Business
Benjamin Zhang,Business Insider Thu, Sep 1 5:48 PM PDT
Only one AN-225 was ever completed, and it entered service in 1988. A second Mriya airframe was partially completed before the fall of the Soviet Union.
This week's Chinese-Ukrainian agreement calls for the completion of the second AN-225 by Antonov and its delivery to AICC.
The agreement also calls for the commencement of series production of the AN-225 in China under license from Antonov.
A relic of the Soviet space program, the AN-225 was designed as a platform to carry the Buran space shuttle. Following the cancellation of the Soviet space program, both the completed and the uncompleted AN-225s sat idle for a decade. In the early 2000s, the completed Mriya was refurbished and returned to service as a commercial heavy lifter.
The AN-225 holds 240 world records including the record for the heaviest cargo ever carried by a plane — 253 tons. According to Antonov, the AN-225 can carry a 200-ton load nearly 2,500 miles.
The gargantuan heavy lifter is powered by six Ivchenko-Progress turbo-fan engines each producing more than 51,000 pounds of thrust.
World
Washington Post 22 hours ago
To all appearances, Vladimir Putin keeps a tight schedule. But perhaps that schedule isn't quite as tight as it appears. Akiyoshi Komaki, the Moscow bureau chief for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, recently investigated a number of photographs the Kremlin had put out of the Russian president's meetings in August. The meetings all took place in the same dark, wood-paneled room in the Russian governmental complex, though they were said to take place on different days. The first meeting, with acting Magadan region governor Vladimir Pechyony, was said to have taken place Aug. 18. Another meeting, with Igor Anatolyevich Orlov of the Arkhangelsk region, took place Aug. 22. The next, with Sverdlovsk ...
World
Defense Tech 9 hours ago
Iraq appears to have received its latest batch of Su-25s ground attack aircraft from Russia to aid in the air war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Recent satellite imagery indicates at least a handful of the Sukhoi Frogfoots arrived in recent months to Al-Rashid air base, according to Offiziere.ch, a Swiss military blog. In April, Russia delivered three of the close-air-support aircraft to Iraq at its request; five aircraft were first delivered in June 2014 after the U.S. delayed its delivery of F-16s. Later that year, Iraq received yet another batch of “five to eight” Su-25s, with local media claiming they were gifted from neighboring Iran. The imagery obtained in July by Offiziere ...
Jake Novak,CNBC 8 hours ago
Hillary Clinton was already having a bad week as polls show Donald Trump closing the gap between them and, in a few polls, even pulling ahead. It got worse Friday after the FBI released Clinton's answers to investigators' questions over her use of a private email server, revealing some pretty damaging responses from the former Secretary of State.
Here are five of the most outrageous statements Clinton made in that three-and-a-half hour FBI interview:
1. She cited her 2012 concussion as the reason that she cannot remember details of briefings during her "transition out of office."
2. She said she never even thought whether emails she exchanged on a future U.S. drone attack should be classified.
3. She said she thought the "C" before a paragraph indicated alphabetical order. The C actually stands for "classified."
4. She said no one ever raised concerns to her about her use of a private email server.
5. She said she could not recall any training on how to handle classified information.
What's more, Clinton aides told the FBI that the Secretary of State frequently replaced her Blackberry phone and the whereabouts of her old device would become "unknown." The FBI report suggests there were at least 13 different devices used.
You're going to
hear on the mainstream media all weekend a lot of supposedly objective
pundits insist the above revelations offer no "smoking gun." And that may be
true from a legal standpoint, but we're in the middle of an election and
these statements are poison for Clinton and cannon fodder for Donald Trump.
She conducted official State Department business while suffering from a concussion that may have impaired her memory? The report suggested she was only working for a few hours a day at the point based on doctor's orders but if it was that bad that she couldn't remember important briefings, she should have been on medical leave.
No. 2 stretches the limits of credulity. We're supposed to believe Clinton never even considered a discussion about a future drone attack should be kept secret? Saying "I never thought," basically sounds like a dodge on a charge of possible pre-meditation.
As for the claim that no one ever talked to her about any concerns about the private server, that's dangerous territory. Because it's probably not going to be hard to find someone at the State Department, or formerly at the State Department, to contradict this claim. In fact, there are many statements just now released from this FBI interview that are likely going to be refuted and in short order.
The "I could not recall" response to the question about prior training is a classic defendant's dodge. It works great because even if Clinton did get training, it can be argued that it doesn't matter because she doesn't remember it. But while it's a good legal dodge, it's potentially lethal in the midst of an election where you're trying to look like a competent and alert leader.
FBI Director James Comey may have decided not to indict Clinton, but the public revelation of this transcript today does a lot of damage. While you can expect most of the mainstream media pundits to pour cold water on the severity of the facts contained in them, the transcripts put the email scandal right back into the center of the news cycle. The last time that happened, Clinton's poll numbers wilted badly and it took a series of Trump missteps to reverse the decline.
She was already slipping in the polls — this could turn out to be very damaging for her and very good for Trump.
Politics