Post reported.
But this is a far cry from what the CDC has previously insisted, said Meryl Nass, with the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington, D.C., the New York Post said.
"The CDC said it doesn't spread at all by air — then Friday they came out with this poster," she said, the newspaper reported. "They admit that these particles or droplets may land on objects such as doorknobs and that Ebola can be transmitted that way."
Ms. Nass also said: "If you are sniffling and sneezing, you produce microorganisms that can get on stuff in a room. If people touch them, they could be [infected]," the New York Post reported.
And it's not like the germs in the droplets don't have staying power.
Rossi Hassad, a professor of epidemiology at Mercy College, said the droplets could stay active for a day, the New York Post reported.
"A shorter duration for dry surfaces like a table or doorknob and longer durations in a moist, damp environment," he said, the newspaper reported.
Get your flu shot (so you don't show up at the emergency room with symptoms that look like Ebola), wash your hands with soap every two hours or so, and don't touch your T-zone to reduce chances of transmission.
#3
A fomes (pronounced /ˈfoʊmiːz/) or fomite (/ˈfoʊmaɪt/) is any object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms, such as germs or parasites, and hence transferring them from one individual to another. Skin cells, hair, clothing, and bedding are common hospital sources of contamination.
Fomite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FomiteWikipedia
#4
good one, Besoeker. Good article - shows Mr Hatton was RIGHT.
I wonder when the apology is coming
Good advice too Besoeker to which I add: if you must fly, wear a pair of cotton gloves to prevent you touching a surface then touching your eyes, nose and mouth.
Wear them from the time you get in the cab to the time you get out of the cab at the other side. Then throw them in the bin, immediately disinfect your hands.
That should help.
Do the same when shopping/going to public places once ebola hits our shores (which is inevitable eventually)
[Wash Times] The State Department has quietly made plans to bring Ebola-infected doctors and medical aides to the U.S. for treatment, according to an internal department document that argued the only way to get other countries to send medical teams to West Africa is to promise that the U.S. will be the world’s medical backstop.
they ditch the isolation transport unit back in 2010
all that expertise is lost.
now they try to build a new one from scratch on the fly - which you just can't replace decades of expertise and training from thin air like that
but worse - they will use it to bring the rest of the world to the US
You should be out on the streets with pitchforks. That just isn't right.
Look: the rest of the world will NOT thank you for helping. They will only blame you more when the experimental vaccine fails or when black people die in US hospitals they'll say they were killed or some equally stupid paranoid fantasy
[AnNahar] The Red Thingy said Tuesday the weekly total of Ebola victims collected by its body disposal teams around the Liberian capital is falling dramatically, indicating a sharp drop in the spread of the epidemic.
The announcement appears at odds with an assessment by the World Health Organization (WHO), which said last week transmission "remains intense" in the capitals of Liberia and neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Fayah Tamba, head of the Liberian Red Thingy, said his workers collected 117 bodies last week from Montserrado county, which includes Monrovia -- a drop of almost two-thirds from the high of 315 from September 15 to 21.
"I am sure you don't need a rocket scientist to tell you that the cases are dropping," he told private radio station Sky FM.
Montserrado county, which accounts for more than a quarter of Liberia's population of around four million, now sees the vast majority of new cases and deaths.
"What does this mean for us? It is very important, for all of us, that while it is true that these numbers are reducing, we want to use this time to call on every one of us to remain very engaged because Ebola is still in Liberia.
"We should not be complacent too early and start to celebrate because we still have this enemy in our corridors."
Tamba gave week-by-week figures for collections which rise quickly from 60 on August 3 -- but the weeks after the September peak show a consistent decline.
His conclusions jar with the WHO's update on the crisis on October 22, which reported that case numbers "continue to be under-reported, especially from the Liberian capital Monrovia".
Liberia has been worst hit by the outbreak, with 4,665 recorded cases and 2,705 deaths, according to the WHO, relying on figures however which are now 10 days out-of-date.
Liberia confirmed its first two Ebola cases at the end of March, but the outbreak was largely confined to the northern area bordering Guinea during the first few months of the crisis, until an kaboom of cases in and around Monrovia.
