Kathryn Burcham with Boston 25 news was reporting live from the scene of a plane crash at Cranland Airport in Hanson, Massachusetts, when it appears she accidentally made a Back to the Future reference. In the clip, Burcham claims that Jacob Haselden, the 20-year-old pilot who crash-landed the plane, told her a “defective flux capacitator” was the possible cause of the crash.
Great Scott! We may have a troll on our hands.
As many of you know, a “flux capacitor” is a component in Doc Brown’s time machine from the Back to the Future franchise. It’s unclear if the plane was a time machine.
While it’s possible that Haselden actually blamed the crash on a fluxgate compass, a magnetic instrument used to help pilots keep their craft level with the earth, it was hard to miss the flub.
I am guessing that the pilot really said flux gate compass (HSI, directional gyro slave etc). But with my involvement with the press as a volunteer supporting Pickering airport ( see https://t.co/PMtyP60BpA ) I have been amazed by reporters ability to hear what they want to hear.
Boston 25 and Burcham did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment or correction, and there’s no mention of the fictional instrument on the story on its website.
According to 7 News Boston, the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash. Haselden was piloting the plane for Go SkyDive Boston, and was the only person aboard when the incident occurred. He escaped with minor injuries.
“We flew up. I had difficulties with the engine. I managed to get everyone out and came back in for a landing, but couldn’t make it,” Haselden told 7 News. “The flipping (of the plane) was me running out of runway. I was coming in too fast due to difficulties with my engine, the flaps, and various plane issues.”
On Friday, another crash occurred at the same airport, injuring one person critically and leaving another dead.
Saido Berahino had gone 913 days without scoring a competitive goal
Saido Berahino ended his two-and-a-half-year goal drought as Stoke knocked Premier League Huddersfield Town out of the Carabao Cup in the second round.
Huddersfield made 10 changes to the side that drew with Cardiff and their winless start to the season continued.
Berahino – a £12m signing in 2017 – scrappily got his first Stoke goal in 913 days as he headed in after James McClean hit the bar.
Debutant Juninho Bacuna’s bizarre own goal made it 2-0 deep in stoppage time.
Bacuna, a summer signing from Dutch side FC Groningen, sliced an attempted volleyed clearance over goalkeeper Jonas Lossl from just inside his own half – at a time when the visitors were throwing players forward in an attempt to equalise.
McClean had forced a good save from Lossl during a low-key opening 45 minutes, played in front of only 7,290 fans.
The result gave Stoke a second straight victory in all competitions and extended Huddersfield’s winless run to eight games, going back to last season.
But that streak pales in to comparison to the goalless spell former West Bromwich Albion striker Berahino endured since he last netted for the Baggies against Crystal Palace on 27 February 2016.
The world when Berahino last scored
Then Sunderland boss Sam Allardyce had not yet replaced Roy Hodgson as England manager
Donald Trump had not yet secured the Republican party’s nomination for the 2016 United States presidential election
The United Kingdom was still nearly four months away from a referendum on European Union membership
France’s future World Cup winner Kylian Mbappe had scored only one senior goal for Monaco
Sunderland still had another season ahead of them in the Premier League, before back-to-back relegations to League One
‘He’s only 25 and he’s got a bright career’
Stoke boss Gary Rowett: “He [Berahino] needed a lucky break and he’s reacted well. I’m pleased for everyone first and foremost, but I’m pleased for him.
“He’s only 25 and he’s got a bright career. It’s a good start for him and he’s got to keep working hard. He’s been one of our brighter players and his work rate has been excellent.
“The first day I came in Saido came to see me and wanted to see where he stood and to discuss why previous regimes had maybe ostracised him, maybe?
“He said he’d been to blame for some of his actions and he was honest, which is the first step for anyone who has done something wrong and wants to start afresh.
“All I said to him was forget me – if you work hard for me then you’ll win me over. I told him it’s the rest of his mates he has to win over, he had to earn the respect of his team-mates back and for them to trust him.
“When he scored everybody went over to him, which shows they were all really pleased for him. He’s worked hard since pre-season and earned the respect of his team-mates.”
Berahino ‘will look a yard quicker now’
Former Burnley, Bolton and Blackburn manager Owen Coyle told BBC Radio 5 live: “It’ll be a tremendous boost for him and he is young enough to get his career back on track and get to the level he was at before.
