Zorro
Zorro's JournalBoeing Explores Sale of Space Business
Boeing helped put the first men on the moon. Now it wants to get out of the space race.
The beleaguered company is exploring a sale of its storied NASA business, including the troubled Starliner space vehicle and operations that support the International Space Station, according to people familiar with the matter.
The effort, part of a strategy by Boeing’s new Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg to streamline the company and stem its financial losses, is at an early stage and may not result in a deal.
Boeing faces a deepening financial crisis. Its largest labor union has rejected two contract proposals and extended a strike that has halted most of its airplane production. Meanwhile, Boeing’s space and defense projects have been hobbled by delays and cost overruns.
https://www.wsj.com/science/space-astronomy/boeing-explores-sale-of-space-business-fa7fa3a9?st=pZKyD5&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
This would be even a bigger deal if selling off their space segment also includes their satellite business.
Satellite images show major expansion at Russian site with secret bioweapons past
A few months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, satellite imagery captured unusual activity at a restricted military research facility nestled among the birch forests northeast of Moscow.
The Russian site, called Sergiev Posad-6, had been quiet for decades, but it had a notorious Cold War past: It had once been a major research center for biological weapons, with a history of experiments with the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and hemorrhagic fevers.
Satellite imagery over the next two years — collected by Google Earth and commercial imaging firms MAXAR and Planet Labs — shows construction vehicles renovating the old Soviet-era laboratory and breaking ground on 10 new buildings, totaling more than 250,000 square feet, with several of them bearing hallmarks of biological labs designed to handle extremely dangerous pathogens.
There has been no sign such weapons have been used in the Ukraine conflict, but the construction of new labs at Sergiev Posad-6 is being closely watched by U.S. intelligence agencies and bioweapons experts amid worries about Moscow’s intentions as the conflict grinds through its third year.
https://wapo.st/40ixGyP
Russia Provided Targeting Data for Houthi Assault on Global Shipping
Russia provided targeting data for Yemen’s Houthi rebels as they attacked Western ships in the Red Sea with missiles and drones earlier this year, helping the Iranian-backed group assault a major artery for global trade and further destabilizing the region.
The Houthis, which began their attacks late last year over the Gaza war, eventually began using Russian satellite data as they expanded their strikes, said a person familiar with the matter and two European defense officials. The data was passed through members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who were embedded with the Houthis in Yemen, one of the people said.
The assistance, which hasn’t been previously reported, shows how far Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to go to undermine the U.S.-led Western economic and political order. Russia, in this case, supported the Iran-backed Houthis, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist group, as they carried out a series of attacks in one of the world’s most heavily traveled shipping routes.
More broadly, Russia has sought to stoke instability from the Middle East to Asia to create problems for the U.S., analysts say. The widening conflict in the Middle East, triggered by last year’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, has absorbed resources and attention at a time when Washington has sought to focus on the threats from Russia and China.
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-provided-targeting-data-for-houthi-assault-on-global-shipping-eabc2c2b?st=mRGAEp&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
James Carville: Three Reasons I'm Certain Kamala Harris Will Win
There is a palpable anxiety wailing on the winds of American life right now. More than in any other election in my lifetime, I’ve been consistently asked by people of all stripes and creeds: “Can Kamala Harris win this thing? Are we going to be OK?” This sentiment is heard over and over from sweaty Democratic operatives who all too often love to run to the press with their woes.
While I am not one to take part in the political prediction industry — recently ballooned by mysterious crypto investments gambling on a Donald Trump victory — today I am pulling my stool up to the political poker table to throw my chips all in: America, it will all be OK. Ms. Harris will be elected the next president of the United States. Of this, I am certain. Here are three reasons:
Mr. Trump is a repeat electoral loser. This time will be no different.
