The International Space Station Celebrates Its 10th Birthday

The International Space Station turns 10

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the first launched module of the International Space Station (ISS). The module Zarya was lifted into orbit on November 20th, 1998 by a Russian Proton rocket lifting off from Baikonur, Kazhakstan. In the decade since, 44 manned flights and 34 unmanned flights have carried further modules, solar arrays, support equipment, supplies and a total of 167 human beings from 15 countries to the ISS, and it still has a ways to go until it is done. Originally planned to be complete in 2003, the target date for completion is now 2011. Aside from time spent on construction, ISS crew members work on a good deal of research involving biology and physics in conditions of microgravity. If humans are ever to leave the Earth for extended periods, the ISS is designed to be the place where we will discover the best materials, procedures and safety measures to make it a reality. (32 photos total)

In December 1998, the crew of Space Shuttle Mission STS-88 began construction of the International Space Station - Astronaut James Newman is seen here making final connections the U.S.-built Unity node to the Russian-built Zarya module. The crew carried a large-format IMAX camera from which this picture was taken. (NASA)

2

Backdropped against a blanket of heavy cloud cover, the Russian-built FGB, also called Zarya, approaches the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the U.S.-built Node 1, also called Unity (foreground) on December 6th, 1998. Inside Endeavour's cabin, the STS-88 crew readied the remote manipulator system (RMS) for Zarya capture as they awaited the rendezvous. (NASA) #

3

Blanketing clouds form the backdrop for this 70mm scene of the connected Zarya and Unity modules after having been released from Endeavour's cargo bay a bit earlier on December 4th, 1998. Six crew members, who had earlier spent the majority of their on-duty mission time working on the tandem of space hardware, watched the joined modules from Endeavour in a survey and fly-around mode. (NASA) #

4

Astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, STS-98 mission specialist, was photographed by a member of the Expedition One crew in the newly installed Destiny laboratory during the second of three space walks on February 12th, 2001. Ahead of schedule, the astronauts connected several computer and electrical cables between the docking port and the lab; unveiled the lab's large, high-quality window (through which this photo was taken) and attached an exterior shutter; and repositioned a movable foot platform they had taken inside Atlantis on the first spacewalk for a slight adjustment. (NASA) #

5

Space shuttle Endeavour is shown after rollback of the rotating service structure. The rollback was in preparation for liftoff on the STS-126 mission with a crew of seven. Above Endeavour's external tank is the vent hood, known as the "beanie cap," at the end of the gaseous oxygen vent arm, extending from the fixed service structure. Below is the orbiter access arm with the White Room at the end, flush against the shuttle. The rotating structure provides protected access to the shuttle for changeout and servicing of payloads at the pad. Photo taken Nov. 14, 2008. (NASA/Kim Shiflett) #

6

This high-angle image of the Space Shuttle Atlantis backdropped over a mountainous coastline was photographed on February 16th, 2001 by the three-man Expedition One crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) shortly after the shuttle and the outpost unlinked following several days of joint operations of the two crews. The scene was recorded with a digital still camera. (NASA) #

7

Cosmonaut Sergei K. Krikalev, Expedition One flight engineer, prepares to photograph some geographic targets of opportunity through a viewing port on the International Space Station's Zvezda Service Module in December of 2000. (NASA) #

8

The Phantom Torso, seen here on May 13th, 2001 in the Destiny laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS), is designed to measure the effects of radiation on organs inside the body by using a torso that is similar to those used to train radiologists on Earth. The torso is equivalent in height and weight to an average adult male. It contains radiation detectors that will measure, in real-time, how much radiation the brain, thyroid, stomach, colon, and heart and lung area receive on a daily basis. The data will be used to determine how the body reacts to and shields its internal organs from radiation, which will be important for longer duration space flights. (NASA) #

9

Silhouetted over Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) is seen on October 11th, 2000 in a configuration soon to be changed, once the approaching STS-92 crew adds its important new changes. If oriented with Earth's horizon on the left, the ISS elements, from the left, are Node 1 or Unity, the functional cargo block or Zarya, the service module or Zvezda and the Progress supply ship. In a matter of days, the crew went on to add the Z1 Truss structure and a third pressurized mating adapter. (NASA) #

10

Astronaut Donald R. Pettit, Expedition 6 NASA ISS science officer, photographs his helmet visor during a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on January 15th, 2003. Pettit's arms and camera are visible in the reflection of his helmet visor. Astronaut Kenneth D. Bowersox, mission commander, is also visible in visor reflection, upper right. (NASA) #

11

The Expedition Three (white shirts), STS-105 (striped shirts), and Expedition Two (red shirts) crews assemble for a group photo in the Destiny laboratory on the International Space Station on August 17th, 2001. (NASA) #

12

An overhead view of the exterior of the Space Shuttle Atlantis' crew cabin, part of its payload bay doors and docking system was provided by Expedition 16 crewmembers. Before docking with the International Space Station, astronaut Steve Frick, STS-122 commander, flew the shuttle through a roll pitch maneuver or basically a backflip to allow the space station crew a good view of Atlantis' heat shield. Using digital still cameras equipped with both 400 and 800 millimeter lenses, the ISS crewmembers took a number of photos of the shuttle's thermal protection system and sent them down to teams on the ground for analysis. Photo taken February 9th, 2008. (NASA) #

13

Astronaut Carl E. Walz, Expedition Four flight engineer, catalogs canisters of water in the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station on March 11th, 2002. (NASA) #

14

The Soyuz TMA-4 vehicle blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 19, 2004, carrying a crew of three to the ISS. (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #

15

The Soyuz 14 (TMA-10) spacecraft approaches the International Space Station. With cosmonaut Oleg Kotov at the controls, the Soyuz linked up to the Zarya module nadir port at 2:10 p.m. (CDT) on April 9, 2007. The docking followed Saturday's launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (NASA) #

