contractor attacks in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan  The message, very often, is sent with bloodshed.There was the suicide bombing last week on a fortified Kandahar guesthouse shared by Western contracting companies, killing four Afghans and injuring several Americans. There was the Afghan engineer, shot dead in March as he helped inspect a school not far from the Pakistan border. Or the Afghan woman, an employee for a U.S.-based consulting firm, shot by motorbike-riding gunmen as she returned home from work in this southern city.

As the United States presses ahead with an Afghan counterinsurgency strategy that depends on speeding up development of one of the world’s poorest countries, the U.S. contractors, construction companies and aid organizations needed to rebuild Afghanistan have faced a surge in attacks that puts the plan in jeopardy.

Overall figures for contractor attacks remain elusive, since the employees come from dozens of nations and work for hundreds of different organizations.But the death toll has jumped precipitously in the months since President Barack Obama launched a massive troop surge last December.

Of the 289 civilians working for U.S. contractors killed between the start of the Afghanistan war in late 2001 and the end of last year, 100 died in just the last six months of 2009, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.To a degree, those killings have mirrored an increase in U.S. service member deaths, which roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009.

Many of the recent attacks against civilian contractors have been around Kandahar, the one-time Taliban capital where the U.S. is poised to launch a major operation in the coming weeks, but the rash of violence has spiked across Afghanistan.”The insurgents are trying to say ‘You can’t do it,'” Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in a speech last week in Paris, shortly after two bombings shook Kandahar. “I think we’ll see that for months as they make an effort to stop progress. But I don’t think that they’ll be successful.”

In some ways, though, they already have been successful.Although contractors say they are not leaving the country, the attacks have forced them to retreat even further behind blast walls and heavily armed security perimeters. The security drives up costs, makes it more difficult to interact with regular Afghans and slows reconstruction projects.

The attacks have forced many contractors, aid groups and Afghan officials to retreat even further behind blast walls and heavily armed security perimeters. The security drives up costs, makes it more difficult to interact with regular Afghans and slows reconstruction projects.

“We have become the targets of the Taliban,” said Azizullah, the owner of a construction company that builds bridges and irrigation projects in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, strongholds of the militant Muslim fighters. “If we travel, they try to kidnap us and hold us for huge ransoms. If we don’t pay, they kill us,” said Azizullah, who like many Afghans has only one name.

His workers now travel in U.S. military convoys whenever possible, he said, to give them additional protection.That doesn’t surprise Gulali, a tribal elder from Kandahar province.”Of course the Taliban are against any of these people working for the Afghan government or the Americans or other foreigners,” said the elder, who also uses only one name.

He believes many of the recent attacks are by militants simply looking for softer targets. While nearly all foreign companies in Afghanistan now work out of guarded compounds, they do not have the massive fortifications and overwhelming firepower found at nearly any American military installation.The Taliban “want to use the easiest option,” he said.But the attacks are challenging a key part of America’s aims in Afghanistan.

Washington’s counterinsurgency plans call for aggressive development to build up everything from Afghanistan’s roads to its sewer systems to its irrigation networks. Much of the actual work is paid for by USAID, the government’s main international aid agency, then contracted through corporations that often subcontract the actual the work to smaller companies. On the ground, many employees are Afghans overseen by small groups of Western administrators.

The attacks “are not about armed confrontation. They are about subversion of the government,” said Terrence K. Kelly, a senior researcher at the Washington-based RAND Corporation who has studied how rebuilding efforts work in war zones. America’s strategy counts on development work to increase the legitimacy and reach of the Karzai government. With these attacks the Taliban can “turn off the delivery of services – which makes the government look bad,” he said.USAID insists it will not scale back its work in Afghanistan because of the attacks, according to Rebecca Black, the agency’s deputy mission director for Afghanistan.

Contractors insist they are also staying.The Louis Berger Group/Black & Veatch, a joint venture building major infrastructure projects across the country, was among the companies based in the Kandahar guest house attacked last week.In a statement, the joint venture said they were “currently conducting a comprehensive review of the recent events in Kandahar to assess what changes, if any, are required to continue our work.”(AP)

solar-powered airplane designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions successfully made its first test flight above the Swiss

A solar-powered airplane designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions successfully made its first test flight above the Swiss countryside on Wednesday.The Solar Impulse, which has 12,000 solar cells built into its wings, is a prototype for an aircraft intended to fly around the world without fuel in 2012.It glided for 87 minutes above western Switzerland at an altitude of 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) with German test pilot Markus Scherdel at the controls.”Everything went as it should,” Scherdel told Reuters Television at Payerne military base after landing.

It took six years to built the carbon fiber aircraft, which has the wingspan of an Airbus A340 and weighs as much as a mid-size car (1,600 kg).The prototype made a “flea hop” in December 2009, flying a distance of 350 meters one meter above the runway of a military airbase near Zurich. It was then transported to Payerne airfield in the west of Switzerland for its maiden flight.The propeller plane is powered by four electric motors and designed to fly day and night by saving energy from its solar cells in high-performance batteries.

It is ultimately expected to attain an average flying speed of 70 kms per hour and reach a maximum altitude of 8,500 meters (27,900 feet).Bertrand Piccard, one of the Swiss pilots behind the project, is best known for completing the first non-stop, round-the-world flight in a hot-air balloon in March 1999.

