The 51 Coolest Cars of the last 50 Years

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US GROUND TROOPS IN SYRIA IS "ILLEGAL, BIG MISTAKE", RUSSIA WARNS OBAMA OF "UNPREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES"

The change in rhetoric (and apparent shift in strategy) comes just days after the US seemingly prepared the public for what might be coming by releasing helmet cam footage of what Washington says was a raid on an ISIS prison by Delta Force (accompanied by the Peshmerga). 70 prisoners were allegedly freed although not before the US suffered its first combat death in Iraq since 2011.

The timing of the video is suspect, to say the least. It came just days after Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford visited Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi in an effort to dissuade Baghdad from requesting Russian airstrikes on ISIS targets. In short, it appears as though Washington is trying to simultaneously,  i) prove to Mid-East governments that the US can still be effective in the fight against terrorism even as questions remain about ulterior motives and even as Russia racks up gains in Syria, ii) prepare the public for the possibility that America is about to put boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Here’s more from WSJ on Washington’s new “strategy”:

The White House is seriously considering deploying a small squadron of Apache attack helicopters to Iraq as part of a package of new assistance programs to counter Islamic State, according to U.S. officials.

The move could ultimately require the deployment of hundreds more U.S. service members to Iraq. Among other proposals, U.S. officials said some in the military recommend openly deploying a small number of forces on the ground in Syria, embedded among moderate rebels or Kurdish forces there, for the first time.  Read more

22 Ancient Shipwrecks Discovered Near Greek Island

Shipwrecks were the stuff of lore around the craggy coasts of Fourni, a Greek archipelago close to Turkey in the eastern Aegean Sea. Generations of local fishermen and sponge divers had seen piles of ancient pottery collecting algae on the seafloor. Last month, a group of marine archaeologists finally investigated the waters, and their wealthof findings far exceeded expectations.

During the very first dive of the expedition, the team found the remains of a late Roman-period wreck strewn with sea grass in shallow water. By day 5, the researchers had discovered evidence of nine more sunken ships. The next day, they found another six. By the time the 13-day survey was finished, the divers had located 22 shipwrecks— some more than 2,500 years old — that had never been scientifically documented before.  Read more

Steve McQueen and the Sexiest Cars and Motorcycles on Film

In 1970, Steve McQueen, Hollywood’s King of Cool and outspoken gearhead, had it all—until he began making Le Mans, his movie about the famous 24-hour French race. Production was plagued by money problems, on-set rivalries, and his own torrid love life, chronicled in the new documentary Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans. Before the film’s Nov. 13 premiere, we look back at the actor’s most famous roles, in which the vehicles are as memorable as he is.

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Cooling Off the South China Sea

Conflicting claims over the sea don’t have to degenerate into open hostility.

On Oct. 27 the simmering waters of the South China Sea came to a slow boil. A U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Lassen, conducted a freedom-of-navigation cruise within 12 nautical miles of a Chinese-built artificial island in the Spratly archipelago. The Chinese government vowed to “firmly react to this deliberate provocation.”

There’s a scenario in which gunboat diplomacy degenerates into outright hostilities. Ships bump, planes collide, shots are fired. Sailors and airmen die. Carefully cultivated diplomatic relations unravel, and commerce and investment between the world’s two biggest economies break down.  Read more

Why the FDA Is Worried About Chinese Drugs in Your Medicine Cabinet

• Inspections find deleted data, altered quality test records
• Chinese companies supply ingredients to top brand drugmakers
• When FDA inspectors showed up at a Chinese company that supplies key ingredients to two of the U.S.’s biggest drug companies, a curious thing happened.

  After lunch, they walked into a quality control lab on the second floor, where they saw a worker pull what looked like a memory stick from a computer and put it in the pocket of his lab coat. The inspectors asked to see what he’d taken.

  And then the man turned and ran.

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors at Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical Co. never found out what the worker took from the computer, but they found plenty of other things, according to agency documents describing problems at the company, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg. There was evidence that quality control staff deleted records of tests that might show a drug was impure. Audit trails disappeared. A paper shredder was kept close by machines that recorded quality data.  Read more

The Trouble With Saving 21 Trillion Yuan

Economist Liang Hong argues that Chinese authorities are missing a trick in their efforts to fix what ails the nation’s economy. The central bank is cutting interest rates to ease China’s heavy debt burden, but the fiscal authorities are working in the opposite direction. They’re sucking more money out of the economy through taxes, fees, and other measures than the government is giving back, Liang says. Public institutions have so much money that they’re socking away huge sums in bank deposits, “a peculiar phenomenon existing only in China,” she wrote in an August report.

“The government is oversaving,” Liang said in a September interview in her office at the Beijing headquarters of China International Capital (CICC), an investment bank where she serves as chief economist. As a result, she says, “the economy is not running efficiently.”  Read more