Save yourself the trouble - Don't travel with pressure cooker!

If you plan to travel abroad, it's wise to skip the pressure cooker.

Sound weird huh? But you'll be in a lot of of trouble if you travel to the US with one packed in your luggage because pressure cooker is now considered a dangerous weapon. Two pressure cookers were used in last month's Boston Marathon bombing.

Seriously though, who would want to take all the trouble to bring that bulky cooker in his suitcase and trouble to the States? Don't they have one there. If you intend to bring one, that can only mean you are planning to stay there for sometime. Why not just buy one?

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The following is an extract from what AP reported on Monday, but you can read more at at Yahoo News:-


(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) - File photo shows jets outside Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Saudi man, Hussain Al Kwawahir was arrested Saturday at the airport after lying about why he was traveling with a pressure cooker.

Saudi man traveling with pressure cooker arrested

A Saudi man was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after federal agents said he lied about why he was traveling with a pressure cooker, but his nephew said Monday that it was all a misunderstanding about a device he simply wanted for cooking.

Two pressure cookers were used in last month's Boston Marathon bombings.

Hussain Al Khawahir was being held in Detroit on allegations of lying to Customs and Border Protection agents and of using a passport with a missing page. He was arrested Saturday.

His nephew, Nasser Almarzooq, told The Associated Press that he had asked his uncle to bring him the pressure cooker so he could make lamb. The college student said two pressure cookers he bought in the U.S. were "not good at all," and said the ones available in Saudi Arabia are higher quality.

Almarzooq said his uncle was coming to visit him for a couple weeks.

A criminal complaint alleges that Al Khawahir arrived at the airport Saturday on a flight from Saudi Arabia via Amsterdam, and that he told agents he was visiting his nephew.

He originally said he brought the pressure cooker with him because pressure cookers aren't sold in America, then later said his nephew had bought one but it "was cheap" and broke after one use, according to the complaint.

Agents said they also noticed a page was missing from Al Khawahir's passport from Saudi Arabia. He told them he didn't how it had been removed, and said the document had been locked in a box that only he, his wife and three children have access to in his home, according to the complaint.

What advantage is there in finding a sunset beautiful?

Red sunsets, as Science Focus puts it, are associated with settled high pressure systems that don’t wash all the dust out of the lower atmosphere, and high pressure tends to mean fine weather.

First Beach, Tanjung Aru Kota Kinabalu

But it would be a stretch to say that our appreciation of sunsets is a genetic weather-forecasting mechanism. Rather, we have evolved an aesthetic sense as part of the wider analytical faculties of our brain.

Man-made rocky beach, off Jalan Pacific Sutera

Far from being skin deep, ‘beauty’ is a shorthand way of measuring the fundamental ‘rightness’ of a thing. In people for example, the attributes we find beautiful generally correlate quite well with physical health or reproductive ability. Instead of evaluating all these different attributes independently, they all get rolled into a single measure: beauty.

Sunset shot near Pacific Sutera

The philosopher Dennis Dutton has suggested that the open rolling plains with occasional trees, that are so often represented in landscape art, are beautiful to us because they resemble the savanna of the Pleistocene epoch, when Homo erectus was first developing an aesthetic sense. Red sunsets would have been a familiar part of these landscapes and in an era when night was the most dangerous time, making sure you were safely back at camp to appreciate the last dying gasp of the day was probably especially important.

The opinion is ScienceFocus' but the images are mine.

Malaysia's Hytex to develop wind farm with China’s Gezhouba

Better known as garment manufacturer in Malaysia, Hytex is making its maiden foray into energy generation. Renewable energy to be specific.

Report says that is has signed  a memorandum of understanding to develop and build a wind farm in Guizhou Province, China:

Wind farm capacity        : 50 MW
Turbine type                  : MagLev vertical Wind Turbine
Energy production         : 200 GWh annually
Cost                               : ¥500 million (RM245 million)
Project implementation  : October 2013 - October 2015
Concession period         : 30 years


TheGreenMechanics: Too bad, the wind condition in Malaysia does not permit large scale wind farming. Perhaps, when  technology permits low wind speed to turn large wind turbines, then we'll see different scenario in the local wind energy sector.


Hytex to develop wind farm in China

PETALING JAYA: Hytex Integrated Bhd is collaborating with China's Gezhouba Group Electric Power Co Ltd to develop a 500 million yuan maglev wind farm in Guizhou Province, China.

In a statement, Hytex said Gezhouba had been appointed as turnkey contractor to develop the wind farm on a build-and-transfer basis for Hytex, and it expected a final agreement to be concluded with Gezhouba in the second quarter.

The MoU was signed via Hytex's unit, Hytex Integrated (Suzhou) Co Ltd (HIS), with Gezhouba. Gezhouba is a unit of China Gezhouba Group, a Hubei-based construction and engineering company which was the main contractor of the Three Gorges Project.

“The 50MW Guizhou maglev wind farm project will cost an estimated 500 million yuan to develop and build. Upon completion, it is expected to produce more than 200GW of electricity annually for the China Southern Grid in Taijiang county which has a population of more than 60 million people,” it said.

Work on the project is expected to begin in October and will be completed by October 2015. It would be based on a projected concession period of 30 years with an option extension of 20 years.

Meanwhile, HIS and its green technology partner, Shenzhen Timar Scenery Energy Technology Co Ltd (STSET), will fabricate and supply the maglev wind turbines and other equipment required.

“HIS and STSET will also provide the technical skills and expertise required to develop and build this renewable energy facility.

HIS teamed up with STSET earlier in February under a joint venture wind farm agreement to develop a wind farm project.


Source: The Star biz