(MSARTAJ) WORLD PHOTO NEWS

Best Job in the World

2009-02-17T00:41:00.001-08:00

BEST JOB IN THE WORLD - SALARY for SIX MONTHS $150,000 (£68,000).

What would you do to secure the job of exploring a cluster of tropical islands and reporting back to an envious world? To date, candidates have been stripping off, making improbable promises, getting tattooed - and just plain begging to be appointed.
The job, billed as the best in the world, was announced this week by Queensland's tourism department, which is seeking to promote the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Since then, its website has had four million hits, crashed several times and received 2,000 60-second video applications.
Among those vying to be paid to swim with turtles and stroll along pearly white sands are an Olympic equestrian gold medallist from Switzerland, an Italian doctor, an ex-British Army commander and a teenager from England who is sick of the cold.
The video clips, downloaded to a dedicated website http://www.islandreefjob.com/, demonstrate the lengths to which candidates are prepared to go. One shows an Australian woman entering a tattoo parlour and emerging with a four-inch tattoo on her arm, stating: "I (heart) islands of the Great Barrier Reef."
The lucky person will be appointed for six months, on a salary of $150,000 (£68,000).

(13-Feb-09) Kindle-2 by Amazon

2009-02-16T23:44:00.000-08:00

(13-Feb-09) Kindle-2 by Amazon

Amazon.com founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos holds the new Kindle 2 electronic reader for $359, at a news conference in New York where the device was introduced, February 9, 2009. Online retailer Amazon.com Inc unveiled the latest incarnation of its digital book reader, the Kindle, on Monday in a slimmer version with more storage and a feature that reads text aloud to users.

(17-Feb-09) Two Nuclear submarines collide in Atlantic

2009-02-16T23:11:00.000-08:00

(17-Feb-09) Two Nuclear submarines collide in Atlantic

A file photo of France's "Le Triomphant" nuclear submarine. British and French nuclear submarines collided in the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, officials admitted Monday, confirming an embarrassing accident involving highly sensitive technology

Proposed Future - Water Taxi in Dubai

2009-02-16T22:49:00.001-08:00

An artist’s impression of one of Dubai’s new water taxi

12,000 Space Junk Floating in Space

2009-02-16T22:28:00.000-08:00

An artist’s impression of 12,000 space junk floating is Space

Mon Feb 16, 10:21 am ET AP – DARMSTADT, Germany –

Wary of the multitude of satellites in earth's orbit, the European Space Agency has begun a program to monitor space debris and set up uniform standards to prevent future collisions far above the planet, an official said Monday.

The euro50 million ($64 million) program — dubbed Space Situational Awareness — aims to increase information for scientists on the ground about the estimated 13,000 satellites and other man-made bodies orbiting the planet, ESA space debris expert Jean-Francois Kaufeler told reporters.

The program was launched in January. On Feb. 10, the collision of two satellites generated space junk that could circle Earth and threaten other satellites for the next 10,000 years.

"What the last accident showed us is that we need to do much more. We need to be receiving much more precise data in order to prevent further collisions," Kaufeler said of the collision.
The smashup happened 500 miles (800 kilometers) over Siberia and involved a derelict Russian spacecraft designed for military communications and a working satellite owned by U.S.-based Iridium, which served commercial customers as well as the U.S. Defense Department.