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Africa and East Asia continue to be among the best performing regions, up 9.7% and 5.6% respectively.
The African nations to make the biggest gains were Morocco (up 40%), Ethiopia (27%), Nigeria (13%) and South Africa (12%).
China saw growth of 27%, due to the continued interest in new services to the country.
But the number of UK domestic passengers fell by 9.3% to 326,000 over January last year.
Figures from airport organisation ACI show that Heathrow remains Europe’s busiest airport, even though growth continues to be hampered the airport’s current capacity constraints.
ACI reported that aviation capacity issues are becoming more widespread and evident across Europe, strengthening the case for Heathrow’s expansion.
Air traffic control provider Nats and Heathrow last month announced the start of a trial which aims to understand whether artificial intelligence could be used to help regain the landing capacity lost during times of low cloud or reduced visibility. The technology aims to boost punctuality for passengers and reduce late runners for the airport’s local communities.
On the heels of this, the Aussies have taken an ax to (weekend) food allowances and its (junior) mistmakers, for one, are having none of it!
"Macquarie is making further cuts to analysts. Weekend Seamless is now $25/day, cut from $40. All analysts are trying to leave. Morale is extremely low."
Convicted mob boss Whitey Bulger is currently being held in an Oklahoma federal prison. He could face murder charges in that state.
A 1983 mugshot of James "Whitey" Bulger taken at the Boston office of the FBI.
Convicted mob boss Whitey Bulger has been moved to a federal prison facility in Oklahoma where prosecutors are weighing whether or not to prosecute him for a murder there.
James "Whitey" Bulger, 84, had been held at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility during his trial this year, but was recently moved to a facility in Brooklyn, N.Y. Federal authorities have kept mum on Bulger's movements.
The federal Bureau of Prisons now lists Bulger's location as Oklahoma City. FTC Oklahoma City is an administrative security federal transfer center that houses more than 1,300 male and female inmates.
A jury found earlier this year that the government proved that Bulger, as leader of the Winter Hill Gang, did conspire to kill and ordered the murder of Oklahoma businessman Roger Wheeler over an attempt to take over Wheeler's jai alai business.
It was not immediately clear why Bulger was transferred to FTC Oklahoma City, but prosecutors are determining whether to pursue a trial against Bulger for Wheeler's murder.
Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris told the Tulsa World last month that Bulger's life sentence would be considered as prosecutors continue to analyze and determine their next steps.
Before Bulger was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year, Wheeler's son spoke during the sentencing hearing and had some harsh words for Bulger and the federal government.
On Friday, the judge overseeing Bulger's trial awarded Wheeler's family more than $6 million in restitution.
£500 can buy a surprising amount of computing power. Prices have been falling like there's no tomorrow and hardware manufacturers have continued to introduce new technologies at breakneck speeds even as the recession deepens.
Today, we evaluate five systems, four of which can be readily purchased either online or from a high street store with the fifth one being build with parts purchased from online shops.
The Mesh Nero 9850HD is an extraordinary well configured computer and at this price, one could have expected some corners to be cut. Alas, we couldn't find any significant ones.
Available at Comet for £499, the 9850HD comes with an AMD Phenom processor, the 9850, which has four cores running concurrently at 2.5GHz with 4MB L2 cache. Furthermore, there's also 4GB RAM, available as two 2GB modules.
Storagewise, Mesh has judiciously placed a 500GB hard disk drive with 16MB Buffer, with a Dual Layer Samsung DVD writer which should prove to be adequate for most tasks.
Other notable specs include an interesting microATX Asus motherboard which provides with 7.1 HD Audio capabilities as well as an HDMI output and other usual features.
The rest of the feature list is enticing as well. You get Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, a rather surprising oddity, a 22-inch IIyama monitor capable of displaying 1920x1080 pixels and powered by a Nvidia Geforce GPU.
Mesh Computers also generoulsy threw in a Logitech Keyboard and Optical Mouse, Cyberlink's award winning video editing suite, a card reader, a Gigabit Ethernet port and 12 (yes 12) USB ports. The system comes with a one year onsite warranty.
You can buy it at Comet online.
Ebuyer does not produce its own computers, instead relying on others to do so. The popular e-tailer chose to partner with Zoostorm to build what is an existing platform especially if you are a budding gamer.
The 7873-1001 comes, like the Mesh 9850, with a Quad core processor from AMD - a Phenom 9500 clocked at 2.2GHz, with 4GB RAM - filling both memory banks available - and a 640GB hard disk drive with 16MB cache.
The system uses a Foxconn A7VMX motherboard which is a mATX model. There's the mandatory DVD writer and the usual accessories like a keyboard, a card reader and a mouse.
