Russia is ready to export Iskander tactical missile systems, a senior executive at state-controlled arms exporter Rosoboronexport said on Wednesday, RIA Novosti reported.
"Rosoboronexport is marketing the Iskander, but no contracts have been signed yet," Deputy General Director Alexander Mikheyev said.
He added that customers abroad were showing interest in the missile system and that his company was in consultation with some of them.
The full size, full length Bloodhound SSC model car unveiled at the Farnborough International Air Show
BBC., 19 July 2010Last updated at 09:19 GMT
The British team hoping to drive a car faster than 1,000mph has unveiled a full-scale model of the
The 1:1 replica of the 12.8m-long (42ft) Bloodhound SuperSonic Car (SSC) is the result of three years of aerodynamic study.
The model is a star turn at this year's Farnborough International Air Show.
The team has announced that aerospace manufacturer Hampson Industries will begin building the rear of the real vehicle in the first quarter of 2011.
Another deal to construct the front end with a second company is very close.
"We now have a route to manufacture for the whole car," said chief engineer Mark Chapman.
"We would hope to be able to shake down the vehicle on a runway in the UK either at the end of 2011 or at the beginning of 2012," he told BBC News.
Assuming no major issues arise from those runway tests, Bloodhound will be shipped straight to a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa, to begin its assault on the world land speed record.
Wing Commander Andy Green gives a tour of the Bloodhound SSC model
To claim the record, the vehicle will have to better the mark of 763mph (1,228km/h) set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997.
But the team believes Bloodhound's superior aerodynamic shape, allied to the immense power of its Falcon hybrid rocket and Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, will take the blue and orange car beyond 1,000mph (1,610km/h).
Three people who worked on Thrust are also engaged in the Bloodhound project.
They are driver Wing Cdr Andy Green, project director Richard Noble and chief aerodynamicist Ron Ayres.
The trio envisaged Bloodhound not just as another record bid but as a project that could inspire children to engage in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects. And the Bloodhound Education Programme has announced here at Farnborough that some 1.5 million school children are now using curriculum resource materials based on the supersonic car.
Key modifications The model car is on display at the Farnborough air show this week. The real vehicle will weigh about six tonnes, but even the polystyrene and fibre-glass replica weighs 950kg.
Visitors will be able to see in the model the key aerodynamic advances made by the design team at the turn of the year which turned Bloodhound into a driveable car.
Before this point, the car was producing dangerous amounts of lift at high speed in the modelling.
But by playing with the position and shape of key elements of the car's rear end, the design team found a solution that will manage the shockwave passing around and under the vehicle when it goes supersonic.
The effort was assisted greatly by project sponsor Intel. It was able to bring colossal computing power to bear on the lift problem.
"It's called configuration 10," said Mr Chapman. "It's very angular at the back; it's got a very narrow rear-track. Between November and March, we reduced 11 tonnes of lift to zero lift at Mach 1.3. At that point, we had the aerodynamic shape which you see in the show car. It's very stable."
Ron Ayres added: "We're now working on things like the air brakes and engine-bay cooling - detail inside the car. There's a lot of engineering to do. But as far as the outside of the car is concerned, we're pretty much done. Some work still needs to be done on the wheel fairings, the fin, the shape and size of the winglets."
Nicolae Ceausescu: former Romanian dictator's remains 'exhumed for DNA tests'
The remains of the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena are being exhumed for DNA testing to prove they were buried in a Bucharest graveyard, officials said on Wednesday.
By Andrew Hough Telegraph co.uk.,Published: 8:30AM BST 21 Jul 2010
Romanian dictator Nicolae CeausescuPhoto: REX FEATURES
President Nicolae Ceaucescu (right) and his wife Elena during their trial in Bucharest in 1989Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Reportedly the last photograph made of the Romanian dictator immediately after his execution on December 25, 1989 in BucharestPhoto: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The grave of the former communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in BucharestPhoto: EPA
The former communist dictator ruled the country with an iron hand from 1965 until 1989 before he and his wife were executed by firing squad after a revolt by Romanians.
But the couple's three children have constantly expressed doubts their parents were actually buried in the graveyard in Ghencea, western Bucharest.
They have fought a long running battle for the remains to be exhumed, claiming there was no paperwork to prove they were in fact buried there.
On Wednesday, their son-in-law, Mircea Opran, who was married to the couple’s late daughter, Zoe, confirmed their remains were being dug up in order for DNA tests that could finally prove their identity. "Today, the corpses will be exhumed in order to get samples for DNA testing. We have to know if it is really them who are buried here,” he told local television.
A cemetery official later confirmed that the exhumation had already begun and was due to be completed on Wednesday. It remains unclear what prompted the exhumation. After street protests against his communist regime, Ceausescu and his wife fled Bucharest in December 1989.
They were arrested a few hours later before being summarily tried and executed on Christmas Day that year. Their remains were buried in Ghencea military graveyard, authorities said.
But such was the hatred towards the couple that they were buried secretly at night with false names on the crosses amid fears their graves would be vandalised.
The couple's three children had previously asked the courts to allow the bodies to be exhumed so DNA tests could be carried out, a request that was erjected twice. But in June 2008 the Romanian Court of Appeal ordered the country’s defence ministry to prove to the couple's only surviving son, Valentin, that the couple were buried there.
Today the graves, marked with marble crosses by people nostalgic for the days of communism, have become a place of pilgrimage. Zoe Ceausescu, or Zoia, a mathematician, was arrested in December 1989 alongside her husband Mircea Oprean and her brother Valentin and charged with undermining the national economy. They were released eight months later.
Her youngest brother, Nicu, a Communist Party official, was charged with genocide in the deaths of 89 people in the central city of Sibiu. He served three years of a 20-year prison sentence before he was released in November 1993 on health grounds. Nicu died in 1996.
The Gulf of Mexico was speckled and streaked with small clouds on July 20, 2010, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image.
Between the clouds, however, a silvery-gray streak of oil remained visible offshore of the Mississippi River Delta. The tan-colored waters around the river delta are full of sediment.
In photo-like images such as this one, oil is most visible when it is located in the sunglint part of the scene—the place where the mirror-like reflection of the Sun off the water gets blurred into a wide bright strip by small waves and ripples.
Our recently published Gulf Oil Slick Images: Frequently Asked Questions explains why oil is most visible in the sunglint part of satellite image and why the Earth Observatory doesn’t post new images of the slick every day.
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