16

The ISS, seen following undocking at 1:13 p.m. (CST), December 9, 2000. This is one of the first images of the entire station with its new solar array panels deployed. Before separation, the shuttle and space station had been docked to one another for 7 days. Endeavour moved downward from the space station, then began a tail-first circle at a distance of about 500 feet. The maneuver, with pilot Michael J. Bloomfield at the controls, took about an hour. (NASA) #

17

Astronaut John L. Phillips, Expedition 11 NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer, is photographed among stowage bags in an airlock on the ISS on May 18th, 2005. (NASA) #

18

Astronaut Leroy Chiao, Expedition 10 commander and NASA ISS science officer, watches a water bubble float between him and the camera, showing his image refracted, on the IISS on January 15th, 2005. (NASA) #

19

This medium close-up view in the now densely-equipped Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station shows one floating ball-shaped item which is actually one of the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) on January 27th, 2008. Cosmonaut Yuri I. Malenchenko, Expedition 16 flight engineer representing Russia's Federal Space Agency, is also visible in the background. (NASA) #

20

The Canadarm2 (center) and solar array panel wings on the International Space Station are featured in this image photographed by a crewmember during the mission's first planned session of extravehicular activity (EVA) while Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-118) was docked with the station on August 11th, 2007. To see a larger panorama (stitched together with another photo of the Endeavour), click here. (NASA) #

21

Astronaut C. Michael Foale, Expedition 8 commander and NASA ISS science officer, equipped with a bungee harness, exercises on the Treadmill Vibration Isolation System (TVIS) in the Zvezda Service Module on the ISS on April 12th, 2004. (NASA) #

22

Backdropped by a blanket of clouds, the ISS was photographed by a crewmember on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis following the undocking of the two spacecraft. Atlantis pulled away from the complex at 8:13 a.m. (CDT) on October 16, 2002. (NASA) #

23

This view features a reboost of the International Space Station (ISS) in action. Ground controllers at Mission Control Moscow ignited the thrusters of a Progress rocket docked to the station's Zvezda Service Module on April 4th, 2003. The 14-minute firing raised the average altitude of the station by about 3 km. One of the Expedition 6 crewmembers captured this picture of the yellow-glowing thrusters from a window in the Service Module. (NASA) #

24

A close up view of a water droplet on a leaf on the Russian BIO-5 Rasteniya-2/Lada-2 (Plants-2) plant growth experiment, which is located in the Zvezda Service Module on the ISS. Photo taken on March 9th, 2003. (NASA) #

25

The ISS is backdropped against a cloud-covered part of Earth as the orbital outpost moves away from the Space Shuttle Discovery on August 6th, 2005. Earlier, the crews of the two spacecraft concluded nine days of cooperative work. (NASA) #

26

Astronaut Karen Nyberg, STS-124 mission specialist, looks through a window in the newly installed Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station while Space Shuttle Discovery is docked with the station on June 10th, 2008. (NASA) #

27

Astronaut Stephen Robinson rides the 17-meter-long Canadarm2 during the STS-114 mission of the space shuttle Discovery to the ISS in August of 2005. The Canadarm2 aboard the ISS has multiple joints and is capable of maneuvering payloads as massive as 116,000 kilograms, equivalent to a fully loaded bus. (NASA) #

28

The ISS is seen moving away from the Space Shuttle Atlantis on June 19th, 2007. Earlier the STS-117 and Expedition 15 crews concluded about eight days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station. Astronaut Lee Archambault, STS-117 pilot, was at the controls for the departure and fly-around, which gave Atlantis' crew a look at the station's new expanded configuration. (NASA) #

29

A spacesuit-turned-satellite called SuitSat began its orbit around the Earth after it was released by the ISS Expedition 12 crewmembers during a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on Feb. 3, 2006. SuitSat, an unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit, was outfitted by the crew with three batteries, internal sensors and a radio transmitter, which faintly transmitted recorded voices of school children to amateur radio operators worldwide. The suit entered the atmosphere and burned a few weeks later. (NASA) #

30

High above New Zealand and Cook Strait, astronauts Robert L. Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang work to attach a new truss segment to the ISS and begin to upgrade the power grid on December 12th, 2006. (NASA) #

31

The ISS is seen from Space Shuttle Discovery as the two spacecraft begin their relative separation. Earlier the STS-124 and Expedition 17 crews concluded almost nine days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 6:42 a.m. (CDT) on June 11th, 2008. (NASA) #

32

Astronaut Steve Bowen, STS-126 mission specialist, participates in the mission's first session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on November 18th, 2008, as construction and maintenance continue on the ISS. During the six-hour, 52-minute spacewalk, Bowen and astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper (out of frame), mission specialist, worked to clean and lubricate part of the station's starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJ) and to remove two of SARJ's 12 trundle bearing assemblies. The spacewalkers also removed a depleted nitrogen tank from a stowage platform on the outside of the complex and moved it into Endeavour's cargo bay. (NASA) #

More links and information

Last chance: Astronauts venture on final spacewalk - AP Story about STS-126, 11/24

ISS Gallery - NASA page

International Space Station - Wikipedia Entry

International Space Station - NASA page

How 10 Famous Technology Products Got Their Names

From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, we take a look at the processes and people who came up with the names for these iconic tech products.

By Thomas Wailgum of CIO

Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn't already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult—to say the least.