Montserrado county, which accounts for more than a quarter of Liberia's population of around four million, now sees the vast majority of new cases and deaths.
#1
This could be how the outbreak slows down & eventually comes to halt, unless there is some huge collection of sick Ebola patients that is being kept secret. All along the reported numbers of affected patients in the Hot Zone have been very, very doubtful.
#3
Hmmm, burned itself out,did it, so much for the hysterical screaming by the newspapers, which you WON'T hear about.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/29/2014 6:31 Comments ||
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#4
I'm sure the WHO will be screaming for at least one more donation drive today
Posted by: chris ||
10/29/2014 6:50 Comments ||
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#5
Red Cross: Huge Drop in Ebola Bodies across Liberian Capital
Hopefully they're not getting up at night and walking away. We've seen that movie before. We have our own Day of the Living Dead celebrated on 4 November.
#8
we see the same kind of declines in remoter places That's the big unknown in the Hot Zone. Expect we will learn later about depopulated rural regions as the investigation continues.
#11
correct chris the WHO are in fact screaming for US$260 million to put on top of their US $4.27 billion annual budget
which they didn't use to stop ebola back in february when it was just one village in guinea
plus they never advised travel restrictions as it spread through 8 countries because their political masters in government in guinea, liberia and SL told them not to because it would harm the economy
#12
thanks John QC i only just discovered that new WHO disease update notification on reddit. Previously I'd been checking the website where they posted all their updates.... and that ceased august 27
#13
there is another reason it's slowing. Read that WHO report John QC linked to. The statistics artificially spiked last time they gathered them as it was more methodical and caught a heap of hidden cases. That's why it would look like it's going down this time as they are just working off a base that spiked artificially. My bet is it's still grinding on the same as ever. 150% increase every 2 weeks
[DAWN] KARACHI: Naegleria fowleri, better known as the 'brain-eating' amoeba, killed another young man at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) on Monday bringing the total number of deaths from the lethal disease to 13 in the city this year, officials said.
Officials said the young man had been shifted to the JPMC from a private hospital because his family could no longer bear exorbitant charges of the healthcare facility.
"Twenty-four-year-old Mohammad Shakeel was admitted to the neurology department a day ago in a precarious condition and he died this evening," said Dr Seemin Jamali, joint executive director of the JPMC, while speaking to Dawn.
She said the young man was a tailor by profession and resident of Orangi Town.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/29/2014 00:00 ||
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Naegleria fowleri is everywhere, folks. If you jump into warm fresh water, pinch your nostrils closed.
[DAWN] RAWALPINDI: A female dengue patient died at the Holy Family Hospital (HFH) in the wee hours of Monday. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... the hospital administration claimed that the cause of death was not dengue.
Samina Bibi, aged 60, resident of New Phagwari in the garrison city, and her son were brought to hospital on Saturday. Her son's condition was stable but she did not survive.
"The patient was suffering from dengue and had other health problems including blood pressure, diabetes and cardiac trouble. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... she was suffering from fever and got treatment from some private hospitals," said a doctor at Holy Family Hospital.
When contacted, Holy Family Hospital Medical Superintendent Dr Arshad Ali Sabir confirmed that the patient was suffering from dengue. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... he said that dengue was not main cause of death.
"She arrived in the hospital with high blood pressure and her heart beat was not in control. Her dengue test was positive," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/29/2014 00:00 ||
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A second Dallas nurse undergoing treatment for Ebola was released today from Emory University Hospital after doctors said she had been cured from the deadly virus. Nurse Amber Vinson, 29, was discharged after spending the last the last two weeks in Atlanta undergoing treatment in its biocontainment unit.
. The following items were found on a continuing medical site oriented to US physicians, from an Emory Hospital spokesman, 2 weeks ago:
American healthcare workers can safely treat patients with Ebola. That's one of the lessons learned from the care of patients treated at Atlanta's Emory University Hospital, according to Bruce Ribner, MD, ... medical director of the hospital's serious communicable diseases unit.
