US drops 'Mother Of All Bombs' in Afghanistan

Undated file image courtesy the US Air Force shows the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb sitting in an undisclosed location in theatre of the Global War on Terror waiting to be used. — AFP

WASHINGTON: The US military on Thursday dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever deployed in combat, targeting an Islamic State complex in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said.

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb – better known by its nickname, the "Mother Of All Bombs" – hit a tunnel complex at 7.32pm in Achin district in Nangarhar province, US Forces Afghanistan said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump called the mission "very, very successful."

The huge bomb, delivered via an MC-130 transport plane, has a blast yield equivalent to 11 tons of TNT, and the weapon was originally designed as much to intimidate foes as to clear broad areas.

"The GBU-43/B is the largest non-nuclear bomb ever deployed in combat," Air Force spokesman Colonel Pat Ryder said.

Achin District Governor Esmail Shinwari said the bomb landed in the Momand Dara area.

"The explosion was the biggest I have ever seen. Towering flames engulfed the area," Shinwari told AFP.

"We don't know anything about the casualties so far, but since it is a Daesh (IS) stronghold we think a lot of Daesh fighters may have been killed."

US Navy Captain Bill Salvin, spokesman for US Forces Afghanistan, said in an email to AFP that a bomb damage assessment was being carried out.

As to the possibility of civilian casualties from such a huge weapon, Salvin said: "Friendly forces scouted the area and noted the lack of civilian presence. The target was chosen to ensure the maximum effect against (IS) while preventing civilian casualties."

General John Nicholson, who heads US Forces Afghanistan, described the weapon as the "right munition" to reduce IS obstacles and maintain the momentum against jihadists in the region.

The strike hit a system of tunnels and caves that IS fighters had used to "move around freely, making it easier for them to target US military advisers and Afghan forces" nearby, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.

"We must deny them operational space, which we did," Spicer added.

The Afghan government was aware of the US plan to bomb the IS tunnel complex, presidential spokesman Shah Hussain Murtazawi suggested.

"Heavy casualties have been inflicted on the enemy," Murtazawi said on Facebook, ruling out the possibility of civilian casualties.

IS in Afghanistan

The US military on Tuesday said an American special forces soldier had been killed while conducting operations against IS in Nangarhar, although it was not clear if Thursday's strike was connected.

Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, is a hotbed of IS militancy. US forces have conducted a number of air strikes on jihadist bases in the area since August last year.

IS, notorious for its reign of terror in Syria and Iraq, has been making inroads into Afghanistan in recent years. It has attracted disaffected members of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban as well as Uzbek Islamists.

But the group has been steadily losing territory in the face of heavy pressure both from US air strikes and a ground offensive led by Afghan forces.

The Islamic State group's strength in Afghanistan has fallen to 600 to 800 fighters from 3,000 in early 2016, NATO has said, adding that it killed the top 12 IS commanders in the country last year.

The MOAB was rapidly developed in 2002-2003 around the time of the US-led invasion of Iraq. 

According to the Air Force, the last time the MOAB was tested in 2003, a huge mushroom cloud could be seen from 32km away.

Despite its massive power, the MOAB still pales in comparison to a nuclear weapon. 

Even the smallest of the US military's atomic arsenal, the B-61 at its minimum configuration, has an explosive yield roughly 30 times that of the MOAB. — AFP

-posted 14 April 2017

KLIA2 control tower is tallest in the world

The KL International Airport 2 (KLIA2) air traffic control tower has been recognised as the tallest in the world by the Guinness World Record.

Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the 141.3 metres tower is higher than the control tower of Suvarnabhune International Airport in Thailand (132.2 metres).



"Built on May 1, 2012, the tower was completed in 10 months, on March 1, 2013 and was first used on April 4, one month earlier to enable air traffic controllers to familiarise with the operation of KLIA2."

He said this at the handing over of the control tower from Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) to the DCA by the Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein in the main control room on level 33 of the tower in Sepang today.

Hishammuddin also received a certificate of recognition from a representative of Guinness World Record and the Malaysia Book of Record and also witness the first touchdown to KLIA2 by Malaysia Airlines flight MH604 and flight MH402.

Azharuddin said the training of air traffic controllers for KLIA2 started as early as January, including theory and simulator training and 120 controllers were ready to operate at KLIA2 and KLIA.

"The 24-hour operation involves eight air traffic controllers on duty at any one time in the main control room.

"A total of 58 new posts have also been created to accommodate the additional work in the control tower," he added.