The makers of these 10 tech products—the iPod, BlackBerry, Firefox, Twitter, Windows 7, ThinkPad, Android, Wikipedia, Mac OS X and the "Big Cats," and Red Hat Linux—all have displayed certain amounts marketing savvy, common sense and fun-loving spirit in settling on their products' names. Here are the intriguing, surprising and sometimes predictable accounts of their creation.

iPod: "Open the pod bay door, Hal"

During Apple's MP3 player development, Steve Jobs spoke of Apple's strategy: the Mac as a hub to other gadgets. Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter Apple hired to help name the gadget before its debut in 2001, fixed on that idea, according to Wired. He brainstormed hubs of all kinds, eventually coming to the concept of a spaceship. You could leave it, but you'd have to return to refuel. The stark plastic front of the prototype inspired the final connection: pod, a la 2001. Add an "i" and the connection to the iMac was complete.

Image credit: IDG News Service

BlackBerry: Sweet Addictiveness

Canada's Research in Motion called on Lexicon Branding to help name its new wireless e-mail device in 2001. The consultancy pushed RIM founders away from the word "e-mail," which research shows can raise blood pressure. Instead, they looked for a name that would evoke joy and somehow give feelings of peace. After someone made the connection that the small buttons on the device resembled a bunch of seeds, Lexicon's team (see profile) explored names like strawberry, melon and various vegetables before settling on blackberry—a word both pleasing and which evoked the black color of the device.

Image credit: IDG News Service

Firefox: Second Time's a Charm

Choosing a name that evokes a product's essence and is available can be quite complicated, as the Mozilla folks found out. The early version of Mozilla's browser was called Firebird, but due to another open-source project with the same name, the Mozilla elders renamed their browser Firefox, which is another name for red panda. Why? "It's easy to remember. It sounds good. It's unique. We like it," they said. Best of all? Nobody else was using it.

Image credit: Copyright Mozilla

Twitter: Connecting the Digital Flock 140 Characters at a Time

When cofounder Biz Stone saw the application that Jack Dorsey created in 2006 he was reminded of the way birds communicate: "Short bursts of information...Everyone is chirping, having a good time." In response, Stone came up with "twttr," and the group eventually added some vowels. It's hard to think of a more evocative name in the tech world than twitter, but what began as what Stone described as "trivial" bursts of communication developed into a powerful means of networking, breaking news, and forum for the 44th U.S. president's campaign.

Image credit: Twitter

Windows 7: Counting on the Power of 7

While Microsoft's next OS is kind of a "Ho-hum" name, one has only to look at what happened with the most recent Windows release to understand why Microsoft might have gone back to a tried-and-true naming philosophy: Vista? Ouch. Windows 95 and XP? Those have done much better. Microsoft's Mike Nash announced the name this way: "Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore 'Windows 7' just makes sense." We're betting that Microsoft execs are hoping that number 7 will deliver on its promise of luck—they could sure use a win after Vista.

Image credit: Microsoft

ThinkPad: Simplicity Wins Out

The venerable line of PC notebooks rolled onto the scene in 1992. While the concept was spot on, there was turmoil at IBM as to what to call it. IBM's pen-computing group wanted to keep it simple; they liked ThinkPad. But IBM's corporate naming committee didn't—it didn't have a number, and every IBM product had to have a number, and how would ThinkPad translate into other languages? Due to the chutzpah of the IBMer who unveiled it, ThinkPad won out, and it was a huge hit for IBM, which eventually sold it to Lenovo in 2005.

Image credit: André Karwath / Wikipedia

Android: Secretive, But Still Not Exciting

You'd think the story behind the naming of the Open Handset Alliance's new open-source platform for mobile devices, which includes the brand-new G1 loaded with Google's goodies, would be cool. But, uh, not so much. Back in 2005, Google quietly acquired a mysterious startup named Android Inc., which had been operating under "a cloak of secrecy" on "making software for mobile phones," reported Businessweek. The result of all Google's secrecy and Internet hype was the debut of T-Mobile's G1 on Oct. 22, 2008.

Image credit: IDG News Service

Wikipedia: Just What It Sounds Like

According to Wikipedia, the name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia (you remember, those large books that, as kids, we ruthlessly plagiarized for school book reports). FYI: a portmanteau is a fancy way of saying that we're going to take two words, jam them together and (hopefully) create a new concept that people will love. So far, so good. In an illustration of the axiom "the more things change the more they stay the same": Today, kids and adults now ruthlessly plagiarize Wikipedia instead of encyclopedias.

Image credit: Copyright Wikimedia Foundation

Mac OS X and "The Big Cats": Catlike Sleekness and Style

Apple's popular Mac operating system X actually denotes the Roman numeral 10, since it is the OS's tenth release, following Mac OS 9. To the ire of Apple fanboys, many people do refer to it as letter 'X.' More interesting have been the "big cat" code names assigned to each succeeding X release that have stuck with Apple's marketing: Cheetah (10.0), Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and current kitty Leopard. Snow Leopard has been assigned for the 10.6 release, with rumors that Lynx and Cougar are in the works.

Image credit: IDG News Service

Red Hat Linux: A Name Rich with Meaning

Cofounder Bob Young (pictured) has given multidimensional origins of the red fedora name:

1. It was named after red, which in Western history is "the symbol of liberation and challenge of authority." 2. Cofounder Marc Ewing wore his grandfather's red Cornell lacrosse hat in college and became known for this tech expertise—those with problems went to see the guy in the red hat. 3. Ewing named his software projects Red Hat 1, Red Hat 2 and so on. "So, when he started his Linux project, he just named it Red Hat Linux," Young said. All righty then!

Image credit: IDG News Service

ISS Astronauts Face Most Dangerous Challenge Ever: Home Remodeling

Astronauts prepare to give International Space Station extreme home makeover

By Daily Mail Reporter

The International Space Station is about to get all the comforts of a modern, high-end, 'green' home: a recycling water filter, kitchen fridge, extra bedrooms and workout equipment.