“When you’ve been on a bad run, you are just desperate to get that ball over the line. From a striker’s perspective, it makes a huge difference, to be in amongst the goals.
“Berahino will now look a yard quicker. His body language will change and he’ll be excited about the game.”
A proposal to rename the Russell Senate office building for John McCain has received bipartisan support, but the effort appeared to slow as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he will form a bipartisan panel to solicit ideas. (Aug. 28) AP
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., thew cold water Tuesday on a proposal to rename the Senate Russell Office building in honor of Sen. John McCain and suggested the formation of a bipartisan “gang” to explore a range of options to commemorate the Arizona Republican.
McCain “meant so much to so many of us,” McConnell said in a statement, and the “Senate is eager to work on concrete ways” to “provide a lasting tribute to this American hero long after this week’s observances are complete.”
McConnell said there several ways the Senate could honor McCain, who died Saturday from brain cancer. One is to name the Senate Armed Services Committee room after him and another could be to hang his portrait in the Senate Reception Room.
“It’s a further tribute to our colleague that there’s no shortage of good ideas,” McConnell said. To “realize these intentions,” he proposed bringing together a group of current and former senators from both sides of the aisle.
“And come to think of it, we should probably call it not a committee, but a gang,” McConnell said. “So I’m glad we’ll be able to form this gang to ensure that a suitable, lasting tribute becomes a reality.”
McConnell told reporters he was “not notified in advance” of the proposal Monday by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to rename the Russell Senate Office building. He said that the Senate does not usually move so quickly to honor deceased colleagues and that there should be deliberation “after proper recognition of the person we’ve lost” and “in a calmer environment.”
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said McCain would have wanted the Senate to go through a deliberative process.
“While John McCain always wanted to get things done, he also always wanted to get things done in a regular order,” Blunt said.
The Russell building is named for Georgia Sen. Richard Russell, a Democratic segregationist who opposed anti-lynching laws and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Russell died in 1971.
Current Georgia Sen. David Perdue said his constituents might not support changing the building’s name. Perdue said the senators should find the “right way” to honor McCain and avoid any “knee-jerk” reactions.
“This is a guy who was a giant of the Senate,” Perdue told The Hill in reference to Russell. “So this renaming thing because of one issue, you know, is somewhat troubling. The fact that it’s been brought into this John McCain thing I think is inappropriate.”
Other southern senators agreed.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told The Hill that Russell was a “well-respected man from the South.” He called Russell “a man of his time,” and rejected the impulse to judge him for his civil rights record.
“If you want to get into that you have to get into George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and all of our – most of our founding fathers, maybe with the exception of Hamilton,” Shelby said. “It’s easy to prejudge what they should have done.”
“I think Russell being named Russell is that generation of senators’ message to future generations,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. “What I don’t want is to establish a precedent, so something named after John McCain is named after somebody else in the future.”
McCain’s fellow Arizona Republican, Sen. Jeff Flake, co-sponsored the proposal to rename the Russell building, but he also seemed ready to pump the brakes on the effort. Flake told The Associated Press that he did not “want to get out ahead” of McCain’s family in the drive to honor him.
“There are a number of proposals coming forward about ways to honor John McCain. I think this would be a particularly good one, but I want to make sure the family is OK with it,” Flake said.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., was “all for” renaming the Russell building after McCain.
“Russell is somebody that’s obviously a huge figure, but it is an era that’s gone by. We’re in a new era now,” Corker said Monday. “Who would want to vote against naming a building after somebody who just passed away?”
Jaguar Land Rover wants pedestrians to feel safer about its self-driving vehicles, and it’s hoping a pair of “virtual eyes” will do the trick.
The thing is, it’s kinda creepy.
Think about it: A shuttle pulls up to a stoplight at an intersection that you’re waiting to cross and suddenly its cartoonish, drooping eyesare looking directly at you. Would you feel comforted?
The idea is that you would, and it’s the latest attempt to replicate the human interaction that can occur between a driver and a person crossing the road. Ford, for instance, is working on a self-driving “language” that uses various patterns on a windshield-mounted light bar to communicate what the car is doing. Drive.AI is developing a less subtle method with digital images and captions on the side of its shuttles that explain what the car is doing, such as, “Waiting for you to cross.”
But a staring contest with a driverless vehicle? Jaguar calls them “friendly-faced ‘eye pods’” — a generous description, to be sure — and they’re not out in the wild, yet.