Most interesting though is the inclusion of an Nvidia Geforce GTS 250 graphics card with 512MB RAM GDDR3, originally known as the 9800GTX/8800GT. The huge cooler on the card makes it almost impossible to use both PCI slots on the motherboard according to some reviewers.
The system comes without any operating system however. Ebuyer's offer stands out because the system only costs £399.99 only and would be ideal if you are only looking for an upgrade to your base unit and plans to keep both your monitor and your Windows License.
The computer also comes with a one year warranty. You can purchase it at Ebuyer.
The Acer Aspire M5201 costs £50 more than Ebuyer's proposal but could be a better buy for some of us. The computer has some fantastic components on offer.
It comes with the same Quad Core CPU from AMD, a 2.2GHz Phenom 9500. Similarly, the M5201 comes with 4GB RAM and a DVD writer.
But then the goodies come piling in. You get Windows Vista Home Premium, Blu-ray capability (reader, not burner), a staggering 1.28TB storage (that's two 640GB which you can use as RAID-0 or RAID-1), plus a Nvidia 8600GT graphics card.
The M5201 also provides with 8 USB ports as well as a keyboard and a mouse. Buying from Tesco also comes with some advantages.
You can purchase Norton 360 at half price, you get double clubcard points (that's nearly £9 worth of points) and you can opt for its "Buy Now, Pay Later" scheme.
The M5201 also comes with a number of software applications (including a few from Acer and Microsoft's ubiquitous Works 8.5 application suite); you can buy it from Tesco Direct here.
Building a computer by yourself is no longer a chore that requires you to have extensive knowledge in computer technology or the proverbial degree in computer science.
We've selected the necessary building parts to assemble a great computer for less than £500, a price that not only includes the operating system but also, as you will see, some rather unique components.
There's the familiar AMD x4 9550 processor (Amazon, £94.39), 4GB RAM PC5300 Kingston Valueram (Play, £27.98), a midi ATX Case with a 350W PSU for (Ebuyer, £23.74), the popular Foxconn A6VMX which features an AMD690V chipset (Ebuyer, £37.05), a Liteon DVD Dual Layer DVD writer (Ebuyer, £13.49), a Hitachi DeskStar 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache (Ebuyer, £66.99), a PowerColor HD 4650 512MB DDR2 Dual DVI TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card (Ebuyer, £37.50), a Hiyatek 26-in-1 Card Reader With Fan Controller and E-SATA Port (Ebuyer, £5.86), WIndows VIsta Home Basic (Ebuyer, £64.98), a Black Wired Keyboard and Mouse Desktop Set (Ebuyer, £6.99) and finally, a Cibox C2202 22-inch Widescreen TFT monitor with 3 year warranty (Ebuyer, £105.16).
Overall, we will have spent a grand total of £484.13 including delivery, from a number of high profile web retailers, leaving us with £15 to spend elsewhere. A great deal surely if you can assemble your own computer.
The HP Proliant ML115 is a server by default, albeit a cheap one. At £199.99 at Ebuyer, It comes with an Opteron 1352 Quad Core processor, 1GB RAM, a 160GB hard disk drive and a DVDROM.
There's no OS but there's a one year next business day warranty that will come handy. Interestingly, using standard parts, you can build on the ML115's great foundations.
Adding an additional 3GB of PC6400 DDR2 RAM will cost you £23.86 from Ebuyer. Using the other bits and pieces from above, you can manage to get a powerful computer for under £500 but with more solid credentials.
We shied away from any dual core computers because we believe that in most situations, quad core computers will be faster than similar priced dual core models.
All but one of the computers here come with a dedicated video card. Some like the Aspire M5201 even come with a Bluray and a HDMI port which makes it perfect if you want to connect your computer to your lounge television.
Which one should you get? Frankly speaking, all of them will be powerful enough for everyday need.
To put things in perspective, you are essentially purchasing a server with four processors or cores, 1TB worth of storage and 4GB memory. This would have cost you north of £10,000 only a few years ago.
Eastbourne artist Ben Dawson has a vibrant and energetic painting style and his work has been making waves.
He commented: “I am lucky to live right on the beach in Pevensey Bay and draw great inspiration from the sea. I spend a great deal of time on the water paddle boarding and kitesurfing and many of my pieces are local views from my paddle board.
My favourite medium is pen and ink and my artistic style has been described as architectural with energetic abstraction.
Ben has a residency at DC1 Gallery and Cafe on Seaside from Tuesday February 26 until Saturday March 23.
His work will be on display from Tue-Sat, 11-5pm, but Ben will also hold four painting workshops.