..."This is a virus which is well controlled with standard infection control measures that every hospital in the U.S. is capable of providing," he said.
However: A patient (not Dr. Brantley nor Nancy Writebol) was airlifted to the U.S. and admitted to Emory in early September, but Ribner said patient confidentiality rules forbid him from revealing any details of the case, or even confirming whether treatment is continuing. Does this mean there may be US Ebola patients currently being treated, but unknown to the general public and political leadership? Back in the days when quarantines were public information, patient confidentiality was minimal.
However: Dr. Ribner cautioned that until that epidemic is brought under control, more people with Ebola will appear in the developed world, including the U.S., he said, and there is "no way" a small number of select institutions, such as Emory, will be able to handle them. I remain unconvinced that, beyond a small number of select institutions, many US hospitals can duplicate the level of care delivered at Emory, should it become necessary.
However, Dr. Ribner disclosed some unexpected obstacles encountered by Emory up until 2 weeks ago.
While CDC recommendations suggest that lab tests for Ebola patients can be carried out safely using standard precautions, the reality was that a spill would mean having to shut down the main lab for decontamination. There was also a concern that few lab techs would be willing to work on such samples.
Instead of using Emory's main lab, Ribner said, the unit set up a satellite within the biocontainment unit and staffed it with volunteers from the main lab. What other hospitals are capable of this?
Outside the hospital, he said, they ran into difficulty shipping samples across town to the CDC. Such samples would be classed as Category A -- labelled as Ebola and packaged inside a rigid box with two watertight containers inside -- but even shippers certified to handle Category A specimens refused. How Emory got around this problem, was not discussed in the article.
while the CDC says wastes can be put in leak-proof containers and discarded as regulated medical waste, Emory's contractors refused to take it unless it was certified free of Ebola.
As a result, Ribner said, the hospital had to autoclave some 350 bags of medical waste, which then filled 218 boxes, before it could be taken away. Again, how many US hospitals have this capability?
The CDC also says sanitary sewers can be used for safe disposal of fluids from patients, but the local watershed authority threatened to cut the hospital's service if that method was used. Instead the hospital disinfected patients' liquid wastes with bleach or quaternary disinfecting detergents for at least 5 minutes before flushing.
What the CDC recommends, and what other people and other organizations are willing to put up with, as we have seen, can differ greatly.
#2
(Reuters) - Australia became the first developed country on Tuesday to shut its borders to citizens of the countries worst-hit by the West African Ebola outbreak, a move those states said stigmatized healthy people and would make it harder to fight the disease..."Anything that will dissuade foreign trained personnel from coming here to West Africa and joining us on the frontline to fight the fight would be very, very unfortunate," Anthony Banbury, head of the U.N. Ebola Emergency Response Mission (UNMEER), told Reuters in the Ghanaian capital Accra.
Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf urged Australia to reconsider its travel ban..."We desperately need international health workers ... They are really the key to this response,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.
World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim said the three worst hit countries needed 5,000 overseas health workers at any one time.
"Those health workers cannot work continuously: there needs to be a rotation. So we will need many thousands of health workers over the next months to a year in order to bring this epidemic under control," he said an African Union meeting in Ethiopia. "Right now, I am very much worried where we will find those health workers."
Kaci Hickox, who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone and shows no symptoms of the virus, agreed to refrain from going out in public for two days, said an attorney.
Early Tuesday evening, Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew noted at a hastily called news conference that the state has the authority to seek a court order to compel quarantine for individuals deemed a public health risk.
She did not address Hickox’s case directly, saying the state has not filed a court order.
Another attorney representing Hickox, New York civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, said she would contest any potential court order requiring her quarantine at home.
“The conditions that the state of Maine is now requiring Kaci to comply with are unconstitutional and illegal and there is no justification for the state of Maine to infringe on her liberty,” he said.
#4
US Nobelist in medicine comes out in support of NJ governor Christie's mandatory quarantine.