The Aurrigo shuttles are currently being tested at a facility in Coventry, England, near Jaguar headquarters through a trial with the UK Autodrive project. So far, the pods have driven on a fake street scene with more than 500 test pedestrians who have bravely stared them down, according to a press release from Jaguar Land Rover UK.
The self-driving pod looks at a pedestrian.
However off-putting it might be, this development in car-eyeball tech coincides with the public’s growing distrust of autonomous vehicles. A recent Cox Automotive study found that only 28 percent of American adult respondents think that fully self-driving vehicles are safe, down from nearly 50 percent two years ago. This matches with findings from the American Automobile Association that 63 percent of U.S. adults say they would feel less safe sharing the road with a self-driving vehicle while walking or on a bicycle.
The “virtual eyes” are a potential solution for this erosion of trust, and engineers on the Jaguar Land Rover future mobility team programmed the pods to seek out humans so that they can further study trust levels before and after making so-called eye contact. When the shuttle registers that you are there, it looks at you, and that’s your signal to safely cross.
At this point this is more of a psychological test, what Jaguar Land Rover calls “trust research.”
In nearby Milton Keynes, the same self-driving shuttles are on the road and out of the test facility — however, sans eyes.
There’s no word yet on if or when Jaguar Land Rover’s eyes will roll out on public streets.
England held a pre-season training camp in Teddington earlier this month
England will attempt to replicate their World Cup schedule by flying back from Portugal just 48 hours before the first autumn international at Twickenham.
Eddie Jones’ squad will train in the Algarve for a week, returning to England on the Thursday before facing South Africa on Saturday, 3 November.
England usually spend the week of their home Tests at their base in Bagshot, Surrey.
But Jones wants his side to match the travel conditions in Japan next year.
England’s first two matches of the World Cup – against Tonga and the USA in September 2019 – take place four days apart in Sapporo and Kobe, a distance of 1,000km – needing a two-hour flight.
They then have a nine-day break before their third game against Argentina in Tokyo, before the group finale with France in Yokohama a week later.
As well as having extensive experience of Japan from his time as head coach of their national side, Jones has been there this summer to fine-tune England’s preparations.
England also face world champions New Zealand, Japan and Australia this November as they bid to turn around a poor run of results, with just three wins from nine matches in 2018.
Robb Kulin talks about becoming an astronaut Florida Today
Robb Kulin was on a break from his console at SpaceX’s Launch Control Center last year when he received a phone call from NASA welcoming him into the agency’s newest astronaut class.
The selection gave Kulin, who then led SpaceX’s Launch Chief Engineering group for flight reliability, the opportunity to one day fly atop a Falcon 9 rocket he had helped design and build.
“If we could really try to help people realize that borders are something that we create, and they’re not natural, I think we would just make the world a better place,” Kulin, then 33, said during a June 2017 press conference introducing a dozen astronaut candidates, or ASCANs.
But in a very rare move, Kulin has turned in his NASA-issued blue jumpsuit, just a year into the two-year training program the astronaut candidates must complete before being eligible for flight assignments.
NASA this week confirmed that Kulin has resigned, effective Aug. 31, citing “personal reasons.”
Kulin, whose resignation was first reported by the Houston Chronicle, so far has not commented publicly on Facebook or Twitter.
It was the first time in 50 years that an astronaut candidate has resigned, according to Robert Pearlman, editor of CollectSpace.com.
Kulin and his classmates were selected from more than 18,300 applicants, and publicly introduced last year at Johnson Space Center in Houston by Vice President Mike Pence.
Born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Kulin earned a master’s degree in materials science and doctorate in engineering, studying bone fractures. He had previously worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska and as a technician drilling ice cores in Antarctica to support climate research.
He started working at SpaceX headquarters in California in 2011, working on the first upgrade of the Falcon 9 rocket. He later helped investigate a Falcon 9 failure.
“My whole goal coming out of that, and I would say the team’s whole goal, was to make sure that the Falcon 9 was as reliable and successful as possible, for SpaceX’s commercial partners, but also of course very importantly for the crew that will fly on that vehicle,” he said last year. “It’s something just that helped us grow stronger and me grow stronger as an engineer.”
SpaceX says it within months of launching a Falcon 9 carrying a Crew Dragon capsule from Kennedy Space Center on a first test flight without anyone on board. That could be followed by a crewed test flight to the International Space Station next spring.