- Bernama

7 most expensive foods in the world

Source: MLP

By: Hui Shan Lim

We've heard of the world’s most expensive cars, gadgets and even hotels. What about food? As Malaysians, we love our food and food hunting can be considered as our hobby. Good food may not be expensive, but that doesn't stop people from creating expensive dishes that are just as costly as luxury goods. 

If you’re wondering what food costs more than a car, take a look at this list of the most expensive foods in the world. 

The Frrrozen Haute Chocolate

There’s almost always room for dessert even after a huge meal. At Serendipity, New York you can taste the most expensive dessert; the Frrrozen Haute Chocolate for RM830,00. Why such a hefty price tag, you say? This ice cream sundae is made of luxurious ingredients; 28 types of cocoa (14 of the most expensive), decorated with 5g of edible 23-carat gold, served in a goblet dusted with edible gold. That’s not all because there’s even an 18-carat bracelet with 1 carat diamonds at the bottom of the goblet and last but not least, you eat the dessert with a gold spoon that is covered in diamonds. Best of all, everything is yours to take home.  

Martini on the rock

One of the most popular cocktail, the Martini is typically made of four parts gin and one part vermouth. The Martini on the Rock is served in a crystal glass on a silver platter top with a very special ingredient – a diamond engagement ring. If you have a taste for extremely expensive things, you can get your hands on this martini with 72-hour advance booking to the Blue Bar at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City for (wait for it) RM33,115.40.

The Samundari Khazana

We love spicy food and we definitely love curry. The most expensive curry hails from a Bombay Brassiere, an Indian restaurant in London at RM10,530! Known as the Samundari Khazana - ‘seafood treasures’, this tantalizing dish is made of Devon crab, white truffle, and half a tomato filled with Beluga caviar dressed with gold leaf. A seafood treasure is not complete without a Scottish lobster (coated with gold!), four abalone and finally, four quail eggs filled with more caviar.  Although it’s an unusual way of cooking curry, this dish has made Bombay Brassiere a famous restaurant in London.

Zillion dollar Frittata

Have you ever tried eating a Frittata? It’s an Italian dish which is similar to an omelette, filled with various ingredients like meat, vegetables and more. Sounds too simple to be worth RM3,311.50? Offered by Norma’s at Le Parker Meridien hotel in New York, the Zillion dollar Frittata is made of 0.45kg lobster, 280g Sevruga caviar and eggs on a bed of fried potato. Too costly but still want to try it? Opt for the regularfrittata for RM331.45.

Madeleine chocolate

Originated from Connecticut, the Madeleine is by far the world’s most expensive chocolate. The chocolatier behind this luxurious creation is Fritz Knipschildt, the founder of Knipschildt Chocolatier in South Norwalk, Connecticut. The French Perigold truffle is rolled into the chocolate and the whole thing is beautiful dusted with cocoa powder. The reason behind a hefty price tag of RM830 per piece is because of the hard work needed to produce each Madeleine. You need to order the world’s most expensive chocolate in advance as it takes a long time for the ganache to be folded into perfection.

Le Burger Extravagant

Previously, I’ve shared some local burger joints for you to explore. The world’s most expensive burger is in Serendipity 3, New York (again!), and it cost a whopping RM980! This time, it does not come with fancy jewelleries, except for the diamond encrusted tooth pick (not kidding). Le Burger Extravagant is made of white truffle butter-infused Japanese Wagyu beef, black truffle, fried quail egg, caviar and don’t forget the gold encrusted bun! It still holds the Guinness World Record formost expensive burger in the worldsince May 2012.

Buddha Jump Over the Wall soup

This Buddha Jump Over The Wall soup is a traditional soup commonly available in most high-end Chinese restaurants in Malaysia. The chef who sets the Guinness World Record with the most expensive soup available commercially is Chef Alex Chow.
The key ingredient is seafood and it includes RM198 worth of abalone and RM164.90 piece of superior shark's fin. Today, Kai Mayfair restaurant receives one or two table booking requesting for the exotic soup, which costs RM792 per bowl.

Rekod dunia mesin kapsul layan diri terbesar

KUALA LUMPUR:  Berjaya Times Square menempa nama dalam Guinness World Records dengan mesin kapsul layan diri terbesar setinggi 9.82 meter.

Mesin yang dirancang sebelum direka dalam proses selama enam bulan dibina sempena sambutan sepuluh tahun pusat beli belah tersebut.

