Τρίτη 10 Ιουλίου 2012

Paris Couture Fashion Week

PARIS - Perhaps the gowns, bustiers, and dresses at the Julien Fournie collection during Paris Couture Fashion Week weren't as dressy or intricate as some of the other collections of that week--say elegant Valentino or beaded Elie Saab. What this Fall/Winter 2012-2013 collection did have was something that we have yet to see elsewhere during the week. The use of neoprene. These neoprene body con dresses clung to the body in a way that only a scuba diver might understand, but their intricacies didn't stop there as the designer focused on elements that slimmed, enhanced, or embellished, along the sides, along the hems, or down the plunging necklaces. Zippers and plastic were also seen often here. Inventive and creative to say the least, with unique textures and designs that drew the crowd.

Endless Oil Spills - Nigeria

It is one of the largest ecological disasters in the world. As a bitter dispute over who is at fault rages, this report takes a powerful grassroots look at 50 years of devastation in the Niger Delta.

Aerial shots show vast black islands surrounded by shimmering slicks of oil. This is what much of the Niger Delta looks like after what environmentalists say is "the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez every year". While it is revealed by secret correspondance released by Wikileaks that one minister can siphon off $20 million dollars in bribes from oil companies, local communities are reduced to eating fish meat that tastes of kerosene. This inequality has led to the rise in cases of sabotage of pipelines to get access to crude oil. It is this that the oil companies blame now for the level of pollution. But for ecologists there are no doubts that poor maintenance is far more to blame than the low level sabotage for the fact that the Delta has more than one leak every day. They say the companies consider it cheaper to lose the oil than maintain and protect the pipes. And as the world turns a blind eye, the desperation of the locals intensifies. "There's a vast contrast between what we saw in America, when President Barack Obama was on the side of the people during the Gulf of Mexico spill, and here."

July 2012

Deadly violence rages across Afghanistan

DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press

Updated 02:32 p.m., Monday, July 9, 2012

Afghans chant anti-government slogans during a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, July 8, 2012. Hundreds of Afghans part of the Wefaq's party protested against the government for reforms in governmental positions. Photo: Ahmad Nazar / AP

News

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An insurgent bomb killed six American soldiers in eastern Afghanistan, part of a surge of violence that has dealt a stark reminder that war is still raging as NATO plots an exit strategy for the end of 2014.

Violence raged across the country Monday, including grisly attacks by multiple suicide bombers, a day after donor nations meeting in Tokyo to pledge $16 billion in aid.

President Hamid Karzai and his top ministers said the pledges exceeded their expectations and sent a strong signal that the international community will not abandon Afghanistan even though foreign troops have started to leave.

It also sent a message to Karzai's adversaries in the Taliban and elsewhere, who are hoping his support will weaken once the foreign combat troops leave or move into support roles in 2 1/2 years.

Sunday was a particularly deadly day in Afghanistan. Roadside bombs and militant attacks killed seven American soldiers, 19 Afghan civilians and seven Afghan policemen.

Violence erupted again on Monday as militants launched suicide attacks on two police headquarters and carried out other assaults that left 20 people dead — three policemen, an Afghan prosecutor, two children and 14 attackers, according to officials. At least 60 other people were wounded.

German Brig. Gen. Gunter Katz, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said the six Americans were killed Sunday when their armored vehicle struck a bomb in eastern Afghanistan. He said a seventh American soldier was killed in a separate insurgent attack Sunday in the south.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for that attack in Wardak province, just south of Kabul. Coalition and Afghan forces are trying to secure areas of Wardak that insurgents use as gateway into the Afghan capital, where they have staged high-profile attacks on Afghan government and NATO targets.

Monday's violence began when gunmen assassinated a chief prosecutor in eastern Ghazni province as he drove to work. Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, the deputy provincial governor, said Sahar Gul was shot twice.

Later in the day, three suicide bombers riding in a three-wheeled vehicle blew themselves up in Kandahar city, said Kandahar provincial spokesman Ahmad Jawed Faisal.

Then nearly a dozen other suicide attackers tried to storm the police headquarters in Kandahar, but they failed to enter the compound, Faisal said. The incident was still being investigated, but Faisal said authorities suspect that the three attackers in the vehicle, a form of miniature pickup known as a Zaranj, were headed toward police headquarters when their explosives detonated prematurely.

Three policemen and two children were killed in the attack. Another 18 police and 12 civilians were wounded.

"I'm not happy to sit here and announce such bad news, but we are facing an enemy that doesn't have a heart, so we have to be strong," Kandahar provincial Gov. Tooryalai Wesa told reporters at a news conference. "They don't care about the innocent people. They just want to scare the people."

A total of 14 suicide attackers, who fired at police for about two hours from several directions, blew themselves up or were shot and killed by police, Kandahar officials said.

Militants also attacked a police headquarters building in Shibirghan, the capital of Jawzjan province in the relatively peaceful north.

Provincial governor Mohammad Aleem Saaie said a suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up near the headquarters. No one died, but he said 26 people were wounded, including two policemen, a doctor and a prosecutor.

