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This really shows how far behind North Korea is, that a private American company is able to successfully do something extremely more complicated than a rocket launch.

The California-based company SpaceX on Saturday scrubbed the highly anticipated launch of its Dragon capsule toward theInternational Space Station due to a rocket engine problem.

The last-second abort came when one of the Falcon 9′s engines exceeded a technical limit that forced a shutdown of the launch attempt, which may be rescheduled as early as May 22.

“Launch aborted: slightly high combustion chamber pressure on engine 5. Will adjust limits for countdown in a few days,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk explained on the microblogging site Twitter.

A SpaceX spokesman said engineers would look into the causes, but that the issue was not believed to be something entirely new.

“The computer checks all of the engine elemetry,” said the spokesman on SpaceX’s live broadcast of the event. “We detected something was wrong with one of the limits” on one of the rocket’s nine engines.

The next opportunity for launch is at 3:44 am on Tuesday, May 22, according to NASA. A press briefing to detail the causes of the delay was set for 6:30 am (1030 GMT).

The launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the unmanned Dragon and over half a ton of cargo toward the orbiting lab, will mark the first attempt to send a privately built spacecraft to the research outpost, where it plans to do a fly-under followed by a berthing.

SpaceX is the first of several US competitors to try sending its own cargo-bearing spacecraft to the ISS with the goal of restoring US access to space for human travelers by 2015.

The company made history with its Dragon launch in December 2010, becoming the first commercial outfit to send a spacecraft into orbit and back.

Until now, only the space agencies of Russia, Japan and Europe have been able to send supply ships to the ISS.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link but every American should hope SpaceX succeeds with their launch because this is the nation’s best hope of reviving its access to space after the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle last year.  If SpaceX can prove that it can safely and regularly launch its Falcon-9 rocket and dock the Dragon capsule with the ISS, it has a follow on contract with NASA to convert the Dragon capsule for use for manned spaceflight.  Currently the Russians are charging NASA $63 million a seat in the Soyuz capsule while SpaceX says they can get the cost down to $20 million a seat with their Dragon capsule.

If the routine moving of people and supplies is done by a private company at a cheaper cost this means that NASA can use more of its budget for scientific and space exploration purposes.  That is assuming that whatever money is saved through its contract with SpaceX is not just simply cut out of their budget by politicians to pay for their own pet spending projects.

The Philadelphia School District signed a two-and-a-half year civil rights agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to address anti-Asian immigrant violence at a Philadelphia high school.

“Schools have an obligation to ensure a safe learning environment for everyone. We will continue to use all of the tools in our law enforcement arsenal to ensure that all students can go to school without fearing harassment,” Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division said.

The complaints were triggered by events on December 3, 2009, during which large numbers of Asian immigrant students from South Philadelphia High School were assaulted in and around the school throughout the day.

The attacks followed years of harassment against Asian students at South Philadelphia High School. In the days after the incident, more than 50 Asian students organized an eight-day boycott of the school in efforts to draw attention to what they felt was an inadequate response by the school to ongoing harassment and violence.  [CNN]

What I found really interesting was that after watching the Newshour program and reading this CNN article was that no mention was made of the race of the people dragging Asian-American students out of their classrooms and beating them.  So I did a bit of web searching and found out that black students were the ones responsible for dragging out these students and causing injuries to 30 of them and 7 more had to be hospitalized.

What pisses me off the most about this case is not the student led racial violence but the fact that teachers were allowing a mob of thugs to go classroom to classroom and drag out students to beat them.  If teachers would have made a stand against the thugs then they could have prevented what happened.  Instead it appears many of the teachers condoned this behavior.  This is outrageous and every teacher that was complicit in these attacks should be fired but I have not read anything yet that this has happened.

Are there any ROK Drop readers in Philadelphia that have any additional insight into this case?

 The desolate stretch of West Texas desert known as the Permian Basin is still the lonely domain of scurrying roadrunners by day and howling coyotes by night. But the roar of scores of new oil rigs and the distinctive acrid fumes of drilling equipment are unmistakable signs that crude is gushing again.

And not just here. Across the country, the oil and gas industry is vastly increasing production, reversing two decades of decline. Using new technology and spurred by rising oil prices since the mid-2000s, the industry is extracting millions of barrels more a week, from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the prairies of North Dakota.

At the same time, Americans are pumping significantly less gasoline. While that is partly a result of the recession and higher gasoline prices, people are also driving fewer miles and replacing older cars with more fuel-efficient vehicles at a greater clip, federal data show.

Taken together, the increasing production and declining consumption have unexpectedly brought the United States markedly closer to a goal that has tantalized presidents since Richard Nixon: independence from foreign energy sources, a milestone that could reconfigure American foreign policy, the economy and more. In 2011, the country imported just 45 percent of the liquid fuels it used, down from a record high of 60 percent in 2005.