Ia disahkan pengadil rasmi Guinness World Records, Jack Brockband

Sebelum ini, Berjaya Times Square memegang rekod taman tema tertutup terbesar selain pernah membina replika kepala singa dan pohon bunga terbesar negara.

Dengan kejayaan itu, pusat beli belah berkenaan menawarkan 150 token percuma kepada pengunjung.

Mereka hanya perlu membelanjakan RM50 dalam satu resit bagi menebus token berkenaan.

Pengunjung berpeluang mendapatkan hadiah daripada permainan mesin layan diri yang disediakan dan hadiah keseluruhan disediakan berjumlah RM500,000.

- Astro AWANI

A 41-megapixel camera smartphone by Nokia?

When it concerns camera, it's not just the megapixel that counts.

In some of the full-frame modern DSLR cameras, 12-megapixel is enough for a pro grade output and this is on a 35mm sensor at the back of the lens. How do you suppose Nokia cramp the 41 megapixels of data in a smaller-than-35mm sensor?

I guess we'll just have to wait to find out.


A promotional image from Finnish phone maker, Nokia announcing a special product launch next month. - © AFP/Relaxnews 2013


More megapixels than top of range DSLRs?

An official Nokia blog post promises 41 million reasons to follow its July 11 product launch in New York.

Initial invites to the event, which will be streamed live over the internet, had simply stated "Zoom Reinvented," but rumors have been swirling around the web since November 2012 that the Finnish phonemaker intends to launch a phone on the Windows Phone 8 platform that offers the same imaging capabilities as a standalone digital camera.

In fact, since February this year, images and specifications have been leaking on a fairly regular basis detailing what Nokia had up its sleeve.

The handset - which in internal Nokia documents is codenamed the EOS - is reported to support 4G LTE mobile internet, feature a 4.5in high definition AMLOED display, be powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz processor with 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage and of course to feature a 41-megapixel image senor located behind a Carl Zeiss lens.

This means that the phone's rear housing will feature a bulge to allow sufficient space for the monstrous sensor. But it will be the bulge that will make the difference.

When it comes to capturing digital images, the number of megapixels the camera can capture is secondary to the number of megapixels of information its sensors can process.

The better the sensor the better the device is at discarding 'noise' - the corrupted, overexposed and underexposed pixels of photos - and producing a crisp, clear, color-balanced whole.

But there's a problem - the better the sensor, the bigger it is.

The image sensor on a DSLR camera, for example is the same size as the lens it sits behind. And this is the main reason why smartphones until now have gone with small lenses and equally small sensors.

Smartphones that put the final nail in the standalone digital camera's coffin appears to be one of the most notable tech trends of 2013, and Nokia wants to be the trendsetter.

However, a number of other competing phonemakers are also looking for a piece of this action, most notably HTC with its UltraPixel technology, which lays three small image sensors on top of each other for a fine image-filtering effect and which debuted on the HTC One handset in March, and Samsung, which has chosen to approach the situation from the opposite direction.

With the Galaxy SIV Zoom, revealed earlier this month, rather than trying to squeeze professional camera features into a phone, the company has taken a professional camera complete with a 10x optical zoom lens and built a smartphone into it.

To see how Nokia's 41-megapixel phone stacks up against the competition, a live stream of the press event will start at 11am EDT on July 11 will be able to be viewed on the Nokia Conversations blog. - © AFP/Relaxnews 2013

Richest person in the automotive industry is a woman

This is such an inspiration and every woman should be proud.

Susanne Klatten
Net Worth: $14.3 billion as of March 2013

At a Glance
Age: 50
Source of Wealth: BMW, pharmaceuticals
Country of Citizenship: Germany
Education: Master of Business Administration, International Institute for Management and Development
Marital Status: Married, Children: 3

Forbes Lists
#58 Forbes Billionaires
#4 in Germany

The Richest Car Guy On The Planet Is A Woman

According to Forbes 2012 billionaire list, Susanne Klatten is the richest person in the world who made their money in the automotive industry.

Forbes valued the 49-year-old German at $13 billion, making her the 59th-richest person in the world and the richest person in Germany.

A trained economist, Klatten inherited a stake in BMW from her late father, Herbert Quandt, who rescued the company from bankruptcy decades ago. She also controls chemical manufacturer Altana and holds stakes in wind power outfit Nordex AG and carbon and graphite producer SGL and Geohumus, which focuses on developing a water storing granulate to be used in agriculture.