The biggest reason Mr. Trump will lose is that the whole Republican Party has been on a losing streak since Mr. Trump took it over. See 2018: the largest House landslide for Democrats in a midterm election since Watergate. See 2020: He was decisively bucked from the White House by Joe Biden. See 2022: an embarrassment of a midterm for Republicans off the heels of Dobbs. And the Democrats have been performing well in special elections since Trump appointees on the Supreme Court helped take away a basic right of American women. Guess what? Abortion is on the ballot again — for president.
There simply do not seem to be enough voters — even in the battleground states — who turn out at Mr. Trump’s behest anymore when he’s simply preaching to his base. He has not learned from his electoral losses nor done the necessary work to assemble a broad electoral coalition in 2024. Let’s not forget that seven weeks after Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican primary, she received 158,000 votes in Pennsylvania — and some disaffected Haley voters are currently looking to move to Ms. Harris. Although Ms. Haley has endorsed Mr. Trump, losing even a fraction of those voters leaves Mr. Trump running the final leg of this race with a fundamental fracture of the femur. To add a cherry to the pie, most voters think Mr. Trump is too old to be president, but instead of easing their concerns, he’s spending the final days of the campaign jiving to the Village People and canceling interviews.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/kamala-harris-win-election.html?ogrp=ctr&unlocked_article_code=1.Uk4.V3gi.KrCAKUxixghJ&smid=url-share
Turkey says 'terrorist attack' on aerospace company leaves at least 4 dead, 14 injured
Source: Washington Post
A “terrorist attack” on the headquarters of Turkish Aerospace Industries, a large Turkish defense and aviation company near the capital, Ankara, left at least four people dead and 14 injured Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Two attackers were also killed, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a statement. He told local media outlets that of the two attackers killed, one was male and one was female, and that of the injured, three were in critical condition. Efforts to identify the attackers were ongoing, he said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility. Apparent footage of the attack, which was broadcast on Turkish television and shared on social media but has not been independently verified, shows gun-wielding assailants opening fire, and smoke from an explosion.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that “an explosion and gunshots were heard on Wednesday” at the facility, adding that security forces, firefighters and paramedics were dispatched to the area. The agency, citing local reports, said personnel at the facility were directed to shelters during the attack.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/23/turkish-aerospace-industries-attack-tusas/
GOP attack ads in California House races link Democrats to pedophiles
A not-so-subtle theme has emerged in recent Republican attack ads in battleground California congressional races: linking Democrats to pedophiles.
Take, for instance, the 30-second spot from the National Republican Congressional Committee attacking Democrat George Whitesides, the former NASA chief of staff who is challenging GOP Rep. Mike Garcia in the Antelope Valley in one of the nation’s most hotly contested races.
Melancholy piano music plays over images of an upturned bicycle and a set of empty playground swings. The camera cuts to a computer tablet displaying a messaging app.
“I’m literally the next block over. Come chill!” writes a user nicknamed SKTRDUDE293.
“ON MY WAY!!!” responds a girl, who looks about 12, with the user name SWIFFTIEE661.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-23/la-me-republican-pedophile-attack-ad
There really is no bottom for the Republican Party.
'We love you': Tributes pour in for surfer who died after swordfish reportedly pierced chest
An Italian surfer died after a swordfish reportedly struck her while surfing off Indonesia's West Sumatra coast.
Giulia Manfrini was co-founder and head of surf resorts sales at Awave Travel, which announced the death on its Instagram. She was surfing in the Mentawai Islands when she died.
Manfrini, who was 36, died after a swordfish speared her in the chest, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, citing Lahmudin Siregar, acting head of the Mentawai Islands' Disaster Management Agency.
Siregar said the swordfish "unexpectedly jumped towards Manfrini and pierced her chest,” the Australian outlet reported.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2024/10/22/italian-surfer-dies-swordfish-indonesia/75791949007/
Elon Musk is suffering from know-it-all syndrome
Elon Musk is trying to buy this election for Donald Trump, and everyone who loves our country should be alarmed. I realize, of course, that rich people try to buy elections all the time. But never quite like this.
