The Spirit of Dubai, one of the largest commercial airships in the world and her journey is to pay homage to the most famous monuments of the Continent, such as the Colosseum in Rome, the Acropolis in Athens, flying over the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Venice, and the Pyramids of Cairo,
         
before arriving in Dubai for the New Year to celebrate the opening of The Palm Jumeirah, the world’s latest landmark, with its unique concept, its architectural and environmental challenges.
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Kite industry thriving in Afghanistan
Kabul - Sunday, November 12, 2006
Five years after the fall of the Taliban, the kite industry - banned under the hardline regime - is once again flourishing in Afghanistan. Kite flying has become again a national pastime, especially in the capital Kabul.

Made from paper and thin wooden struts, they have become a symbol of change.
The Taliban believed activities such as kite flying distracted youngsters from studying the Islamic holy book, the Quran, but now the hobby is once again booming.
          
Many shops sell the reels, line and other cheap paraphernalia needed for this simple sport. Kabul's top kite maker is Noor Agha. He had to go underground to make his kites in the Taliban days, but now his work can be sold openly.
"Kabul has changed a lot compared with how it was in the Taliban time. During their regime, if a child was even caught flying a (cheap) plastic kite, his father would be thrown in jail," he said. "But fortunately now, we live like kings. We can do whatever we want. We can fly kites wherever we want."

The popular book The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini has made Kabul's kites famous worldwide.

Radio enthusiasts try to debunk Marconi
It was a technological milestone that laid the groundwork for today's cellphones and BlackBerrys. On Dec. 12, 1901, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi made history by announcing he had used a kite and some copper wire atop Signal Hill in St. John's to receive a wireless signal from across the Atlantic Ocean.
More than a century later, a group of radio scientists in Newfoundland are conducting a series of tests that could debunk Marconi's claim to fame. "We're essentially setting out to prove it wrong," said Joe Craig, a physicist and director of the Marconi Radio Club.
    
Mr. Craig and several other researchers are using a combination of modern computer technology and vintage equipment to determine whether the inventor actually heard three faint, electromagnetic clicks -- the letter S in Morse code -- that were transmitted from 3,470 kilometres away in Poldhu, England. "We can never recreate his exact equipment, because to do that would be to interfere with all sorts of essential radio communication that's going on all the time," said Len Zedel, a physics professor at Memorial University who is also working on the tests.

A station has been set up in the St. John's area, using a 150-metre antenna. The experiment, which will end in 2006 February. A transmitter station in Poldhu began sending its call letters, GB3SSS, in Morse code at 15-minute intervals.According to Mr. Zedel, the polemic never will be completely solved, since Marconi was the only one to hear famous the three clicks. But the place of Marconi in the History will never be called in question, adds it.

Airport closed due to mystery kite.
China - October 2006
A kite forced the closure of Zhanjiang International Airport (China) for half a day after it was found flying near the runway in the Guangdong port city over the weekend. The incident took place at about 6:15 pm on Saturday, when a 2-metre-long kite was seen flying in the sky only 200 metres away from the runway.
After failing to locate the people who were flying the kite, the airport authority had to close the airport down. Two departing flights and four arrivals had to be cancelled or diverted to other airports, and 477 passengers were left stranded in airport waiting rooms overnight.
The airport returned to normal operation 12 hours later on the early Sunday morning when the kite fell into farmland nearby.

Philippe Cottenceau
France
After the death of Philippe, those which liked him are invited to fly their kites, to pay homage to Philippe : The 30 December, saturday, two months after his death.

Sunny Lin’s kite World

         
Mr. Lin ' s " biggest " mini kite is only of a palm size , the small one is just as big as a thumb , and the lightest one is no more than o.ol gram.
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California – November 2, 2006
KiteShip Corporation, an innovator in very large free-flying sails (VLFFS) for ships, announces that it was selected winner of the Transportation Category of the “California Clean Tech Open” with their very large traction kites, which reduce ship owners' crippling fuel costs by up to 25 percent, and vastly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants.
                   
The issue :
Chosen among nearly 200 files, KiteShip, in Palo Alto, designed giant kites for the boats of cruising. Their use reduced to a significant degree gas emissions for purpose of greenhouse slackened in the atmosphere by the engines of these boats.
According to KiteShip, the boats consumes only 10% off the fuel used in the world for transport but pollute fifty times more, because they uses a worse quality fuel than the plane or car. The start-up will uses its price to market its first products have the next year off.

No freedom for the kites.
Cambodia - Novembre 27, Monday.
On Monday, November 27, 2006, more than 100 members of the Alliance for Freedom of Expression in Cambodia (AFEC) gathered in the park in front of Wat Botum, nearby the National Assembly. The AFEC members were attempting to fly 100 kites as part of a campaign to demand freedom of expression and assembly in Cambodia. The motto of the event was "Without wind a kite cannot fly. Without Freedom of Expression society cannot progress."
            
Weary to await an improbable municipal green-light, some militants had decided to carry on regardless of, Monday morning, and to fly their paper birds. They did not have time of it.Police officers swoop down on the group and immediately confiscated the kites. There’s no violence, but as Kek Galabru regrets it, (president of Licadho, the Kampuchean league of the humans right), this banning of freedom of expression on the public highway means indeed that the “democracy is in difficulty” in the kingdom.

Antarctica - November 2006
This coming November, Rory Sweet, Henry Cookson and Rupert Longsdon will be attempting an ambitious and unique expedition. The team will depart from Cape Town on a 2600mile flight south to the Russian scientific base, Novolazarevskaya, situated at the edge of the coldest, windiest, highest, most inhospitable continent on earth – Antarctica.

       
From here the expedition will spend the next 50 days dragging 19stone pulks over 1100 miles across the Antarctic wasteland in temperatures as low as -50°C. Their route will take them up through glacier and crevasse fields to an altitude of 11 500 feet onto the polar ice plateau where they will head for their main objective, the little known Pole of Inaccessibility. This is the exact center of the Antarctic continent, the point furthest from the Southern Oceans.
To cover these vast distances the team will be using a combination of traditional man hauling and kite skiing. The logistics and preparation for such an expedition are immense. They have been preparing for this trip since December last year and have recently returned from a two week, kite skiing training trip on the Greenland ice cap. This trip will be one of longest and most ambitious expeditions of 2006/2007.
Their Gear: Flexifoil Blade, Concept Air Moove and Smart Kites. The kites are crucial to the success of the expedition, enabling us to thrust deeper in to the continent thus penetrating into the center of the unknown Antarctic. We will be using 3 types of kites from Flexifoil and Concept Air. Their size range is 3.5m, 6.5m, 8.5m, 10.5m and 11.5m - deciding which size to use depends on wind speed, terrain and weight of the pulk.
See more : http://www.teamn2i.com/