In 2009, Klatten won a civil case against Helg Sgarbi, an ex-lover who tried to blackmail her for millions. Sgarbi was sent to jail for six years for fraud and attempted extortion. She lives in Bad Homburg, Germany.

Other people on this year’s list who made their fortunes in cars include BMW’s Stefan and Johanna Quandt (Nos. 76 and 88, worth $11.2 billion and $10 billion, respectively); Hyundai’s Chung Mong-Koo (No. 161, $6.2 billion); Tesla’s Elon Musk (No. 634, $2 billion); and Roger Penske (No. 1075, $1.1 billion).



Read more at Forbes

Melbourne to build tallest building in southern hemisphere

This is set to be the tallest building in southern hemisphere, but South Africa’s Centurion Symbio City, a 447 metre tower will take the throne when it is built by 2018.

Australia 108  building. Photo by AFP

MELBOURNE: Australia’s second-largest city Melbourne could possibly have the tallest building in the southern hemisphere after approval yesterday for a new 388-metre apartment and hotel complex.

The Victorian state government said Australia 108 would become the world’s 19th tallest building on completion and would be “an outstanding addition to Melbourne’s skyline”.

“I am proud to approve a tower that will define our city for many years to come,” Planning Minister Matthew Guy said.

There were some concerns that the construction of the 108-storey tower in the city’s Southbank area, expected to be ready in five years, would cast a shadow over the Shrine of Remembrance war memorial, one of the city’s best-known landmarks.

But Guy said the trustees of the shrine did not object to the proposal which he said was a A$600 million investment in the state economy that would create 300 jobs in construction and hospitality.

Architect Nonda Katsalidis said the tall, slender building which will have 646 apartments, a 288-room six-star hotel plus retail and office space, was designed to throw a spotlight on the city’s international identity.

“We don’t have an Opera House (like Sydney) but we have AFPa complex culture and all those ideas were thrown into this project,” Katsalidis told ABC radio.

“The hotel at the top is designed as a starburst. We took the inspiration from the stars on the Australian flag,” he added.

The world’s tallest building is Dubai’s Burj Khalifa at 828 metres high while Europe’s tallest skyscraper, the Shard in London, stands at 310 metres.

The current tallest residential building in the southern hemisphere is the Q1 tower on Queensland’s Gold Coast in Australia, which soars 323 metres to 71 storeys.

But Australia 108 could be trumped by South Africa’s Centurion Symbio City, a 447 metre tower to be built by 2018 near Pretoria. — AF

Malaysia takes top spot: Bribery Table

We all want to make headlines, but not for the wrong reason!

Despite all this, I still love my country and hope it will make amend one day. Soon, I hope.

The Wall Street Journal.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, December 2012.

Despite Malaysia’s high-profile anticorruption crusade, half of the corporate executives surveyed by a global corruption watchdog believe that competitors have obtained business through bribery, underscoring the hard task ahead for Prime Minister Najib Razak‘s government in weeding out graft.

Transparency International said Malaysia scored worst in the 2012 Bribe Payers Survey. It asked about 3,000 executives from 30 countries whether they had lost a contract in the past year because competitors paid a bribe—and in Malaysia, 50% said yes. Second on the dubious honor roll was Mexico, at 48%.

A Transparency International survey suggests businesses in Malaysia must navigate a haze of corruption. Japan ranked as the world’s least-corrupt place to do business, with just 2% of respondents saying they had lost out due to bribery; Malaysia’s neighbor Singapore was second-cleanest, at 9%. Even Indonesia, with a long-standing reputation for corruption, fared better than more-developed Malaysia: Southeast Asia’s largest economy came in at 47%.

By comparison, 27% of respondents in China said they thought bribes had cost them business.



Via TGM

World's tallest woman dies in China

BEIJING — A Chinese woman who was certified as the tallest in the world has died, an official from her hometown said.

Yao Defen, of eastern China's Anhui province, was listed as the world's tallest woman by Guinness World Records in 2010, when she stood 2.33 metres (seven foot eight inches) high, according to the record compiler's website.

"Yao Defen died in the middle of last month," a spokesman for the government of Shucha township, where Yao lived, told AFP by telephone.

The official, who refused to give his name, said that he was not certain of the cause of her death.

Yao, recorded as the third tallest woman who ever lived, was 40 when she died. Her gigantism was reportedly due to a tumour in her pituitary gland.

An Anhui newspaper reported that she died on November 13, having reached a height of 2.36 metres, adding that she was already more than two metres tall when she was 15. - AFP

 

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Source: AFP, pix1, pix2, pix3