Dr. Bruce Beutler is currently the Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas — the first U.S. city to treat an Ebola patient and also the first to watch one die from the virus. Dr. Beutler, an American medical doctor and researcher, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2011 for his work researching the cellular subsystem of the body’s overall immune system. In an exclusive interview with NJ Advance Media, Beutler reviewed Christie’s new policy of mandatory quarantine for all health care workers exposed to Ebola, and declared: “I favor it.”
“Even if someone is asymptomatic you cannot rely on people to report themselves if they get a fever,” said Dr. Beutler, adding, “You can’t just depend on the goodwill of people to confine the disease like that – even healthcare workers. They behave very irresponsibly.”
#6
Kaci Hickox is a particularly arrogant obnoxious speshul snowflake. The rules and common couretsy don't apply to her
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/29/2014 15:43 Comments ||
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#7
Frank G - yes Kaci is a douche. But if the Govt reacts properly by legislating so quarantines can be enforced then she will have done us all a favour as an outrider before the storm hits. as long as governments get themselves moving in the right direction that is
[ARABNEWS] Russia's announcement that it will recognize separatist elections in eastern Ukraine "undermines" attempts to end a six-month war there, a senior Ukrainian foreign ministry official said Tuesday.
"Russia's intentions directly contradict the Minsk (peace) accord, undermine the agreed process on de-escalation and peaceful resolution, and continue to weaken trust in it (Russia) as a reliable international partner," the official, Dmytro Kuleba, said.
Pro-Russian separatist rebels in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine are holding the leadership election Sunday in an attempt to legitimize their de facto control of a swathe of territory.
Earlier Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said "we expect the elections will go ahead as agreed, and we will of course recognize the results." President Petro Poroshenko's front man lashed out, saying that the rebel election "will never be recognized by the civilized world." The polls in the self-declared rebel republics "put the entire grinding of the peace processor under threat," front man Svyatoslav Tsegolko said.
Moscow rejects accusations in Kiev and Western capitals that it is behind the armed uprising in Ukraine's industrial heartland in which some 3,700 people have been killed since April.
However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... the decision to lend legitimacy to the rebels' leadership vote was one of most overt acts of support so far for the two unrecognized "people's republics" that murderous Moslems are carving out in eastern Ukraine.
Senior Ukrainian foreign ministry official Dmytro Kuleba said Moscow was violating the peace deal it had itself sponsored in the Belarussian capital Minsk on September 5, ushering in an uneasy truce.
"Russia's intentions directly contradict the Minsk accord, undermine the agreed process on deescalation and peaceful resolution, and continue to weaken trust in it (Russia) as a reliable international partner," Kuleba said, calling the separatists "terrorists."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/29/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
I'm glad that somebody opposes the global Tranzi Jihad.
[Ynet] The US is stepping up security at government buildings in Washington and other major cities in response to "calls by terrorist organizations for attacks on the homeland and elsewhere," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Tuesday.
"Given world events, prudence dictates a heightened vigilance in the protection of US government installations and our personnel," Johnson said in a statement.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
10/29/2014 00:00 ||
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#2
Given their definition of terrorists, you're probably right Skid. I mean, they're obviously planning a massive & widespread election fraud, and prepare for a possible mass outrage.
#3
At the range yesterday checking zero on a scope. A couple of firing points down were a couple of fellows speaking non-Georgian, kitted out in the latest sharply pressed contractor cargo trousers, subdued T's and floppy bush hats. They fired SIGS on the 25 meter rifle zero (3 pistol ranges clearly open just 50m distant) using LE stance and holster draw shooting at a homemade steel plate target. I felt reasonably safe as only one of them was hitting it with any regularity.
A short while later, they produce a sniper drag bag and a scoped SIG 716 with sound suppressor to engage the 100m targets. This only lasted about 25 rounds. After policing up the homemade steel target, both saddled up in 'soccer mom' vans and departed leaving paper targets and brass.
Anyone working in a Federal building should feel very safe.
[Ynet] Chinese firm breaks ground on new private seaport in Ashdod, near existing state-owned facility, expected to handle large container ships.