Ben will share tips and techniques, and the workshops are aimed at anyone interested in developing their painting skills. The medium will be acrylic ink and pen.
The workshops last three hours and are £40 each to include all materials, canvas and tuition.
Silver Birches is on Saturday March 2, and covers use of masking fluid, wet in wet techniques, depth and pen work. Eastbourne Pier is on Saturday March 9 and focuses on perspective, sea and sky. The third is Belle Toute and Birling Gap on Saturday March 16, with an interesting take on this classic view, and last there is Advanced Persective on Saturday March 23, mainly pencil and pen work with washes.
Please arrive at 1.30pm for a 2pm start. Wear clothes that you don’t mind getting a bit of paint on. Book on www.onlineticketseller.com or buy at DC1 Gallery and Cafe.
We had reported earlier that Kareena Kapoor Khan will be starring in a female centric film Veere Di Wedding alongside Sonam Kapoor, Swara Bhaskar and Shikha Talsania. The film will be produced by Balaji Motion Pictures in the collaboration with Rhea Kapoor.
Kareena Kapoor Khan, who is very picky about her roles, didn’t take much time to come on board. The actress met with producer Rhea Kapoor 4 months ago. While talking about the film, Kareena Kapoor Khan opened up on being a part of the chick-flick and revealed that she instantly fell in love with the script. Kareena is set to start shooting for the film from August 1.
Set at the backdrop of a big fat Indian wedding, Veere Di Wedding will be India’s first chick-flick which will revolve around the lives of four school friends and how things eventually change in each girl’s life. Directed by Shashanka Ghosh, the first schedule of the film begins in August and will be shot extensively in Delhi and Thailand. Kareena Kapoor Khan had two releases this year- R Balki’s Ki & Ka and Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab which released today.
July 18, 2008 — Editor’s note: This story on golfing great Greg Norman first ran in Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine in 2006. Since then, Norman divorced longtime wife Laura and married tennis legend Chris Evert, whose former husband, ski racer Andy Mill, first introduced Evert and Norman. Norman, now 53, improbably was leading the British Open after three rounds at Royal Birkdale before winding up in third overall.
Australian great Greg Norman, golf’s “Great White Shark,” is no fish out of water in Colorado’s high country.
Growing up in Queensland, Norman was a typical Australian youth, playing water sports, rugby and Australian rules football. He didn’t pick up a golf club until the age of 15, but once he did the sport propelled him to international stardom and a home away from home in the Colorado Rockies.
The two-time British Open champion’s infatuation with the Rocky Mountain West began when he first played in the PGA Tour’s International golf tournament at Castle Pines Golf Club near Denver in 1986. Winning that tournament in 1989 – one of his 20 career PGA Tour wins – might not have hurt either.
Norman’s purchase of the Seven Lakes Lodge and adjacent Pollard Ranch near Meeker, Colo., from buyout king and Vail homeowner Henry Kraviz merely strengthened his already solid ties to the state. That cumulative 3,300-acre, $16-million acquisition added to 8,200 acres Norman bought in the Flat Tops region northwest of Vail nine years ago.
The property has seven stocked trout ponds, a 15,000-square-foot main house and an executive cabin designed by famed architect Gordon Pierce, who created many of the buildings in Vail that give the posh ski resort its alpine ambiance.
The one thing Norman’s ranch doesn’t have is a golf course. If he wants to play a round nearby, he has to take a quick trip down the road to the critically acclaimed course he designed for Vail Resorts near Wolcott, Colo., about 20 miles west of Vail.
The private 7,500-yard, 18-hole, par-72 Norman Course at Red Sky Ranch Golf Club opened in June of 2003 and in 2004 was named by Golf Magazine the No. 1 Colorado course to play and No. 25 in the United States.
Norman is clearly proud of what the company he launched in Sydney in 1987, Greg Norman Golf Course Design, accomplished at Red Sky.
“I think I could play that course every day,” Norman says. “It is positioned in one of the most beautiful areas in the region, but there were several obstacles we had to deal with. The biggest challenges were rocks, the grade of the slope, topsoil and, most importantly, water.
Norman courses have quickly become known for tough layouts highlighted by inspired use of the surrounding topography. He hopes he’s achieved the same results with his only other Rocky Mountain-region project currently on the books: the Cornerstone Club in southwestern Colorado.
The private golf course opened in 2006 with the completion of the first of 400 residences widely spaced over 6,000 acres, leaving approximately 3,000 of those acres as unspoiled open space. Cornerstone is in Ouray County between the ski resort town of Telluride, summer resort of Ouray and main commercial hub of Montrose.
