I’ve seen photos and there is a brief clip of it in the Imax movie here about the oil fires.

The Hungarians replaced the turret from an old Russian tank with 2 turbines from a Mig 21. Water is injected in the exhaust, they throttle up and distinguish the fire.

For more interesting uses of jet engines and where I found this video see this post.

I found this important post on Intlxpatr It’s important not to get too complacent and be careful about crime of all types.

I received this notification this morning from the American Women’s League of Kuwait, guidance from the US Embassy:

We received a report that the spouse of an American citizen was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by three men in Mahboula. The victim was forced in a vehicle, taken to a secluded location, sexually assaulted, and left in the desert. The authorities are working to solve this heinous crime.

As a reminder to all, it is very important to keep an eye on who may be observing your activities while in Kuwait. Surveillance is not something that is just done by terrorists – almost every criminal who commits a crime conducts some sort of surveillance on their target either seconds, minutes, or hours before trying to commit a crime or assault a person.

Keep the following in mind:

Surveillance – think about who may be watching you. If it feels wrong, it probably is. Alert the local security personnel or store management of anything you feel is suspicious – DO NOT KEEP THIS INFORMATION TO YOURSELF AND TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS.

If you think you are being followed, make every effort to stay in a very public place until you can either make contact with the local security personnel or have some sort of an escort. Do not proceed to your vehicle or restroom, thus giving the person following you an opportunity to get you alone so they can rob or assault you.

Exiting/returning to your vehicle – this is the time when all people are vulnerable because your mind is focused on getting out of the car, watching traffic, trying to control children, or placing packages in/out of the car. Especially when returning to your vehicle, a good practice is to look around the exterior of your vehicle for people or suspicious items. Once in the vehicle, lock your doors and make sure your windows are up at all times.

Travel in groups whenever possible. Tell others where/when you are going and when you plan to return.

If being picked up wait inside a public place as opposed to alone and outside.

Carry a cell phone with pre-programmed emergency numbers, Post One, Police, Home, etc.

Last, think about fighting your attacker, especially if the attacker wants to take you to another location. Do not let that happen and draw attention to yourself and situation.

I think it must have been bombed out in the Gulf War. It is in North Kuwait next to an Oula Gas Station.

View Larger Map

Click on the image above to see it large at Flickr. I’m trying to figure out a quick and easy way to embed draggable panoramas.

Then after reading the newspaper and having a coffee at the Hilton you could see the moon through the clouds – or is that through the dust.

These also prove the point that the best camera is the one that you have with you. Though the images usually need a bit of tweaking to look OK. In this case the Nokia N82 phone camera took the photos. Then the photos were brought into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, merged in Auto Pano 2 and then put in Adobe Photoshop, cropped and the edges fixed and also run through the Noise Ninja plugin to remove the horrible noise that the phone camera puts in them then back to Lightroom and using geocoding support the GPS location data was embedded in the images from the original ones that were geotagged in the phone with the phone’s built in GPS. Then finally they were uploaded to Flickr with Jeffrey Friedel’s Flickr plugin and his Geoencoding support to embed the location data. Are we having fun yet?

It was very clear today on the drive to site. You can see Kuwait City across the bay about 25 km to the south. You can here or click on the photo for a larger version.

The blue marker on the map below is from where the photo was taken.

View Kuwait City across the bay in a larger map