"This was another attack against innocent civilians," said Gen. Abdul Aziz Ghairat, the provincial police chief. "The majority of the wounded people are civilians."

Attackers have picked up the pace during the summer months, planting improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, along roads or footpaths. But during the past year, U.S. troops found and avoided more homemade bombs than a year ago because of improvements in training, equipment and intelligence, the U.S. military said.

In the first three months of this year, 5 percent of the bombs planted across Afghanistan hit their mark, according to the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization. That's down from 10 to 12 percent over the same three-month period a year ago.

So far this year, 231 U.S. and other NATO forces have been killed in Afghanistan. That compares with 271 in the first six months of last year.

___

Associated Press writers Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Mirwais Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

Δευτέρα 9 Ιουλίου 2012

nice photo

διας και αφροδιτη

greece

ΑΣΤΡΑΠΕΣ

Κυριακή 8 Ιουλίου 2012

Supersonic Freefall: What Felix Baumgartner’s 37-km Jump Will be Like Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/96176/supersonic-freefall-what-felix-baumgartners-37-km-jump-from-will-be-like/#ixzz2031qU3rR

Supersonic Freefall: What Felix Baumgartner’s 37-km Jump Will be Like

by NANCY ATKINSON on JULY 8, 2012

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter

Sometime this summer, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner will leap from the edge of space, attempting to not only break the sound barrier with his body, but also break the record for the longest freefall. As no one has successfully jumped from this height before, it’s uncertain what the highest supersonic freefall in history will look or feel like. This animated video put out by the Red Bull Stratos team provides a sense of what to expect during the attempt.

“After years of training with my team of dedicated Red Bull Stratos experts, I’ll be going on a journey that no one has ever done,” Baumgartner told Universe Today in 2010 in an email message. “If I succeed, I will be the first person to break the sound barrier, alone. That will be a record for all eternity. As such, a piece of me will become immortal. That excites me.”

42-year-old Baumgartner is hoping to jump from nearly 37 km (23 miles, 120,000 feet) to break the current jump record held by Joe Kittinger a retired Air Force officer, who jumped from 31,500 meters (31.5 km, 19.5 miles, 102,000 ft) in 1960. Now 83, Kittinger is assisting Baumgartner in preparations for the jump.

There have been several attempts to surpass Kittinger’s record, but none have succeeded, and people have given their lives for the quest. Kittinger’s jump contributed valuable data that provided ground work for spacesuit technology and knowledge about human physiology for the US space program.

Image caption: Felix Baumgartner and life support engineer Mike Todd celebrate after landing of the first manned test flight for the Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, New Mexico on March 15, 2012. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

If Baumgartner is successful, the Red Bull Stratos mission will break four world records: the altitude record for freefall, the distance record for longest freefall, the speed record for fastest freefall by breaking the speed of sound with the human body, and the altitude record for the highest manned balloon flight.

How fast will Baumgarter need to go to beat the speed of sound? Sound travels at different speeds through the atmosphere (as well as through different mediums), depending on atmospheric density and temperature. For example, at sea level, in average conditions of about 15 degrees C (59 degrees F), sound travels at around 1,223 kph (760 mph). But at higher altitudes, where the air is colder, sound travels more slowly.

Researchers with the Red Bull Stratos mission anticipate Baumgartner could break the sound barrier at about 30,480 meters (100,000 feet) above sea level, in temperatures of -23 to -40 C (-10 to -40 F) where sound travels at about 1,110 kph (690 mph) or roughly 304 meters per second (1,000 feet per second).

So, he’ll have to go faster than those speeds – or Mach 1 — to be supersonic.

While there is no literal “barrier,” the transition to supersonic speeds can cause problems for aircraft as transonic air movement creates disruptive shock waves and turbulence. Data obtained from Chuck Yeager’s first supersonic flight in 1947 allowed for changes in design of supersonic aircraft to avoid problems. Still, some aircraft do experience problems at that point, and going supersonic has been attributed to some air disasters.

And the human body isn’t designed for supersonic speeds.

“Our biggest concern is that we don’t know how a human unencumbered by aircraft is going to transition through this,” said the project’s Medical Director Dr. Jonathan Clark, a flight surgeon for six space shuttle missions (and husband of astronaut Laurel Clark who died in the Columbia disaster in 2003), who has researched numerous aerospace disasters. “But it’s also exactly what we’re hoping to learn, for the benefit of future space flights.”

Documents provided by the Red Bull Stratos mission say that the data obtained from the mission will be shared with the scientific community, and Clark noted that he expects long-awaited medical protocols to be established as a result.

A live webcast of the Red Bull Stratos freefall will air on the Red Bull Stratos website.

SUPER FASHION

PARIS - Sharp shoulders, fur, and wrapped fabrics were the name of the game for the Eric Tibusch show during Paris Couture Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2012-2013. Eric Tisbusch played with the style of women from a different era, including different plays on a 20s motif, with a Marlene Dietrich lookalike in a top hat and tuxedo as well as lace gowns, boleros, and capes a plenty. Overabundance may have been the name of the game here, but we wouldn't expect anything less.