The other main pilot, Swiss engineer Andre Borschberg, has described it as “ten times lighter than the very best glider.””Such a large wingspan for so little weight is something completely new in the world of aviation,” he said on the initiative’s website http://www.solarimpulse.com.

The project’s budget is 100 million Swiss francs ($94 million), 80 million francs of which has been secured from sponsors, according to spokeswoman Rachel de Bros.Belgian chemicals company Solvay, Swiss watchmaker Omega, part of the Swatch group, and German banking giant Deutsche Bank, are the three main sponsors.Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), one of two Swiss federal polytechnical universities, is scientific advisor.(Reuters)

Nevsky Express bounced out tracks in remote rural areas(elements of explosive)

Nevsky Express bounced out tracks in remote rural areas at the time the train was on its way between Moscow and St Petersburg.The investigators found “elements of explosives” at the scene, said the Russian federal investigation committee in a statement.A senior intelligence official said, a bomb made out of rail locomotives.Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russian domestic intelligence service, told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that the bomb is equivalent to seven pounds of TNT detonated at the site, Reuters news agency said.There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.’The explosion kerasa’Russia’s chief prosecutor opened criminal investigation on charges of terrorism, said the Russian news agency reported.Hundreds of rescue workers and other workers worked all night at the crash site near the city of Tver region Bologoye.Some reports said as many as 39 people were killed.The train was carrying over 650 passengers. Over 90 people hospitalized, some of them transported by helicopter.Head of state-owned railway company, Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, said investigators believed the accident on Friday night was caused by acts of terrorism.”In short, the terrorist attacks” is the main line of investigation pursued by the experts who are investigating the accident that left the tracks, Yakunin said on state television from the accident scene.Some passengers reported a large explosion sound occurred before the train left the tracks.A Russian television channels broadcast the recording mobile phone conversations between the train engineer and kemenetrian emergency. Engineer said, there was an explosion in the train.Train named Nevsky Express was on his way in one of the busiest routes in Russia, and Friday nights are the hours the passengers crowded.In 2007, a bomb in the same railway carriage toppled causes, causes nearly 30 people injured.

motoman sda5d Hiro robot – a humanoid that can identify colours

For as long as anyone can remember, the Tokyo International Robot Exhibition has been a showcase for Japan at its wackiest: stern industrial machines lurked backstage as waltzing, noodle-making or ping-pong-playing humanoids stole the limelight.But in recessionary 2009, with Japanese industry writhing in pain, the national robot obsession has turned serious. For the first time, the show explained how the machines really are going to take over.A new mood was in the air: the downturn, said one Tsukuba University engineer, had honed Japanese robotics research and forced it to be more practical. Companies and universities that were once given unlimited budgets to push the boundaries of robotics were now being told to come up with something usable and commercial and fast.

Toyota’s recent decision to pull out of Formula 1 was a hot topic of discussion: would its next cost-cutting move be to close the robotics division or would it still throw millions into perfecting a trumpet-playing automaton?The fun stuff, accordingly, was downplayed while potential applications were pushed to the front. That gave many of the companies a chance to show that, quietly but steadily, the technology has been improving by leaps and bounds.Getting a cute humanoid robot such as Honda’s Asimo to go from walking to running took decades of effort, said one Tokyo University engineer, but the work of making a machine into a better pizza-maker than a human moved much faster.

Japanese robots are being built with open software codes, to encourage outside programmers to come up with ideas to make them even more useful. It is all working rather too well.Perhaps disturbingly for workforces around the world, there is a fast-growing list of human jobs that robots can do quicker and better.The show marked the debut of Kawada Industries’ Hiro robot – a humanoid that can identify colours, shapes and human faces and boasts some of the most dextrous mechanical paws ever created.

Asked what purpose it might serve, Hiro’s handler explained that at the Nissan factory, the production line already consists almost entirely of robots. However, occasionally they have to bring in a human. “This robot could replace that person,” the handler said.Kawada was not the only company whose work may soon inflate global unemployment numbers. Yaskawa, occupying the largest booth at the show, proudly touted its Motoman series of assembly robots. These, claimed the company, would soon be “replacing people without taking up too much space or requiring any change in the layouts of production lines”.

In the next booth, a representative of Yaskawa’s fiercest competitor, FANUC, said: “What’s amazing is their [the robots’] speed. They can achieve the speed of the most experienced workers. We don’t need to worry about the employment issue … When they’re not required to work, we just turn off the switch.”Kawada and Yaskawa’s main business until now has been producing robots for the auto industry. The priority now is to push the machines into more areas of the manufacturing and services industries. As well as spot-welding a Toyota Prius, Motoman can be retooled to perform routine blood tests faster than a team of nurses.

The service and nursing industries are the primary target. As the Japanese population continues to age, robotics companies have spotted a potential market. This year, developers touted an array of robotic guide dogs, nurses, cleaners, firemen and even robots that can fold and press towels.

A Kawada engineer speculated that human workers and robot workers may soon be working face to face; a practice currently prohibited by Japanese trade ministry regulations.“As things stand, robots and humans don’t work together and are separated by fences,” he said. “We are working on the assumption that those barriers will be gone in the future … our society has fewer children, and a lot of people want robots to do the hard work.”Robots that were once there for laughs are now being programmed to take jobs or, as the legend on one pair of steely hands had it: “Diverse performances of this dual-arm, multi-functioning robot enable the automation of human work.”