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South Africa — The First Country Built on “Critical Race Theory” — Officially Implodes South Africa is disintegrating. After the jailing of Jacob Zuma, supporters of the former president took to the streets, ostensibly to protest but actually to simply plunder at will. ... Rioters have plundered shops and entire shopping malls. When they run out out of normal goods, they steal livestock. When it’s too heavy to carry by hand, they bring a forklift.... The meltdown in South Africa isn’t a natural disaster or a random fluke. It’s a choice. South Africa was the first modern nation to be...

President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday said a week-long spree of violence and pillaging that has shocked South Africa had been "planned" and vowed to hunt down those responsible, as the death toll from the unrest reached 212. "It is quite clear that all these incidents of unrest and looting were instigated -- there were people who planned it and coordinated it," Ramaphosa said in a visit to KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, the flarepoint for post-apartheid South Africa's worst crisis... Shopping malls and warehouses have been ransacked in KZN and Johannesburg, stoking fears of shortages and inflicting a devastating blow to the...

Like seemingly everybody else in America, I have spent the vast majority of this brutally hot summer sitting underneath a fan in my air-conditioned apartment and clutching a sweaty can of White Claw spiked seltzer. Available in flavors like mango, black cherry, and grapefruit, these slim cans of refreshing sparkling water are spiked with a potent 5% alcohol content, and they’re the hottest cold drink in the country. This particular brand of spiked seltzer has inspired a truly unique devotion among its fans, dominating more than half of the rapidly growing “spiked seltzer” market, becoming the subject of countless memes,...

PRETORIA, South Africa — The nation’s tax chief steeled himself. Chiding and pleading with President Jacob Zuma to get him to file his taxes — much less pay the full amount — was always an excruciating task. And it kept getting worse. One of the president’s sons, a nephew and countless business allies had serious tax problems as well, four former senior officials said, alarming investigators and leaving them wondering what to do. South Africa’s young democracy had depended on the faith — and taxes — of its people since the end of apartheid, so the risks were evident. If...

Two independent investigations have now placed the blame for the failure of the classified Zuma satellite to reach orbit on Northrop Grumman, not SpaceX...The investigations tentatively concluded that onboard sensors did not immediately communicate to ground systems that the satellite did not separate from the rocket, according to the Journal. Unbeknownst to officials at the time, the planned return of the rocket’s upper stage — a method of disposal to avoid adding space debris around the Earth — brought the satellite back down with it. By the time the satellite separated from the rocket it was too late, putting Zuma...

Two independent investigations, made up of federal and industry officials, pointed to Northrop's payload adapter as the cause of the satellite's loss, the report said, citing people familiar with the probes. The payload adapter is a key part of deploying a satellite in orbit, connecting the satellite to the upper stage of a rocket. Zuma is believed to have cost around $3.5 billion to develop, according to the report. The satellite was funded through a process that received a lesser degree of oversight from Congress compared with similar national security-related satellites, industry officials said. ... The investigations tentatively concluded that...

JOHANNESBURG — Top leaders of South Africa’s governing party ordered President Jacob Zuma to step down on Tuesday, saying that his continued presence was eroding the “renewed hope” felt since the election of new party leaders in December. Ace Magashule, secretary general of the African National Congress, said that the party had not given Mr. Zuma a deadline to respond, but added that he was certain that the president would deliver a reply the next day. “Let’s leave it to President Jacob Zuma,” Mr. Magashule said at a news conference at party headquarters in Johannesburg. In a meeting with party...

Many people awaited last Sunday’s Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral of a highly classified US payload. The launch had been delayed for weeks, speculation as to the satellite’s purpose was rampant, and successfully delivering national security satellites to orbit is an important part of SpaceX’s business. The launch, however, remains shrouded in mystery.Shortly after the launch, Bloomberg reported that the satellite was lost, due to US Strategic Command saying they were not tracking any objects. The Wall Street Journal suggested that Congress was being briefed on a failure, and that it was due to a failure of the satellite...

Interesting details on the X37B also.

An expensive, highly classified U.S. spy satellite is presumed to be a total loss after it failed to reach orbit atop a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. rocket on Sunday, according to industry and government officials. Lawmakers and congressional staffers from the Senate and the House have been briefed about the botched mission, some of the officials said. The secret payload—code-named Zuma and launched from Florida on board a Falcon 9 rocket—is believed to have plummeted back into the atmosphere, they said, because it didn’t separate as planned from the upper part of the rocket. Once the engine powering the rocket’s...

