Happy birthday.

Ill senior dies in jump from birthday biplane flight

An elderly man recently diagnosed with a brain tumor leaped to his death from a vintage airplane he rented to celebrate his 88th birthday, officials said Tuesday.

Joseph Harold Frost took off his safety belt at 300 to 400 feet, stood up in the open cockpit of the two-seat biplane and went over the side Monday.

The pilot tried but failed to wrestle him back into the plane and nose the aircraft upward to force Frost back into his seat.

"I think that was Dad's idea, to go out in a flash of glory," said Robert Frost, who had helped his father arrange the chartered flight on a biplane similar to the ones the elder Frost flew in World War II.

The man landed on an apartment patio, horrifying those who witnessed it.

"I saw him hit the power lines, heard trees breaking. I really thought it wasn't real," Cynthia Lankford said.

Election year, eschmection year.

OPEC close to agreement on production cuts

OPEC oil producers Wednesday agreed to endorse tighter oil supply curbs, ignoring consumer country concerns about crude prices near 13-year highs, the Libyan Oil Minister Fethi bin Chetwane said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to implement a deal cutting one million barrels a day from April 1, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said. The pact was first arranged in Algiers in February.

The Bush administration, in a U.S. election year, had called on OPEC to lift output restrictions to help control U.S. prices at the pump and prevent energy inflation slowing economic growth.

Gulf OPEC members Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates argued the cartel should consider deferring the April curbs to allow prices to cool.

OPEC blames speculative investors who hold record positions on futures exchanges in London and New York for driving up oil prices this year.

via lady_babalon

9 Americans, including 4 civilians, killed in Iraq

In one of the bloodiest and most horrifying days since the end of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, five U.S. troops and four American civilian contractors were killed in separate attacks in the Sunni Triangle west of Baghdad. After an ambush on two vehicles carrying the civilian contractors in Fallujah, jubilant Iraqis burned and mutilated the dead, then dragged two corpses through the streets and hung them from a bridge spanning the Euphrates River.

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by way of xiombarg

Another weapon in our high-tech arsenal.

Marines' weapon loaded with 'scream'

US troops are to be armed with a stun gun that uses a baby's high-pitched scream to bring the enemy to its knees.

The gun, which will be issued to marines in Iraq this month, fires "sonic bullets" that can be targeted like a torch beam.

Anyone hit with a full blast would suffer excruciating pain, permanent deafness and some form of cellular damage. A prolonged blast could kill.