Space shuttle Endeavour's seven astronauts are due to carry the extra mod cons up to the station over the weekend.

They will convert the living area from a three-bedroom, one-bath, one-kitchen home to a five-bedroom, two-bath and two-kitchen home.

Enlarge

Changes to the International Space Station will enable it to home six astronauts instead of just three

NASA is already environmentally friendly, generating power through solar panels and recycling most waste.

But a new water recovery system will take this one step further, turning urine and condensation into fresh drinking water.

The system is essential if NASA is to increase the size of the space station crew from three to six by the middle of next year.

Endeavour's commander, Christopher Ferguson, said the water system would make deep-space exploration easier once crews are freed of lugging water.

'I would challenge you to find any other system on the Earth that recycles urine into drinkable water. It's such a repulsive concept that nobody would even broach it,' he said.

'But that day will come on this planet, too, where we're going to need to have these technologies in place, and this is just a great way to get started.'

The state of the art gym equipment and brand new toilet will be delivered over the weekend

The astronauts are also excited about getting their first kitchen fridge on board keeping their drinks cold and fruit fresher for long. The current lone refrigerator on board is restricted to science experiments.

'It seems kind of trivial, but six months of lukewarm orange juice can kind of bum you out,' said astronaut Sandra Magnus, who will fly up on Endeavour and move in for 14 weeks.

An exercise machine capable of some 30 routines will also be delivered.

NASA does not expect to get the water generation system up and running before spring. That's how long it will take to check everything and make sure the recycled water is safe to drink. Until then, the space station crew will continue to use water delivered by the shuttle and unmanned Russian supply ships.

Enlarge

Greg Chamitoff looks out from the ISS as he awaits the new crew and home comforts from Earth

Before Endeavour leaves, urine already collected by space station residents will be flushed through the system and undergo distillation, so recycled water samples can be returned to Earth for analysis.

Additional samples will be brought back by another shuttle in February to make absolutely certain the system is working properly.

If everything goes well, the space station will open its doors to six full-time residents next May or June.

The jump in crew size is especially important for the Canadian, European and Japanese astronauts who have been waiting years to live aboard the space station.

The larger, more diverse crew will boost the amount time spent on scientific research from 10 hours a week - the average now - to 35 hours a week, Suffredini said.

Most of the crew's time is now devoted to upkeep, and the maintenance chores will grow as the 10-year-old space station ages, he noted.

While fixing up the inside of the space station, Endeavour's astronauts will tackle a greasy, grimy job on the outside.

Three of the crew will take turns cleaning and lubricating a jammed solar-wing rotating joint; it's clogged with metal shavings from grinding parts and hasn't worked correctly for more than a year.

Toxic Melamine in 8 brands of powdered milk found positive in Bangladesh

BAEC find vindicates DU melamine results
Govt finally discloses to court 7 out of 8 milk powder brands tested positive; govt's role comes under criticism; court ruling today
By Ershad Kamol of “The Daily Star”


The government yesterday disclosed to the High Court (HC) that Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC) also had detected high concentration of toxic melamine in seven brands of powdered milk out of the eight tested so far.

The revelation raised questions among a cross-section of the people about the caretaker government's sincerity about ensuring public health as it had sat on the test results for a week instead of letting the worried consumers know about the findings.

The court is scheduled to pronounce a judgment on the melamine issue today.

On November 3 the government declared that melamine had been detected only in three Chinese powdered milk brands Yashili 1, Yashili 2, and Sweet Baby 2 in tests by a Thai and two local laboratories.

But at the time the government already had the BAEC test results in its hands which it decided to keep undisclosed.

The consumer confusion about melamine in powdered milk arose when about a month ago Health and Food Adviser Dr AMM Shawkat Ali opted to downplay a Dhaka University (DU) chemistry department test result that had detected melamine in eight brands of powdered milk including five popular ones.

Instead he and his government trusted the test results of the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI), and of a private laboratory Plasma Plus, both of which detected melamine in only Yashili 1 while failing to find trace of the substance in the remaining seven brands.

Later the samples of all eight brands were sent to the laboratories of Bangladesh Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR), BAEC, and a FAO recognised private laboratory in Thailand for testing.

This time around BAEC detected melamine in seven of the brands while the other two laboratories found contamination only in the Chinese brands.
The government adviser said on November 3 that BAEC and the DU chemistry department are not capable of conducting complicated tests like finding melamine in milk.

He told The Daily Star about the BAEC lab, "It's good for detecting pesticides and radiation levels, but not for detecting melamine in milk," adding that the DU chemistry department also has similar limitations.

Criticising the government's move to keep the BAEC test results hushed for a week, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) Chairman Prof Muzaffer Ahmad told The Daily Star yesterday, "It's a violation of the Right to Information Act which the government recently enacted. The persons responsible for hiding the information from the public should be put on trial according to the law."

"The government's role in such a complicated public health issue infers its lack of care for it. In fact, the government was hiding the facts for the welfare of the corrupt business community," he said.

Programme Officer of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) Emdad Hossain said the way the government has been dealing with the melamine issue, is in violation of consumers' rights, because the consumers were kept in the dark about the confirmation of existence of a dangerously harmful substance in milk products they feed there children.

"People were in the dark and confused, as the government kept secret the test results. This is a blatant violation of consumers' rights, and very dangerous because of melamine's health implications," Hossain said.

The amounts of melamine detected by BAEC are 175.2 milligram per kilogram (mg/kg) in Yashili-1, 172 mg/kg in Yashili-2, 330.4 mg/kg in Sweet Baby-2, 171.3 mg/kg in Nido Fortified Instant, 478.3 mg/kg in Anlene, 287.4 mg/kg in Diploma, and 7.4 mg/kg in Dano Full Cream Milk.