SpaceX did not comment on Kulin’s departure from NASA.
NASA said Kulin would not be replaced by a new astronaut candidate.
As trainees, astronaut candidates study International Space Station systems, spacewalking techniques, robotics skills, and aircraft flight readiness using two-person T-38 jets. They also receive Russian language training, necessary to serve on a space station expedition.
The candidates also must complete military water survival training before beginning their flying program, pass a swimming test, and become qualified SCUBA divers to practice spacewalks in Johnson Space Center’s giant swimming pool, officially called the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which simulates working in microgravity.
Asked in a NASA interview what he would bring to Mars, Kulin, who grew up ski racing, said “skis.”
Kulin recalled as a boy reading about great ocean explorers, and feeling as if I had missed his time.
“But once I realized kind of what space was, I realized that was actually the place that I wanted to go,” he said. “It’s probably one of the remaining frontiers for exploration and to try to push the limits of mankind.”
The advice he said he’d give students was to focus not on getting high marks on tests, but on building “that great foundation of understanding, which is the important part, and it really helps later on in life.”
Kulin was at Cape Canaveral preparing for a SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station last year when he took a break, stepped away from his console and his phone rang. It was NASA’s astronaut office offering him a job.
“Pretty awesome moment,” he told NASA.
Kulin’s last official Twitter messages as an astronaut candidate came April 30 and May 1 during a visit to the Space Coast. He said it was “incredible to be back at the cape” to see the “awesome work” of his former SpaceX colleagues, linking to a photo that is no longer available.
NASA’s remaining astronaut candidates from Kulin’s class are Kayla Barron, Zena Cardman, Raja Chari, Matthew Dominick, Bob Hines, Warren Hoburg, Jonny Kim, Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O’Hara, Frank Rubio and Jessica Watkins.
In addition, NASA lists 39 active astronauts eligible for flight assignments.
The blueprint files to print your own 3-D gun are now being sold — despite a ban issued by a federal judge.
Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed, a group that distributes the files necessary to print your own “wiki weapons,” held a press conference on Tuesday announcing the release of the 3-D firearm blueprints.
This comes one day after a federal judge in Seattle extended a temporary banplaced on the 3-D gun files just before they were to be released online last month. That ban, handed down in July, was issued after attorneys general from Washington and several other states jointly filed a last minute lawsuit against the Trump administration in order to stop the 3-D gun files release. The federal judge on Monday granted a motion to extend that ban until that case is resolved. The issue came to public attention after the State Department reached a settlement with Defense Distributed in June, paving the way for the group to release the files online.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Cody Wilson announced his plans to sell the 3-D gun blueprint files on flash drives, which can be purchased on Defense Distributed’s website. Wilson believes his workaround legally circumvents the court order which blocked him from uploading the files online and freely distributing the blueprints.
A screenshot of some of the 3-D gun files available for purchase from Defense Distributed.
Image: Defense Distributed
Wilson is selling the files for a pay-what-you-want value, with a suggested retail price of $9.99. At the time of the conference this morning, Wilson claimed to have already received 400 orders.
The gun rights activist compared his new 3-D gun distribution model to Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ album, which was released online in 2007, also under a pay-what-you-want pricing model: “I’m happy now to become the iTunes of downloadable guns if I can’t become the Napster,” Wilson said.
Wilson is also opening the platform to users looking to sell their own files, with Defense Distributed taking 50 percent of the cut.
Still, not everyone can buy the 3-D gun files. Due to the language in the court order banning international publication of the blueprints, the flash drives are only for sale to U.S.-based customers. Even then, Defense Distributed is blocking orders coming from states the group is referring to as “blue states,” or any state that imposed a ban on these firearms.
The message that greets customers on Defense Distributed’s store if you live in a state that bans 3-D guns.
Image: Defense distributed
Customers from those states are met with the above graphic along with a message: “Oops, you’re behind the blue wall. Your masters say you can’t be trusted with this information. Sorry, little lamb.”
The 3-D gun blueprint files, which can currently be ordered online, are shipped to your home on a flash drive, and include firearms such as the Liberator pistol and the AR-15 — the weapon used in the majority of mass shootings in the last 35 years.
A Texas jury has found a white former police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager last year guilty of murder.
Roy Oliver shot into a car full of teenagers as they were leaving a party in the Dallas suburb of Balch Springs in April 2017.