The difference goes far beyond Musk’s shady — and possibly unlawful — attempt to register and track new potential Trump voters through a daily lottery that pays each winner $1 million. And it goes beyond the estimated $75 million Musk has given to his Trump-supporting America PAC. More important, and unprecedented, are other factors: the immensity of Musk’s wealth, the scale of his power, the reach of his voice, the incoherence of his politics, the mercurial nature of his decision-making, the porcelain fragility of his ego. And if Trump wins, heaven forbid, Musk expects to play a major role in the next administration.
In the name of “free speech,” Musk paid $44 billion to buy Twitter and then squander three-quarters of its value turning it into X, a cesspool of far-right anger, grievance, misogyny, conspiracy theory, eighth-grade humor and Trump worship. In the name of “efficiency” — the task he wants to perform for Trump — Musk would be in a position to wreak similar havoc on our professional civil service, our best-in-the-world military, our majestic national parks and who knows what else.
Musk is an immigrant from South Africa who uses the megaphone of X to attack a daughter of immigrants — Vice President Kamala Harris — and to applaud Trump’s racism and xenophobia. Musk never hesitates to fuel the MAGA world’s raging transgender panic and has dismissed his own transgender daughter as “dead — killed by the woke mind virus.” He is the father of 12 children in all, and he proselytizes for procreation, saying on Saturday at a Trump rally that “I don’t think it’s cool to deliberately not have kids. It’s anti-human.”
https://wapo.st/4eThQPk
Trump Refuses to Admit He Lost McDonald's Employee of the Month
FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, PA (The Borowitz Report)—Calling the selection process “rigged,” Donald J. Trump refused on Tuesday to accept that he was not chosen Employee of the Month at a McDonald’s where he briefly worked over the weekend.
“I’ve been treated very unfairly by McDonald’s,” he complained to reporters. “Frankly, I did win this selection.”
The Republican nominee alleged that he had “the most votes for Employee of the Month in the history of employees and months,” but that ballots cast for him were stolen by a sinister individual he called “The Hamburglar.”
Trump said he would never work at McDonald’s again, asserting that “Burger King is better, quite frankly, because it’s a monarchy.”
A co-worker of Trump’s, however, offered a downbeat assessment of his job performance: “He kept on stealing fries and whatnot, and when I caught him doing it, he threw ketchup against the wall. That guy sucks.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-refuses-to-admit-he-lost-mcdonalds
As Trump Served Up McDonald's Fries, Vitriol Boiled Outside
On Sunday afternoon, former President Donald J. Trump dropped by a McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pa. He had cooked up a stunt to troll Vice President Kamala Harris, who has talked about having worked at McDonald’s one summer during college. Inside the restaurant, Mr. Trump wore an apron and dropped French fries into a vat of gurgling oil. Across the street, something much unhealthier was bubbling up.
A few hundred Trump supporters were lining the shoulder of the road and holding a tailgate party in the parking lot of a strip mall right where Philadelphia ends and the suburbs begin. Another group of locals — maybe 50 people — had turned up to protest Mr. Trump’s visit. People on the two sides spent the sunny autumn afternoon screaming into one another’s faces while filming the skirmishes on their iPhones.
The parking lot throbbed with hatred, fear and neighbor’s suspicion of neighbor. It became a microcosm of this year’s election, vicious and absurd. There was shouting about Project 2025 and the Jan. 6 riot. Transgender youth and vaccines. Tariffs and abortion. Fascism and communism. Mr. Trump’s supporters wore T-shirts that said “I’m voting for the convicted felon.” The other side yelled, “Lock him up.” One person wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a mask of Mr. Trump’s face.
This is what the mood is like in a swing state, 16 days before an election. Sixteen days before this election. Nearly a decade into the Trump-era of politics, the language is apocalyptic. Social media has supercharged the crude negativity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/us/elections/donald-trump-mcdonalds-protesters.html?ogrp=ctr&unlocked_article_code=1.T04.8FY7.K-HRGEExQlI8&smid=url-share
Are the Trump supporters all recording video on their phones, or doing a "Sieg Heil" in the photo? Looks like it might be both to me.
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