Katana Found Near Murder Scene in Prince George

I saw an intriguing story on the cover of today's Citizen. Police have discovered a katana (the paper insists on calling it a "samurai sword") in the Hudson's Bay Slough canal near Queensway. The katana had "red discolouration[ie. blood, most likely] on the tip and more splattered down the blade." This fact, as well as the location where it was found, have led police to consider whether it might be related to a murder that occured on Saturday. The victim is rumored to be a gang member, though police will only say at this time that he was "known to us."

I'm waiting to hear if more information is released about the sword, specifically whether it really was used to kill the victim and whether it was an authentic katana or just an imitation. Prudence leads me to believe that it's probably an imitation. If it is authentic, it means that the sword is, to say the least, not cheap.

UPDATE: Or, rather, non-update. Since the story broke on the fourteenth of April, there has not been a follow-up story in the Citizen, though they did run an op-ed on the sixteenth, which can pretty much summed up as "killing people with swords is bad." The Free Press did run a story on the sword, but it doesn't offer anything not already revealed in the Citizen article.

Weren't we all told . .

. . . that the cold war is over? Apparently, it's not quite done yet.

MOSCOW - The Russian space agency has ordered design work to start for a next-generation spaceship capable of flying missions to the moon, setting the ground for a potential new space race with the United States.

The space agency granted the state-controlled RKK Energiya company a US$23 million contract for initial work on a new, reusable craft to replace the 40-year-old Soyuz.

The as-yet-unnamed Russian spaceship could emerge as a potential competitor to NASA's prospective Orion spacecraft.

Design requirements for the Russian craft appear similar to Orion's specification, prompting some experts to nickname it "Orionski."

Orion is scheduled to carrying humans to the International Space Station beginning in 2015, and to the moon by 2020.

Alexei Krasnov, the chief of manned space programs for the Russian space agency, said last week that the prospective Russian spacecraft is set to make its maiden flight before 2020, without elaborating.

James Oberg, an experienced aerospace engineer who worked on NASA's space shuttle program and is now a space consultant, wrote in a commentary that the new Russian space program could help NASA win funds for its plan to return astronauts to the moon.

"This will give NASA a long hoped for boost in Congress by echoing the space race motivations of the 1960s," Oberg said.

Energiya beat the other leading state-controlled spacecraft builder, the Khrunichev company, for the prestigious order. It was announced on a government website.

Energiya has until June 2010 to complete the initial design. The company builds the Soyuz and its unmanned cargo version, named Progress, which are not reusable.

Krasnov said the new spacecraft will be capable of carrying a crew of six and a payload of 500 kilograms to orbit around the Earth. The Soyuz can only carry a crew of three.

Krasnov told reporters last week that the new spaceship should also be capable of delivering a crew of four to lunar orbit.

"We want the new ship to be a step into the future, not just a scaled up version of the Soyuz," he said.

Russia plans to start construction next year of Vostochny, a new space launch facility in the far eastern Amur region near China. The new cosmodrome is expected to host launches of unmanned spacecraft beginning in 2015 and the first manned missions starting in 2018.

Russia currently uses the Soviet-built Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for all of its manned space missions and most important commercial launches. Another launch facility in Plesetsk, northern Russia, is mostly used to launch military satellites.

Windfall oil revenues of the past years have allowed the Kremlin to spend more on Russia's space program, which had suffered badly in the post-Soviet economic meltdown. But with Russia facing its worst financial crisis since 1998, observers say the government may find it hard to fund the ambitious new program.

So. . . President Bush, in 2004, decides to take advantage of the popularity surrounding the Spirit and Opportunity missions on Mars to announce his new "vision for space exploration," which involves ditching the space shuttle, completing construction of the International Space Station, and "return[ing] to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond." Then, China, ever so eager to prove it's not a dumb kid anymore, announces its own plans for a moon mission, which I wrote about earlier. Now Russia, which had earlier annouced that it had no interest in taking part in the Nasa plan, has now suddenly decided it will build a new spacecraft capable of lunar orbit.

At least Canada's not being dragged into this moronic new space race. . . we're too busy trying to beat the Russians in the moronic new oil race.