However, BAEC did not detect any trace of melamine in Red Cow, which was found to be contaminated in the DU test.

Deputy Attorney General Rajik Al Jalil produced all test results to the HC yesterday, after the court had directed the government to do so.

Prof Nilufar Nahar, under whose leadership melamine was detected in the eight brands of powdered milk through a test in the DU chemistry department lab, said, "As a scientist I have a global reputation. The government should know my work before dismissing our department's abilities. I invite them to visit our laboratory and urge them to stop talking nonsense."

"The man who conducted the tests in Plasma Plus and the two others who tested the samples in BCSIR had been researchers under my supervision. I know the mistakes they made in their tests. The government should be ashamed of its blatant kowtowing to the interests of the unscrupulous industry, and for pitting novice chemists against the nation's top scientists."

She also questioned the authenticity of the test results from the Thai laboratory, saying, "It's a FAO recognised private laboratory, not FAO's own lab, moreover the report is incomplete." The report of the Thai lab did not elaborate on the methodology of its tests, she added.

"Local distributors of powdered milk brands should apologise to the public instead of trying to hide the facts, and at the same time they should ask the Chinese company Sanlu to compensate them for the loss of their business," she suggested.

Meanwhile, BSTI has been briefing the media on the 'safe level of melamine contamination', instead of warning the public about its disastrous impact on health, especially on children's health.

Four children died in China due to kidney stones that occurred from being fed melamine contaminated milk, while 53,000 others are currently suffering from kidney failures due to the same reason.

Black Shadows under the glitziest candle of Dubai

'We need slaves to build monuments'
It is already home to the world's glitziest buildings, man-made islands and mega-malls - now Dubai plans to build the tallest tower. But behind the dizzying construction boom is an army of migrant labourers lured into a life of squalor and exploitation. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports

• 
• Written by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.
  
• from :
  
• 
  

Workers sleep on the street in Dubai. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul Ahad

The sun is setting and its dying rays cast triangles of light on to the bodies of the Indian workers. Two are washing themselves, scooping water from tubs in a small yard next to the labour camp's toilets. Others queue for their turn. One man stands stamping his feet in a bucket, turned into a human washing machine. The heat is suffocating and the sandy wind whips our faces. The sprinkles of water from men drying their clothes fall like welcome summer rain.

All around, a city of labour camps stretches out in the middle of the Arabian desert, a jumble of low, concrete barracks, corrugated iron, chicken-mesh walls, barbed wire, scrap metal, empty paint cans, rusted machinery and thousands of men with tired and gloomy faces.

I have left Dubai's spiralling towers, man-made islands and mega-malls behind and driven through the desert to the outskirts of the neighbouring city of Abu Dhabi. Turn right before the Zaha Hadid bridge, and a few hundred metres takes you to the heart of Mousafah, a ghetto-like neighbourhood of camps hidden away from the eyes of tourists. It is just one of many areas around the Gulf set aside for an army of labourers building the icons of architecture that are mushrooming all over the region.

Behind the showers, in a yard paved with metal sheets, a line of men stands silently in front of grease-blackened pans, preparing their dinner. Sweat rolls down their heads and necks, their soaked shirts stuck to their backs. A heavy smell of spices and body odour fills the air.

Next to a heap of rubbish, a man holds a plate containing his meal: a few chillies, an onion and three tomatoes, to be fried with spices and eaten with a piece of bread.

In a neighbouring camp, a group of Pakistani workers from north and south Waziristan sit exhaustedly sipping tea while one of them cooks outside. In the middle of the cramped room in which 10 men sleep, one worker in a filthy robe sits on the floor grinding garlic and onions with a mortar and pestle while staring into the void.

Hamidullah, a thin Afghan from Maydan, a village on the outskirts of Kabul, tells me: "I spent five years in Iran and one year here, and one year here feels like 10 years. When I left Afghanistan I thought I would be back in a few months, but now I don't know when I will be back." Another worker on a bunk bed next to him adds: "He called his home yesterday and they told him that three people from his village were killed in fighting. This is why we are here."

Hamidullah earns around 450 dirhams (£70) a month as a construction worker.

How is life, I ask.

"What life? We have no life here. We are prisoners. We wake up at five, arrive to work at seven and are back at the camp at nine in the evening, day in and day out."

Outside in the yard, another man sits on a chair made of salvaged wood, in front of a broken mirror, a plastic sheet wrapped around his neck, while the camp barber trims his thick beard. Despite the air of misery, tonight is a night of celebration. One of the men is back from a two-week break in his home village in Pakistan, bringing with him a big sack of rice, and is cooking pilau rice with meat. Rice is affordable at weekends only: already wretched incomes have been eroded by the weak dollar and rising food prices. "Life is worse now," one worker told me. "Before, we could get by on 140 dirhams [£22] a month; now we need 320 to 350."

The dozen or so men sit on newspapers advertising luxury watches, mobile phones and high-rise towers. When three plastic trays arrive, filled with yellowish rice and tiny cubes of meat, each offers the rare shreds of meat to his neighbours.

All of these men are part of a huge scam that is helping the construction boom in the Gulf. Like hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, they each paid more than £1,000 to employment agents in India and Pakistan. They were promised double the wages they are actually getting, plus plane tickets to visit their families once a year, but none of the men in the room had actually read their contract. Only two of them knew how to read.

"They lied to us," a worker with a long beard says. "They told us lies to bring us here. Some of us sold their land; others took big loans to come and work here."

Once they arrive in the United Arab Emirates, migrant workers are treated little better than cattle, with no access to healthcare and many other basic rights. The company that sponsors them holds on to their passports - and often a month or two of their wages to make sure that they keep working. And for this some will earn just 400 dirhams (£62) a month.