“There is no question that many national security policy makers will believe they have much more flexibility and will think about the world differently if the United States is importing a lot less oil,” said Michael A. Levi, an energy and environmental senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “For decades, consumption rose, production fell and imports increased, and now every one of those trends is going the other way.”  [NY Times]

And who started this surge in domestic energy production?:

But the drillers in Texas had important allies in Washington. President Bush grew up in Midland and spent 11 years as a West Texas oilman, albeit without much success, before entering politics. Vice President Dick Cheney had been chief executive of the oil field contractor Halliburton. The Bush administration worked from the start on finding ways to unlock the nation’s energy reserves and reverse decades of declining output, with Mr. Cheney leading a White House energy task force that met in secret with top oil executives.

“Ramping up production was a high priority,” said Gale Norton, a member of the task force and the secretary of the Interior at the time. “We hated being at the mercy of other countries, and we were determined to change that.”

The task force’s work helped produce the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which set rules that contributed to the current surge. It prohibited the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act, eliminating a potential impediment to wide use of the technique. The legislation also offered the industry billions of dollars in new tax breaks to help independent producers recoup some drilling costs even when a well came up dry.

Separately, the Interior Department was granted the power to issue drilling permits on millions of acres of federal lands without extensive environmental impact studies for individual projects, addressing industry complaints about the glacial pace of approvals. That new power has been used at least 8,400 times, mostly in Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, representing a quarter of all permits issued on federal land in the last six federal fiscal years.

The Bush administration also opened large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico and the waters off Alaska to exploration, granting lease deals that required companies to pay only a tiny share of their profits to the government.

And who is keeping this surge in energy production going?:

As the industry’s confidence — and profits — grew, so did criticism. Amid concerns about global warming and gasoline prices that averaged a record $4.11 a gallon in July 2008 ($4.30 in today’s dollars), President Obama campaigned on a pledge to shift toward renewable energy and away from fossil fuels.

His administration initially canceled some oil and gas leases on federal land awarded during the Bush administration and required more environmental review. But in a world where crucial oil suppliers like Venezuela and Libya were unstable and high energy prices could be a drag on a weak economy, he soon acted to promote more drilling. Despite a drilling hiatus after the 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 rig workers and spilled millions of barrels of crude oil into the ocean, he has proposed expansion of oil production both on land and offshore. He is now moving toward approving drilling off the coast of Alaska.

“Our dependence on foreign oil is down because of policies put in place by our administration, but also our predecessor’s administration,” Mr. Obama said during a campaign appearance in March, a few weeks after opening 38 million more acres in the gulf for oil and gas exploration. “And whoever succeeds me is going to have to keep it up.”

I seriously doubt over the upcoming Presidential campaign season we are going to hear much about cap & trade or global warming because it is pretty clear that these topics are political suicide.  Also the next time you hear someone say that the US cannot drill its way to energy independence show them this article because they are only partially right.  Drilling alone won’t bring energy independence because things such as the use of alternative energy sources and more fuel efficient cars definitely helps with this goal, but drilling is definitely part of the solution.

WikiLeaks said it planned to release from Monday over 5 million emails from Stratfor Global Intelligence, a provider of geopolitical analysis, whose website was hacked and emails and customer data stolen in December.

The whistle blower site said the emails date from between July, 2004 and late December, 2011, and allegedly contain privileged information about the US government’s attacks against WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. They also allegedly reveal controversial practices by Stratfor in cultivating sources, and targeting of individuals for corporate and government clients, WikiLeaks said.

Stratfor in Austin, Texas said in a statement Monday that mails stolen during the December hack apparently will be published by WikiLeaks. “This is a deplorable, unfortunate — and illegal — breach of privacy,” it said. “Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either”.

WikiLeaks did not disclose its source for the emails it is leaking to over 25 media outlets and activists. Hacker group, Anonymous however said in a Twitter message that it gave the Stratfor emails to WikiLeaks. Transparency, whether forced or voluntary, is a necessity to understand our world, it said.

Stratfor said in January that it got an alert in December that its website had been hacked and customer credit card and other information had been stolen by Anonymous. Its website was hacked again on Dec. 24.

Stratfor denied the hackers’ claim that the data was a list of “private clients” but rather a list of members who may have purchased a publication.

“As one person said, the credit cards were extra, something they took when they realized they could. It was our email they were after,” George Friedman, CEO of Stratfor said in the statement in January.  [PC World]

It seemed like STRATFOR was getting over the hacking incident from two months ago and now this.  It really does seem like someone is trying deliberately to shutdown STRATFOR or make a name for themselves in the hacking world by being the person who shut the company down.

Military, Police, and Fire Men and Women will get free admission to this weekend’s Progressive International Motorcycle Show in NYC with proper ID.

