feed on feeds - 2015/09/26 - items 0 to 15

Suarez scores a brace but Messi injured in win over Las Palmas; Real Madrid held while Villareal go top of La Liga.

United captain becomes club's third highest scorer in win over Sunderland; City stunned by Spurs.

New submitter kheldan writes with this snippet from The Consumerist: A week after ordering Volkswagen to recall 500,000 vehicles that contain "defeat devices" designed to cheat emissions tests, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would overhaul its compliance processes to ensure vehicles meet standards not only in controlled environments but in real-world driving conditions, and adds What may be the story-behind-the-story here, are the two Elephants in the Room: One, how many other automakers in the world have been 'gaming' the system like German automakers apparently have been all along, and Two, are these changes to the certification process at the USEPA going to 'trickle down' to the state and local levels, affecting routine emissions testing of individual vehicles? Questions peripheral to these may include: How much is this going to affect new vehicle prices in the future, and how much is this going to affect the fair market value of used vehicles?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Baltimore Sun, and despite claims by its maker Raytheon that the system is "performing well right now," the expensive tethered-blimp observatory called JLENS (for "Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System") seems to be mostly a boondoggle. The report focuses on the JLENS installation that was launched in Maryland last year. The Sun makes much of the flight taken by disaffected postal worker Douglas Hughes last April to the White House lawn, directly in the JLENS observation area -- the success of which (to be charitable) casts doubt on the effectiveness of the flying observatory system. Beyond its evidently low utility in doing its job, JLENS seems to be a brittle system, amplying its potential costs as well as its military vulnerability with grand, expensive failures as well as everyday difficulties: in 2010, "a civilian balloon broke loose from its mooring, destroying a grounded JLENS blimp that had cost about $182 million." The article lays out some political shenanigans, too: politicians in a wide range of states have supported the project, which has a nationwide footprint of contractors and possible deployment locations. From the article: Within the Pentagon, Marine Corps Gen. James E. "Hoss" Cartwright, then vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to JLENS' defense, arguing that it held promise for enhancing the nation's air defenses. At Cartwright's urging, money was found in 2011 for a trial run of the technology in the skies above Washington. Cartwright retired the same year — and joined Raytheon's board of directors five months later. By the end of 2014, Raytheon had paid him more than $828,000 in cash and stock for serving as a director, Securities and Exchange Commission records show.