A Chinese construction firm began construction of a new Israeli port on the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday, prompting a strike at Haifa docks further up the coast where the workers oppose the new competition.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's goverment, looking to break up the monopoly of two state-owned ports in Haifa and Ashdod through which nearly all exports and imports pass, recently approved creating private ports adjacent to the current ones.
The move, it says, will bring down the cost of goods across the board.
A subsidiary of China Harbour Engineering Co is building the 3.3 billion shekel ($876 million) port in Ashdod, which is due to be completed in 2020. The port's operator has not been chosen and the contract for Haifa has yet to be awarded.
The new ports will eventually be able to receive the large container ships that presently cannot dock in Israel.
Which means they'll also be able to take Israeli goods to, eg. Portland, where the protesters won't realize they need to be picketed.
As Prime Minister Netanyahu and senior ministers gathered at a groundbreaking ceremony in Ashdod, workers in Haifa left their posts â for the second time this month â complaining that the new competition would hurt their jobs.
They called on the government to reach a deal with unions about any moves it makes in the port sector.
"You have rights," Netanyahu said of the port workers in a speech. "But eight million Israeli citizens also have rights â the right to have competitive, modern, efficient port services."
Netanyahu said the project was a "further expression of the strengthening ties between Israel and China".
The port unions in Israel are known for frequently disrupting operations and a labor court usually orders the workers to return to their jobs within a day.
The Finance Ministry has also announced a three-year privatization plan for state-owned companies that calls for selling off the Ashdod port in 2015 and the Haifa port in 2016.
Successfully deconstructing the Socialist state -- another reason for the left wings of American and European societies to loathe the Zionist entity.
#6
glad nobody died. On youtube there are videos and annoying alleged Muslims are posting haha type comments in arabic. One quoted the koran and said we'd never raise another rocket. every one would explode from now on. you wonder to yourself is it just nasty gloating or do they sabotage us
#9
1) It's NOT a NASA rocket!
2) It's an Orbital (company) rocket carrying a payload to the spacestation for NASA and carrying several other private payloads for $.
3) The engines date from the 1960s. They were Soviet Moon Rocket Engines (N1 - the one that killed most of the Soviet Space Scientists when it blew up on the pad in the 60s.) They were reworked into an AeroJet engine AJ-26. They bought them cheap from the Ukrainians. They were sitting in long term warehouses in the Ukraine since the 60s. (God only knows how crystallized that old metal is.)
4) One of these old engines blew up on the test stands at Stenis earlier this year and it didn't seem to trouble NASA or Orbital ( The test stand explosion )
5) For the Russian speaking here are the specs of the rocket: engine specs
#10
Actually, I don't think this is strictly a NASA vehicle, this one is built by Orbital Sciences and I believe was using 40 year old Russian/Ukrainian engines.
NASA is still building big rockets (the SLS, sometimes referred to as the Senate Launch System), but they are redoing the Apollo model. Not their fault, they do what they're told by the USG.
The real action is with SpaceX and their Falcon rocket, the next launch which is in November I think, will try to land the (rocket powered) first stage back onto a floating platform. If that succeeds we're really cooking with gas...
Posted by: Tony ||
10/29/2014 14:16 Comments ||
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#12
And of course, had I been 9 minutes earlier... But 3dc is providing much more info than I :)
Posted by: Tony ||
10/29/2014 14:18 Comments ||
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#13
A great comment by "Greg" at NASASpaceFlight.com (Locked down only to registered users after the explosion) I think it would be more likely to see CRS-6 moved up, maybe even into January, than any substantial changes to CRS-5. Depends on how far through manufacturing the CRS-6 Dragon is, I bet. If I were SpaceX, I'd probably be trying to make a case for NASA to buy a "test flight" of a refurbished Dragon sometime in 2015 to fill the gap without stressing the Dragon manufacturing line.
Note NASA has refused to consider used Dragons even though they are rated for 12 to 25 flights.
#17
and this comment: Pegging future hopes to another Russian engine that's already been used as a political asset once in a situation that shows no sign of being resolved. What could go wrong?