A group of construction engineers told me, with no apparent shame, that if a worker becomes too ill to work he will be sent home after a few days. "They are the cheapest commodity here. Steel, concrete, everything is up, but workers are the same."

As they eat, the men talk more about their lives. "My shift is eight hours and two overtime, but in reality we work 18 hours," one says. "The supervisors treat us like animals. I don't know if the owners [of the company] know."

"There is no war, and the police treat us well," another chips in, "but the salary is not good."

"That man hasn't been home for four years," says Ahmad, the chef for the night, pointing at a well-built young man. "He has no money to pay for the flight."

A steel worker says he doesn't know who is supposed to pay for his ticket back home. At the recruiting agency they told him it would be the construction company - but he didn't get anything in writing.

One experienced worker with spectacles and a prayer cap on his head tells me that things are much better than they used to be. Five years ago, when he first came, the company gave him nothing. There was no air conditioning in the room and sometimes no electricity. "Now, they give AC to each room and a mattress for each worker."

Immigrant workers have no right to form unions, but that didn't stop strikes and riots spreading across the region recently - something unheard of few years ago. Elsewhere in Mousafah, I encounter one of the very few illegal unions, where workers have established a form of underground insurance scheme, based on the tribal structure back home. "When we come here," one member of the scheme tells me, "we register with our tribal elders, and when one of us is injured and is sent home, or dies, the elders collect 30 dirhams from each of us and send the money home to his family."

In a way, the men at Mousafah are the lucky ones. Down in the Diera quarter of old Dubai, where many of the city's illegal workers live, 20 men are often crammed into one small room.

UN agencies estimate that there are up to 300,000 illegal workers in the emirates.

On another hot evening, hundreds of men congregate in filthy alleyways at the end of a day's work, sipping tea and sitting on broken chairs. One man rests his back on the handles of his pushcart, silently eating his dinner next to a huge pile of garbage.

In one of the houses, a man is hanging his laundry over the kitchen sink, a reeking smell coming from a nearby toilet. Next door, men lie on the floor. They tell me they are all illegal and they are scared and that I have to leave.

Outside, a fistfight breaks out between Pakistani workers and Sri Lankans.

The alleyways are dotted with sweatshops, where Indian men stay until late at night, bending over small tables sewing on beads.

A couple of miles away, the slave market becomes more ugly. Outside a glitzy hotel, with a marble and glass facade, dozens of prostitutes congregate according to their ethnic groups: Asians to the right, next to them Africans, and, on the left, blondes from the former Soviet Union. There are some Arab women. Iranians, I am told, are in great demand. They charge much higher prices and are found only in luxury hotels.

Like the rest of the Gulf region, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are being built by expat workers. They are strictly segregated, and a hierarchy worthy of previous centuries prevails.

At the top, floating around in their black or white robes, are the locals with their oil money. Immaculate and pampered, they own everything. Outside the "free zones", where the rules are looser, no one can start a business in the UAE without a partner from the emirates, who often does nothing apart from lending his name. No one can get a work permit without a local sponsor.

Under the locals come the western foreigners, the experts and advisers, making double the salaries they make back home, all tax free. Beneath them are the Arabs - Lebanese and Palestinians, Egyptians and Syrians. What unites these groups is a mixture of pretension and racism.

"Unrealistic things happen to your mind when you come here," a Lebanese woman who frequently visits Dubai tells me as she drives her new black SUV. "Suddenly, you can make $5,000 [£2,800] a month. You can get credit so easy, you buy the car of your dreams, you shop and you think it's a great bargain; when you go to dinner, you go to a hotel ... nowhere else can you live like this."

Down at the base of the pyramid are the labourers, waiters, hotel employees and unskilled workers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines and beyond. They move deferentially around the huge malls, cafes, bars and restaurants, bowing down and calling people sir and madam. In the middle of the day, during the hottest hours, you can see them sleeping in public gardens under trees, or on the marble floors of the Dubai Mosque, on benches or pieces of cardboard on side streets. These are the victims of the racism that is not only flourishing in the UAE but is increasingly being exported to the rest of the Middle East. Sometimes it reminds you of the American south in the 1930s.

One evening in Abu Dhabi, I have dinner with my friend Ali, a charming Iraqi engineer whom I have known for two decades. After the meal, as his wife serves saffron-flavoured tea, he pushes back his chair and lights a cigar. We talk about stock markets, investment and the Middle East, and then the issue of race comes up.

"We will never use the new metro if it's not segregated," he tells me, referring to the state-of-the-art underground system being built in neighbouring Dubai. "We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell," his wife explains.

Not for the first time, I am told that while the immigrant workers are living in appalling conditions, they would be even worse off back home - as if poverty in one place can justify exploitation in the other.

"We need slaves," my friend says. "We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids - they were slaves."

Sharla Musabih, a human rights campaigner who runs the City of Hope shelter for abused women, is familiar with such sentiments. "Once you get rich on the back of the poor," she says, "it's not easy to let go of that lifestyle. They are devaluing human beings," she says. "The workers might eat once a day back home, but they have their family around them, they have respect. They are not asking for a room in a hotel - all they are asking for is respect for their humanity."

Towards the end of another day, on a fabulous sandy beach near the Dubai marina, the waves wash calmly over the beautiful sand. A couple are paragliding over the blue sea; on the new islands, gigantic concrete structures stand like spaceships. As tourists laze on the beach, Filipino, Indian and Pakistani workers, stand silently watching from a dune, cut off from the holidaymakers by an invisible wall.

Behind them rise more brand-new towers.

"It's a Green Zone mentality," a young Arab working in IT tells me. "People come to make money. They live in bubbles. They all want to make as much money as possible and leave."