The Progressive International Motorcycle Show is your #1 place to see get the latest Motorcycle news, products, and custom bikes. Already the largest motorcycle show around, this year’s New York event is going to be bigger than 2011. More bikes, more products, and more learning opportunities. There are several show features for you to enjoy, such as the Dream Pavilion, Smage Bros Stunt Show, Ultimate Builder Custom Bike show with a $90k prize, and Kawasaki Design-a-Bike.

Remember, uniformed service men and women get in for free! For anyone with any questions, visit the official site to find out more information about the events: http://www.motorcycleshows.com/

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. government to pay $17.8 million to a family that lost four members when a Marine Corps fighter jet crashed into their San Diego home in 2008.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller’s ruling came after a nonjury trial between the Department of Justice and the family, who sought $56 million for emotional and monetary loss.

Don Yoon lost his 36-year-old wife, Youngmi Lee Yoon; his 15-month-old daughter, Grace; his 2-month-old daughter, Rachel; and his 59-year-old mother-in-law, Seokim Kim Lee, who was visiting from Korea to help her eldest daughter take care of their children.

Yoon said in a statement that Miller’s ruling was “thoughtful, reasoned and just.” Yoon broke down crying throughout his testimony, which came three years to the day when he buried his wife and baby girls in the same casket. He told the judge he only looks forward to the day when he can join them.

“Our family is relieved this part of the process is over, but no sum of money will ever make up for the loss of our loved ones,” he said.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but Mr. Yoon is right, there is no way to properly compensate someone after a tragedy like this.

Hackers on Sunday claimed to have stolen a raft of e-mails and credit card data from U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor, promising it was just the start of a weeklong Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

One alleged hacker said the goal was to use the credit data to steal a million dollars and give it away as Christmas donations, and images posted online claimed to show the receipts.

Members of the loose-knit hacking movement known as “Anonymous” posted a link on Twitter to what they said was Stratfor’s tightly-guarded, confidential client list. Among those on the list: The U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and the Miami Police Department.

The rest of the list, which Anonymous said was a small slice of its 200 gigabytes worth of plunder, included banks, law enforcement agencies, defense contractors and technology firms such as Apple and Microsoft.

“Not so private and secret anymore?” the group taunted in a message on the microblogging site.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link but what is so private and secret about STRATFOR?  Anyone can subscribe to STRATFOR’s website to get full access to their various articles; so I don’t know what the Anonymous group was trying to prove?  So the US Air Force, Army, Fox News, MSNBC, etc. subscribed to STRAFOR, big deal.  I would be more surprised if people from these organizations were not subscribed to STRATFOR.  The biggest thing Anonymous did was force regular people like myself to have to call our banks and have our credit cards cancelled on Christmas Day.  Thanks jerks.  With that said it is pretty pathetic on STRATFOR’s part if true that the data that was stolen was not encrypted and very easy for Anonymous to steal.  You would think that an intelligence think tank that charges so much for membership to their website would at least have some stringent security measures in place.  This is definitely making think twice about subscribing again.

A woman cut off her husband’s penis with a pair of scissors and threw the severed member into a river in revenge for his affair with another woman and his physical abuse, police in Taiwan said Sunday.

The 30-year-old Vietnamese woman, identified only by her surname, Pan, cut off about half her husband’s penis at their home in the southern city of Tainan after he took drugs and sleeping pills and fell asleep, police said.

The woman allegedly claimed she had thrown the severed member of her drug-addicted Taiwanese husband into a river before turning herself in.

“She has been taken into custody on charges of assault,” a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The woman allegedly told police she felt no regret about what she had done to her husband, who is 29 years old, jobless and a known user of illegal drugs.

Police said she claimed to have suffered beatings even though she had worked at a local karaoke shop to support the family since the pair married two years ago.

Her husband’s affair with another woman, which he did not attempt to hide, prompted her revenge, the suspect said, according to police.

If convicted, she faces a jail term of up to 12 years.  [AFP]

Steven Seagal is being threatened with a lawsuit over his part in a police raid that was taped for his A&E reality show, TMZ reported.

The actor, who has served as a reserve deputy sheriff since the mid-’80s, was part of a team that arrived at Jesus Sanchez Llovera’s Arizona house in March with a tank and armed in full riot gear, Llovera alleges in his legal documents.

Llovera claims that the raid, carried out by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, was “unfounded” because they believed Llovera was raising roosters for illegal cockfighting. But he says the roosters are only “for show.”

Llovera — who served both Seagal and Sheriff Joe Arpaio with an official notice of claim, the first step toward a lawsuit — says his 11-month-old puppy was shot and killed during the raid and that police also killed more than 100 of his roosters.  [Hollywood Reporter]

You can read more at the link, which also has a local news video of the incident you can watch.  In the video you can see that Steven Seagal is dressed in the US Army’s multi-cam uniform.  He looks like he is decked out to go to war in Afghanistan instead of busting a cock fighter.