#19
Orbital to Conduct Conference Call with Financial Analysts and Investors to Discuss Antares Rocket Launch Failure
-- 1:00 p.m. (EDT) Conference Call with Financial Analysts and Investors to be Webcast --
DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2014-- Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) announced that it will host a conference call with investors and analysts later today to discuss yesterday’s launch failure of the company’s Antares rocket on a cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station for NASA. The call will begin at 1:00 p.m. (EDT) and will be hosted by:
Mr. David W. Thompson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Garrett E. Pierce, Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer
To access to the conference call, dial (888) 541-8767 and use the conference ID number 28574595. The conference call will also be webcast through a link on Orbital’s web site at www.orbital.com/investor. A replay of the conference call will be available later in the day online or by dialing (855) 859-2056 and using the same conference ID number. The replay will remain active for three days, until November 1, 2014.
More information about Orbital can be found at http://www.orbital.com.
We shall see. Different companies do failure boards with different degrees of success. There are lots of explicit and implicit pressures (PR, trying to preserve sunk costs, people who are *sure* what the cause is, political fallout, etc.) that must be ignored, since as Feynman said, "Mother Nature cannot be fooled". Orbital has had failure board failures in the past - they lost a mission due to a failed fairing, convened a failure board, implemented what they thought were enough fixes, then lost the next mission in the same manner.
The pressure on a company-employed failure board member could be enormously intense, even if self-induced. Suppose you were investigating the test stand explosion of the AJ-26. One possible outcome of the review board might be that these decade-old engines cannot be trusted. Do YOU want to be the person to tell your chairman your company made a mistake in picking these engines, it will need to refund the CRS contract, subject the company to public humiliation, stand down for four years, and lay off thousands of employees? The failure board folks know full well their recommendations have consequences, and it would require an inhuman level of dispassionate analysis for an employee to avoid even unconscious bias.
So no, I would not trust Frank Culbertson, or any Orbital employee, to lead the investigation. They have too much of an internal conflict of interest, despite their best intentions. I think the board must be led by, and primarily composed of, outsiders. To do otherwise is to expect too much of human beings.
#22
An arm chair analyst said the following... note not an Orbital person:
I went through the video frame by frame several times and came to basically the same conclusion. I've attached screenshots of the two frames before the visible anomaly and two frames where something has clearly gone wrong.
My observations and speculation: It appears that the engine loses thrust and the plume becomes extremely rich, suggesting oxidizer starvation. The explosion occurs several frames later, then the rocket falls back with the first stage largely intact with the business end still burning. The explosion suggests that either the turbopump of the combustion chamber disintegrated, and combined with the apparent oxidizer starvation it suggests that the oxidizer side of the turbopump assembly suffered a reduction in flow rate followed by mechanical failure Based on the delay between apparent loss of oxidizer and explosion, my guess is a foreign object or contamination in the oxidizer.
#23
This was news to me (literally, 11 pm last night).
Was watching the local news when it launched, and ran outside to see it (supposedly we could see it from Richmond). Never saw anything, but figured maybe the clouds to the east were enough to obscure. Went on about my business and didn't see TV again until ll pm news.
Maybe next time. :-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
10/29/2014 15:31 Comments ||
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#24
more background from comments at NasaSpaceFlight.com:
The tankage is indeed manufactured in Ukraine, but I believe the one used for this flight was shipped well before the current situation developed, even before the "Maidan" protests. The Antares' first stage tankage equipment is built by Yuzhnoye (Dnipropetrovsk), while the control system for analog Soyuz variants (U, FG) is made by Polysvit (Kharkov).
The NK-33 engines were manufactured in Samara (USSR, now part of the Russian Federation), but 40 years ago. Modificaton work (inspections, digital controllers and some part replacement) to transform them into AJ-26 was performed in Sacramento (CA, USA) and possibly the Stennis test facility in Missisippi.
ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- An unfortunate failure occurred during Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares launch on October 28, 2014. ATK (NYSE: ATK) is conducting a thorough evaluation of any potential implications resulting from this incident, including current operating plans, long-term strategies, and the proposed transaction to merge the company's Aerospace and Defense businesses with Orbital.
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