Back at the Mousafah camps, a Pakistani worker walks me through his neighbourhood. On both sides of the dusty lane stand concrete barracks and the familiar detritus: raw sewage, garbage, scrap metal. A man washes his car, and in a cage chickens flutter up and down.

We enter one of the rooms, flip-flops piled by the door.

Inside, a steelworker gets a pile of papers from a plastic envelope and shoves them into my lap. He is suing the company that employed him for unpaid wages. "I've been going to court for three months, and every time I go they tell me to come in two weeks." His friends nod their heads. "Last time the [company] lawyer told me, 'I am in the law here - you will not get anything."

Economically, Dubai has progressed a lot in the past 10 years, but socially it has stayed behind," says Musabih. "Labour conditions are like America in the 19th century - but that's not acceptable in the 21st century."

Is Steve Jobs Preparing His Farewell?

Steve Jobs is leaving Apple. Not tomorrow, but probably very soon. That's why he started to say good bye today, doing something more important than just presenting new MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and an updated MacBook Air. Today's event was a play in which he clearly told everyone that the company is more than himself. Since the very first minute, when he immediately sat down to let Tim Cook talk, he was saying: "Hey, look, Apple is more than Steve. These are The Guys, the Goodfellas, the A-Team. They share the same vision I have. And they are going to push the company forward when I leave this company to drink caipirinhas suntanning on my private beach in Hawaii". Head over at GIZMODO to read the whole article.

HiPER Laser Fusion Project "Starts" Tomorrow, Could Save Earth

Nuclear fusion energy project could lead to limitless clean electricity

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 05/10/2008

The power of the sun is to be recreated in a new £1 billion science project which aims to provide a clean and almost limitless source of energy.

Here is how it works:

• HiPER is being designed to demonstrate the feasibility of laser driven fusion as a future energy source. It will also enable the investigation of the science of truly extreme conditions – accessing regimes which cannot be produced elsewhere on Earth (temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees, billion atmosphere pressures, and enormous electric and magnetic fields).

• HiPER will require major developments in technology, building on the highly successful European capability in this area. In particular, the PETAL laser, located in the Aquitaine region of France, will be a fore-runner to the HiPER facility to address physics and technology issues of strategic relevance for HiPER

British scientists will this week begin work to create a nuclear fusion reactor, which will use the same powerful reactions that take place in the Sun to provide energy and, ultimately, electricity.

Scientists have previously only been able to replicate the reaction inside hydrogen bombs.

Now, however, they believe they are on the verge of achieving controlled fusion in a laboratory for the first time.

Laser beams with enough power to light up every home in Britain for a few microseconds will be used to heat up the nuclear fuel to millions of degrees centigrade in order to trigger the reaction.

advertisement

If successful, the reactor will be a prototype for future commercial power stations, providing a cleaner and safer replacement for conventional nuclear power stations, which use nuclear fission to produce energy.

Unlike nuclear fission, which tears apart atoms to release energy and highly radioactive by-products, fusion involves squeezing two "heavy" hydrogen atoms, called deuterium and tritium together so they fuse, producing harmless helium and vast amounts of energy.

Previous attempts to harness fusion have failed due to the huge amount of power needed to start the reaction and keep it running, leading to more power being put into the system than is ever given out. But scientists at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford, hope their approach will generate useful power for the first time.

Leading a consortium of physicists from across Europe they will tomorrow launch the three year process of planning and designing the High Powered Laser Research (HiPER) facility.

Professor Mike Dunne, director of the central laser facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and one of the scientists leading the fusion project, said that fusion could provide a safe source of energy with no carbon emissions and plentiful energy supplies.

He said: "HiPER is aiming to bridge the step between proving nuclear fusion is possible and a commercial power station.

"It should prove that a big enough laser can be built, with a high enough repetition rate and efficiency, which are the critical building blocks on the route towards fusion energy."

Fusion reactors are already under construction in the US and France using two separate approaches to creating the intense pressure and heat required to trigger the nuclear fusion reaction.

The National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, is aiming to use powerful lasers to create the intense pressures required to trigger the reaction when it is switched on next year, but the lasers are so powerful it is likely to use up more energy than it produces, meaning the technology would be useless for a commercial power station.

A separate approach at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in Cadarache, France, is aiming to use powerful magnetic fields to spark the reaction but this is again not thought to be terribly efficient. The HiPER project will adapt the American laser approach and improve its efficiency so that it can trigger the reaction at lower pressure.

"The National Ignition Facility will prove fusion can be achieved with lasers and we are then the next step," said Professor Dunne.

"If you think of the NIF as being like a diesel engine – the lasers compress the fuel pellet until the pressure causes the fusion reaction to start.

"HiPER is more like a petrol engine where the fuel is compressed a little by the lasers but then a second more powerful laser acts like a spark plug to trigger the fusion reaction."

The researchers have received £13 million for the first phase of the £1 billion project to build the HiPER facility. Most of the funding has come from the UK government funded Science and Technology Facilities Council, together with contributions from the European Commission.

It comes at a time when the Government is facing intense opposition to its plans to build new nuclear fission power stations in order to meet rising energy demands as fossil fuel supplies begin to run low.

Unlike nuclear fission, the fusion reaction produces only produces very small amounts of low-grade radioactive material and does not carry the risk of radioactive meltdown.

Fusion fuel, deuterium and tritium is also readily available in seawater. Just 2lbs of fusion fuel is capable of producing the same amount of energy as 10,000 tonnes of fossil fuel.

A spokesman for the STFC said: "The future location of HiPER is being explored over the next few years, with the UK being a prime candidate."

Martin O'Brien, fusion programme manager at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, added: "Fusion is increasingly recognised internationally as a possible long term clean energy supply. The UK is very much in the leading position on nuclear fusion."

