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...quibble with Alistair Darling's call Wednesday, March 24, for a global tax on banks to help recover the billions in public funds doled out during the crisis. "We intend to get all taxpayers' money back," the Chancellor of the Exchequer said during his budget speech to Parliament, his last before a general election expected in May. Charging banks to help do that, Darling added, was an issue on which "more countries agree...
...Just last summer, Gates toured the huge Fort Worth, Texas, factory where the F-35 is coming to life and declared himself satisfied. "My impression is that most of the high-risk elements associated with this developmental program are largely behind us," he said. Cheaper F-35s rolling off the assembly line seemed to bolster the wisdom of Gates' earlier decision to kill the F-22 fighter, because cheaper F-35s could fill any resulting...
Unfortunately, that was last year's logic. Gates said on Wednesday that Pentagon officials had bamboozled him with "overly rosy forecasts" that were more thorn than flower. After burrowing into the F-35's cost and schedule, President Obama's Pentagon team - including Bush Administration holdover Gates - recently discovered deep-rooted problems. "Things are more complicated than people imagined they were going to be," Ashton Carter, the Pentagon's top weapons buyer, told reporters earlier this month. "You can't control costs, you can't control schedule if you're being unrealistic about costs and schedule...
...rush to build the F-35 has led to ever-changing blueprints, which has led to slowdowns on the production line, which has delayed flight testing. How bad is it? Last year, engineers expected to churn out 200 changes - a month! - to the F-35's design, but actually generated about 500. Even after Gates' restructuring, taxpayers could spend close to $60 billion on more than 300 F-35s before flight testing is finished, meaning costly modifications will be required...
...Aceh isn't the only Islamic society in Asia to cane transgressors. In February, three Malaysian women were subjected to several strokes each after being convicted of extramarital sex. But that sentence was meted out inside a Kuala Lumpur prison. If a proposal drafted last September by a group of Acehnese lawmakers had come to fruition, adulterers might have been stoned to death in public. Pristine beaches and alfresco executions? It's hardly a formula that's going to worry Phuket or Bali. (See 25 authentic Asian experiences...