A reliable outside Tree House military source says “watch the Maldives“... 

• Police investigate data from home flight  simulator of captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53
• Investigators speak of his ‘obsessive’  support for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim
• Police officers fear  Ibrahim being jailed could have left Shah profoundly upset

(Via UK Daily Mail ) Police are investigating the possibility that  the pilot of missing Flight MH370 hijacked his own aircraft in a bizarre  political protest.
The Mail on Sunday has learned that Captain  Zaharie Ahmad Shah was an ‘obsessive’ supporter of Malaysia’s opposition leader,  Anwar Ibrahim. And hours before the doomed flight left Kuala Lumpur it is  understood 53-year-old Shah attended a controversial trial in which Ibrahim was  jailed for five years.
Campaigners say the politician, the key  challenger to Malaysia’s ruling party, was the victim of a long-running smear  campaign and had faced trumped-up charges. (more…)

INVESTIGATORS NOW BELIEVE THE MISSING BOEING 777 FLEW FOR 8 HOURS!
 (Via New York Post )  Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday that authorities now know the  transponder on the jet was intentionally disabled, and the plane turned back  from its flight to Beijing and flew across Malaysia. Najib said authorities are  now trying to trace the plane across two possible ‘corridors’ — a northern  corridor from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan through to northern  Thailand, and a southern corridor from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
Malaysia’s leader said Saturday the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight  370 was the result of “deliberate action.”
Earlier, a Malaysian official said it was “conclusive” the plane was  hijacked. But Prime Minister Najib Razak said investigators are still looking at  all possibilities.
Najib said authorities now know the missing Malaysia airliner’s transponder  was intentionally disabled, and it turned back from its flight to Beijing and  flew across Malaysia. (more…)

Previous reports outlined that immediately after leaving Malaysian airspace and air traffic controllers two separate communications tools were shut down.   The capability to transmit radio messaging was shut down and then, twenty minutes later, both Transponders -the systems which identify aircraft location/status-  were manually turned off.   Now this:

REUTERS – Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, heightening suspicions of foul play among investigators, sources told Reuters on Friday.

Analysis of the Malaysia data suggests the plane, with 239 people on board, diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew west instead, using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe, said sources familiar with investigations into the Boeing 777′s disappearance. (more…)

In case you didn’t know a US Airlines flight had a crisis landing in Philadelphia.

Emergency Crews Respond To Incident At Philadelphia International Airport http://t.co/KJdT9Ol46N pic.twitter.com/vsDZSUyz59

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) March 13, 2014

https://twitter.com/JimmyStyle/status/444242215754555392
and then moments later…. (more…)

Shanghai 1990 vs. 2010

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Guest posted by:  GruntOfMonteCristo

Fourteen ton spacecraft still has 11 tons of toxic rocket fuel on board…(rollover below)

After a long delay in the posting of the late-Saturday NORAD tracking fit for Phobos-Grunt, internet watchers were beginning to worry that the spacecraft had already broken up in the atmosphere about a day before most predictions.  That vigil ended last night, at around 10:40pm Treehouse time.  One thing that can be concluded from this update, other than the vehicle being intact, is that the orbit decay trends are continuing fairly smoothly.  You probably won’t hear this elsewhere, but that may indicate that the Russian space agency ROSCOSMOS has not been completely straight about the tank material housing the toxic propellants.  If it were aluminum as stated, the tanks likely would have ruptured after more than a day of being engulfed by plasma, especially since the vehicle seems to be flying in a tanks-first attitude.  The propellants would have been scattered by now, dramatically decreasing the mass of the vehicle, and causing a spike in the decay rate.  This apparently hasn’t happened.  The vehicle seems to have held together so far, and that’s a bad sign.  In my opinion, it supports the suspicion that the tanks are really titanium, which will probably survive the reentry all the way to the ground.    (more…)

Our TSA….saving us from wheelchair grannies and their evil defibrillators.  No wonder American Airlines went bankrupt earlier this week. 
(msnbc.com)…An 84-year-old New York grandmother said Saturday she was injured and humiliated when she was strip searched at an airport after she asked to be patted down instead of going through a body scanner.  Lenore Zimmerman said she was whisked away to a private room and made to take off her pants and other clothes after she asked to forgo the screening because she worried it would interfere with her defibrillator. She missed her flight and had to take one two-and-a-half hours later, she said.
“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she told The New York Daily News. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.  I was outraged,” said Zimmerman, a retired receptionist.   (more…)

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Summer’s here, and perhaps you’ve been contemplating taking a jaunt in the family automobile, or maybe even that long hoped for cruise or transatlantic flight.  Then reality sinks in, and you’re reminded of the sky-high gas prices, or that gauntlet of TSA  screeners eagerly groping you in hopes of finding a ‘loaded’ Depends.  Despair not!  We’re going to take you on a little trek right in front of your own computer. 
Every year Wikimedia Commons, the file repository serving Wikipedia and other projects, has over ten million files freely available for everyone.  Every year they hold a vote to select their picture of the year.  Below are the top ten photos chosen for 2010.  (more…)