US Congress bailout bill

US Congress is set to sell out the country

Partially relevant rant Enslaving Main Street to gild Wall Street

By Benson N. Hedgefund: Friday, 03 October 2008, 4:48 PM

IN A FEW HOURS the US House of Representatives might tip that country into a decade long economic depression that will begin the fall of the American Empire and reverberate around the world. While the American Empire's fall won't be lamented, the depression will be painful.

It might do that by voting to grant US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson the authority to bail out and line the pockets of the wealthiest and most favoured of that reckless class of greed-blinded crooks and swindlers who have financially ruined much of the US populace.

In the process they've driven many large US banks, hedge funds and insurance companies straight off the cliff of financial insolvency and into undeclared bankruptcy.

The so-called representatives of the people might do that because they've been bought and paid-for long ago with incremental bribes of political campaign contributions doled out by that same elite and long entrenched class of financial players. Many US congress people have been paid about $1 million each over the years, give or take a few hundred thousand dollars.

What the House of Representatives is about to vote on and possibly approve is a daft bill already passed by the Senate that would give Secretary Paulson virtually unlimited carte blanche to loot the US Treasury of, and indebt the country for generations by borrowing from the Federal Reserve, and through it the rest of the world, literally trillions of dollars.

The initial authorisation is nominally for $350 billion, but that's automatically extendable to $700 billion under the bill, and that spending authorisation may be renewed, $700 billion at a whack, indefinitely and limitlessly.

Under the bill, Secretary Paulson's authority to pay out taxpayer money to whomever he pleases, for whatever assets or purposes he wishes, at whatever prices, is not constrained in any meaningful way. It is not subject to any binding guidance or close oversight and is not reviewable or reversible by any legislative body or any court of law.

The bill is simply a breathtakingly brazen prescription for total financial dictatorship over the US Treasury and future US tax liabilities, as far as the eye can see.

This incredible financial coup d'etat is being justified as somehow imperatively necessary by the supposedly impending collapse of world's financial system.

The promoters of this scheme -- US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, principally, plus US Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke and US President George Bush -- claim that this unprecendented abrogation of US Congressional power over the national purse is needed because some large banks and insurance companies are in a severe financial bind.

The spot they're in has resulted from their wild abandon in devising, making, packaging, insuring, selling and trading home mortgage loans and equity loans, made in all too many cases to people who couldn't afford them.

Many people, who were induced to sign up for variable interest rate Subprime and Alt-A mortgage loans on overvalued houses -- often with no money down, verification of income, assets to back them up, or even paying jobs in many instances -- have been falling behind in their payments and losing their homes to foreclosures in droves for over a year now.

As borrowers, they're trapped by ongoing collapse of the US housing market bubble. The houses that they bought at inflated prices aren't worth nearly as much as they still owe on their mortgages, so they can't sell their homes. And their adjustable rate mortgages are starting to ratchet upwards, making them struggle to make their mortgage payments and forcing many of them into bankruptcy and foreclosure.

The US housing bubble at the root of the current US financial ills was caused by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's inflationary policy of low interest rates that he pursued for several years, which fueled rampant real estate speculation resulting in an unsustainable rise in US housing prices. In mid-2007, the music stopped and house prices started falling. They still have quite a ways to fall to get back down to the levels ordinary American wage-earners can historically afford, and the US housing market won't begin to recover until they do.

Those institutions are holding stacks of home mortgages and secondary mortgage market bonds and derivatives that are of dubious value. Recent imposition of a rule that they must mark these securities to market prices has made a number of those institutions technically insolvent, because those securities are of unknown value so therefore no banks are willing to buy them at any price, thus they are technically worthless.

Secretary Paulson is proposing to buy up swathes of mortgage bonds, derivatives based upon them, credit default swaps, and whatever else he feels like buying, from whatever financial institutions drag their tattered castoffs into his high-class pawnshop, and he will apparently be willing to pay whatever they ask for them.

Mortgages valued at a trillion dollars or so have already gone bad, that is, either they are non-performing because borrowers have stopped making payments or they've been placed into foreclosure. A Swiss bank estimates that as much as $5 trillion in US mortgages will eventually become worth little or nothing. That's the potential liability facing Mr Paulson.

That amount, $5 trillion, is approximately the value of all US mortgages that are held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two US secondary market mortgage holders taken into "conservatorship," that is, nationalised, by the US government just a couple of weeks ago, to put the number in perspective.

The bailout or "rescue" bill proposed, however, won't really place most of the beneficiary financial institutions on firm footing. It will only buy up their worst investments, providing their insiders and major stockholders with large windfalls of cash with which to make fast getaways to sunnier climes. It will merely reward the principal crooks for their larcenies.

That's because the US financial system is awash with arcane derivatives that are called credit default swaps, which Warren Buffet has astutely called " weapons of financial mass destruction." There are presently about $55 trillion in credit default swaps outstanding in the US financial system. There's not enough money in the entire world to buy all those up.

Therefore, some banks, hedge funds and insurance companies are going to fail, dragged down by their former greed in pursuit of ever higher quarterly profits without regard to downside risks. Some large financial institutions will be among those that eventually fail.

The bill won't stave off an economic depression either. In fact, it'll likely both hasten and worsen the depression that's coming, as well as delay the onset of US economic recovery.

That bright light in the American economy's tunnel isn't the sun but rather an onrushing train. Ignoring it will only make the inevitable crash more violent and the damage worse.

But handing the crew that got the US economy into this mess, along with their henchmen and cronies, a free hand to loot the national treasury, enslave taxpayers for generations, and shower the crooked, corrupt and swindling financial elite with cash is simply insane.

It should be interesting to see whether the US Congress actually pulls the trigger on America today. µ