Fifteen-year-old Jordan Edwards, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was struck and killed.
“It’s been a hard year … I’m just really happy,” Edwards’s father, Odell, told reporters at the courthouse after the verdict on Tuesday.
At the time of the shooting, Oliver claimed the vehicle was trying to run over his partner, but several witness accounts and body-cam footage showed the car was moving away from the officer.
Oliver was fired from the Balch Springs police force in May 2017 after police admitted the video of the shooting contradicted Oliver’s initial statement.
Local reporters, who were present in the courtroom on Tuesday as the verdict was read, reported that there were hugs, claps and cheers from the family of Edwards.
Odell Edwards, father of Jordan Edwards, gets a hug from Dallas County district attorney Faith Johnson after hearing a guilty of murder verdict [Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News via AP] [Daylife]
Oliver faces between five and 99 years in prison for the murder. His sentencing hearing began immediately after the trial. The former police officer was acquitted of manslaughter and aggravated assault.
‘Not just about Jordan’
Daryl Washington, Edwards’s lawyer, said the verdict is not just about justice for the young teenager’s family but for the families of all unarmed black people killed by police.
“This case is not just about Jordan,” Washington told reporters. “It’s about Tamir Rice, it’s about Walter Scott, it’s about Alton Sterling, it’s about every unarmed African American who has been killed and who has not got justice.”
According to Washington Post Fatal Force database, more than 980 people were killed by police in 2017.
Monica Tunstle-Garrett, left, of Mesquite, Texas, and Al Woolum, right of North Richland Hills, Texas, light candles as the arrive at a vigil for Jordan Edwards in Balch Springs, Texas, Thursday, May 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez) [Daylife]
The Guardian identified more than 1,090 police killings the previous year.
Nearly a quarter of those killed by police in 2016 were African Americans, although the group accounted for roughly 12 percent of the total US population.
According to watchdog group The Sentencing Project, African American men are six times more likely to be arrested than white men.
These disparities, particularly the killing of African Americans by police, has prompted the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, a popular civil rights movement aimed at ending police violence and dismantling structural racism.
‘Finally’
Online, many called Tuesday’s verdict a “small”, but “significant” step for justice for unarmed people killed by police.
According to Phil Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, only 91 police officers in the US have been charged with murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting since 2005. Less than 40 have been convicted of a crime.
“This is a big deal,” tweeted Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Twitter user, Ben Frank, wrote: “Finally, a cop was found guilty of murdering a black man. Hopefully this will be the new norm and [teach] these cops they just can’t murder us and get away with it.”
Finally, a cop was found guilty of murdering a black man. Hopefully, this will be a new norm and theach these cops they just can’t murder us and get away with it. #JordanEdwards#Dallas
Angie Thomas, author of the book The Hate You Give, and others pointed out that the verdict came on the same day as the anniversary murder of Emmet Till, a 14-year-old African American who was kidnapped and brutally killed in 1955 in Mississippi. Although two white men confessed to the murder after they were acquitted by an all-white jury, experts say details around the murder remain unclear. The US Department of Justice recently announced it was reviving its investigation into the case, which became a focal point of the civil rights movement in the US.
“It’s not lost on me that Jordan Edwards received justice on the anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder,” Thomas tweeted. “Trying to process this.”
It’s not lost on me that Jordan Edwards received justice on the anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder. Trying to process this.
Roy Oliver, the former Dallas-area police officer who shot and killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in April 2017, has been found guilty of murder.
Oliver, who is white, was fired from the Balch Springs Police Department just days after the death of Edwards, a black teenager who was leaving a local house party with friends when Oliver opened fire on their vehicle. Edwards, who was unarmed, was in the passenger seat.
Oliver, 38, testified last week that he had no choice other than to fire his weapon after seeing the car move toward his partner, Tyler Gross. Oliver said he believed Gross to be in danger, but Gross told jurors he never felt threatened and did not feel the need to open fire.
“I was not in fear at that point,” Gross told jurors.
A video released by local authorities at the time of the shooting showed the vehicle moving away from officers. Oliver fired five shots from his AK-15 rifle, striking Edwards in the back of the head and killing him instantly. He was fired shortly after the shooting.
Jury deliberations took 13 hours. Oliver was also found not guilty of two counts of aggravated assault.
It is the first time since 1973 that a Dallas County police officer has been found guilty of murder.
Oliver faces between five years and life in prison at his sentencing.
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