Last night at 8:00 p.m. EST, SpaceX conducted its first launch of the year, carrying a classified spacecraft built by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. government code-named "Zuma." Now reports are circulating that the Zuma spacecraft might have been lost following the launch. Peter B. de Selding, a spaceflight reporter for Space Intel Report, first tweeted that sources suggested to him that the satellite "may be dead in orbit after separation." ...Popular Mechanics has reached out to both SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for comment about the fate of the satellite. Northrop did not immediately reply, but a SpaceX spokesperson issued...

SpaceX plans to launch the secret Zuma payload for the U.S. government this evening (Jan. 7), after a nearly two-month delay. Zuma is scheduled to lift off atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station tonight between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. EST (0100 to 0300 GMT on Jan. 8). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of the company. You can also watch the liftoff directly from SpaceX's live webcast page here.  Sunday's launch will also include a landing attempt by the Falcon 9's first stage, which will come back down to Earth...

SpaceX, now on track to more than double its personal best for launches conducted in a single year, wants to further accelerate its launch pace in 2018 by perhaps 10 or more missions. “We will increase our cadence next year about 50 percent,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and COO, told SpaceNews in an interview last week. “We’ll fly more next year than this year, knock on wood, and I think we will probably level out at about that rate, 30 to 40 per year.” With 16 launches completed and three to four remaining by year’s end, SpaceX is tracking to...

The launch of Zuma atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been pushed to Friday (Nov. 17) at the earliest, officials with the U.S. Air Force's 45th Space Wing announced via Twitter today (Nov. 16). "We have decided to stand down and take a closer look at data from recent fairing testing for another customer," SpaceX communications director John Taylor said in a statement this afternoon. "Though we have preserved the range opportunity for tomorrow, we will take the time we need to complete the data review and will then confirm a new launch date."

A Falcon 9 rocket is vertical on the pad at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A with a classified payload in the fairing. A launch window for the flight opens at 8:00 p.m. EST and remains open until 10:00 p.m. The first stage of the Falcon 9 will return for a vertical landing at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Defense giant Northrop Grumman has confirmed in a statement that it procured the launch for an undisclosed customer, but what the payload is, and who will be operating the satellite, have not been revealed. The codename for...

If the Zuma launch goes well, it will mark SpaceX's 17th launch of 2017. If the landing goes off without a hitch, it will be the company's 20th overall successful landing. This includes landings on drone ships at sea as well as on land. Very little is known about the Zuma mission, as no government or commercial entity has claimed it.  Usually, even the National Reconnaissance Office — the branch of the government responsible for maintaining spy satellites — will say when a payload is theirs while keeping the mission details classified. But for some reason, whatever agency is behind...

It’s not often that one can point to a last-minute (from the public side) addition of a mission to a launch manifest – let alone one that manages to stay secret until 30 days before the opening of its launch campaign. But that is the case for a mystery Falcon 9 mission that is now set to launch between Koreasat-5A and CRS-13/Dragon. The mystery mission, codename Zuma, is known on its FCC launch license as Mission 1390 and will see a Falcon 9 rocket launch from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center before performing a RTLS (Return To Launch Site)...

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the outgoing head of the African Union (AU), has hit out at Donald Trump's controversial immigration order at a summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She said: "The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries." --SNIP-- Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, contrasted the different stance of African countries compared to the US. He said: "African nations are among the world's largest and most generous hosts of refugees.

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma is calling on South Africans not to visit Israel in order to show solidarity with “the people of Palestine”, the Africa News website reported Sunday. Zuma’s comments came at the 105th anniversary celebration of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), during which he reiterated the party’s solidarity with the “oppressed people of the world”, citing “Palestine” as an example. “The people of Palestine continue to suffer in their rightful quest for self-determination … We reiterate that we firmly discourage travel to Israel for causes not related to fostering peace in the region,” Zuma was quoted...

Zika is an existing virus in Malaysia and the steps needed to prevent its infection are similar to those adopted for dengue, said a researcher. World Health Organisation's (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Arbovirus Reference and Research director Prof Dr Sazaly Abu Bakar said the Zika virus was isolated from mosquitoes in 1969 in Bentong, Pahang. However, the origin of the virus discovered in Malaysia was not known since it was not studied to determine its genome, he said. "It may have come from Africa or could be native to our country and found in our monkeys and mosquitoes," he added....