Now based in Jupiter, Fla. (Norman also owns a home in Hobe Sound, Fla,), Norman’s course design company and affiliated real estate development company, Medallist Golf Developments, has 47 courses open around the world with another 22 in various stages of development in the United States, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, China, Dubai, South Africa, Australia and Spain.
Norman also owns a golf course turf company, a Web design and e-commerce firm, a clothing line in partnership with Reebok, a line of vintage Australian wines, an event management company and a popular Sydney fine-dining establishment, Greg Norman’s Australian Grille.
In fact, Norman’s skills with a golf club may only be surpassed by his business acumen, though some critics have said his financial dealings have distracted him from the game of golf over the past decade.
Norman’s last regular PGA Tour victory came in 1997. Since then he’s been plagued by injuries to his shoulder, back and wrist that have forced the 51-year-old to contemplate retirement several times over the last few years.
His shoulder problems in the late 1990s again brought him to Colorado, where he underwent a ground-breaking surgical procedure developed by Dr. Richard Hawkins of the world-famous Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Vail.
Soon after surgery, Norman accepted a seat on the board of the Steadman-Hawkins Research Foundation, getting involved in fundraising and developing biomechanics programs specific to golf.
But despite the success of that procedure Norman has played in nearly debilitating pain for several years, culminating with back surgery in March of 2005 that was performed by Dr. Joseph Maroon, team neurosurgeon of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers.
Since then there have been signs Norman’s game is returning to its formerly glorious form. He joined the Champion’s Tour after turning 50 last year and finished third in the Senior British Open and fourth in the U.S. Senior Open.
Within two years of picking up a golf club for the first time at age 15 (his interest was piqued by caddying for his mom), he was a scratch player. His successes as an amateur convinced him to give up his dream of becoming a pilot for the Australian RAF and pursue a career on the links.
Just six years after picking up the game for the first time and going on to earn $38 a week as a trainee at a golf shop, Norman turned pro in 1976 and joined the PGA Tour in 1983. The rest is history.
His crowning achievements came at the British Open, where in 1986 Norman shot a record-tying 63 on his way to a five-stroke win over Gordon Brand at Turnberry. Then in 1993 Norman repeated at the British, trailing by one stroke going into the final round at Royal St. George’s, but shooting a 64 to beat Nick Faldo by two strokes.
One would think two major championships should be enough to cement a pro’s legacy. After all, Phil Mickelson, golf’s current golden boy, has just three major wins. And John Elway only won two Super Bowls despite playing in five.
But many people only seem to want to remember Norman for the dubious distinction of being the only player to have lost in a playoff in all four major championships. And no tournament has been more cruel to Norman than the Masters.
Augusta was the scene of his legendary collapse in 1996, when he famously squandered a six-stroke lead, and he led going into the final round in 1986, only to have Jack Nicklaus rally for the Golden Bear’s last improbable major victory.
But Norman is philosophical about his record in majors, and seems genuinely at peace with the legacy he has left the game.
And Norman has won a slew of regular tournaments – a total of 86 throughout his career (18 PGA, 66 internationally).
Five times Norman topped $1 million in annual earnings, and he was the first player ever to reach the $10 million mark in career earnings. He stands 31st on the all-time earnings list, and was ranked No. 1 in the world for an astounding 331 weeks.
Clearly, Norman is capable of putting the tough losses behind him, focusing on the many successes, and parlaying that success into a burgeoning business empire.
This decision could signal the agency's desire to turn over the ISS to private management.
NASA Director Charles Bolden announced today that private companies, like SpaceX and Boeing, may soon be able to install their own modules on the International Space Station.
The ISS has been in orbit since 1998, and is currently made up of 15 separate but connected modules. These modules were mostly built by either the U.S. or Russia, with a few built by Europe and Japan.
Many of these modules are nearing end-of-life, with both the U.S. and Russian modules only funded through 2024. To keep the ISS alive, NASA has decided to allow private companies to get in on the action.
A few months ago, NASA asked a number of private space companies how they would use the ISS if they were given a chance. And according to Director Bolden, many companies expressed a "strong desire" to get their own modules in the mix.
These modules could expand the functionality of the ISS for future NASA astronauts, or this could be NASA signaling that it's willing to turn over the ISS to a private company eventually. If this is the case, we could see the ISS used for commercial purposes, like a giant space hotel.
NASA has been relying heavily on private space companies over the past few years. SpaceX and Orbital ATK have been launching regular missions to bring cargo to the ISS, and starting next year SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada will be transporting astronauts there as well. In a few years, they might be staying in SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada modules as well.

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