Nuclear Fusion
The Sun on Earth
Isabella Milch, Germany
 "From today's perspective, the only conceivable long-term energy mix in Germany is based on the main pillars of renewable energies, coal combustion with carbon dioxide separation and nuclear fusion to generate electricity." This forecast closes the study on "Electrical Power Supply 2020 - Perspectives and Calls for Action" by the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VIDE).
However, before nuclear fusion can become a pillar in the energy mix of the future, researchers will have to overcome a number of major challenges. A fusion power plant aims to reproduce the energy production process of the sun by generating power from the fusion of atomic nuclei. The fuel is low-density ionized gas plasma - consisting of the two types of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. The fuel has to be confined in a magnetic field and heated to temperatures of more than 100 million degrees in order to trigger the fusion reaction.
The current state of scientific knowledge will make it possible to build the ITER (Latin: "the way") international test reactor as the next major step in the worldwide research on this field. With 500 megawatts of fusion power, ITER aims to demonstrate the feasibility of an energy-supplying fusion reaction. ITER is being planned with the materials and technologies available today which have not yet been fully optimized for nuclear fusion.
That is the task of a parallel physics and technology programme. Professor Alexander Bradshaw, the scientific director of the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching near Munich, says: "On the basis of current planning, ITER will commence operation in 2015; after ten years of experimentation, a decision will then be required about the construction of a demonstration power plant.
The first generation of commercial power plants is therefore conceivable around the middle of the century,"
With an electrical output of approximately 1,000 megawatts, fusion power plants would mainly meet basic demand. They could thus be linked to the electricity supply grid like today's large-scale power stations. The installations would complement renewable energy technologies and could function as a buffer for weather-dependent wind and solar power plants.
From what we know today, fusion power plants would be environment- and climate-friendly, could be constructed all over the world and would unlock almost unlimited reserves of fuel: the raw materials for the fusion process, deuterium and lithium, which form tritium in the power plant, are available in almost infinite quantities all over the world.
One gram of fusion fuel would generate the same amount of energy as currently produced by the combustion of eleven tones of coal. Fusion would thus be the only energy source that not only requires little space, but also offers independence from fuel imports.
Text courtesy: Deutschland April/May 2006. Embassy of Germany in Nepal-ed.
Fighting Online Crime
DANIEL LARKIN, Unit Chief, Internet Crime Complaint Center, USA
Commerce online has brought crime online. Law enforcement agencies have developed new methods and new relationships to catch the bad guys in cyberspace.
Daniel Larkin is unit chief of the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a reporting and referral system for Internet crime complaints from people in the United States and around the world. Through an online complaint form and a team of agents and analysts, IC3 serves the public and U.S. and international law enforcement agencies investigating Internet crime.
Internet crime, also called cyber crime, is any illegal activity arising from one or more Internet components, such as Web sites, chat rooms, or e-mail. Cyber crime can include everything from non-delivery of goods or services and computer intrusions (hacking) to intellectual property rights abuses, economic espionage (theft of trade secrets), online extortion, international money laundering, identity theft, and a growing list of other Internet-facilitated offenses.
Crime Moves Online
The IC3 began as a concept in 1998 with an appropriate recognition that crime was moving to the Internet because business was moving to the Internet, and the FBI wanted to be able to track that activity and develop investigative techniques specific to Internet crimes.
At that time there was no single place where people could report Internet-related crimes, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wanted to distinguish online crime from other criminal acts that are normally reported to local police, the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS-the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service), and others.
The first office, set up in 1999 in Morgantown, West Virginia, was called the Internet Fraud Complaint Center. It was a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, a nonprofit contractor to the U.S. Department of Justice whose primary mission is to improve the ability of state and local law enforcement officers to identify and respond to economic and cyber crime.
In 2002, to clarify the scope of cyber crime being analyzed, from simple fraud to the range of criminal activities that were appearing online, the center was renamed the Internet Crime Complaint Center and the FBI invited other federal agencies-USPIS, the Federal Trade Commission, the Secret Service, and others-to help staff the center and contribute to the work on cyber crime.
Today at the IC3 in Fairmont, West Virginia, six federal agents and approximately 40 analysts from industry and academia receive Internet-related criminal complaints from the public, then research, develop, and refer the complaints to federal, state, local, and international law enforcement or regulatory agencies and multi-agency task forces for investigation.
Through an IC3 Web site [http:llwww.ic3.gov], people from all over the world can file complaints about Internet crime. The Web site asks for a person's name, mailing address, and telephone number; the name, address, telephone number, and Web address, if available, of the individual or organization suspected of criminal activity; details about how, why, and when a person believes a crime was committed; and any other information that supports the complaint.
The main operational goal of the IC3 is to take an individual citizen's complaint that might represent a crime involving damages of, for example, $100, and combine it with information from 100 or 1,000 other victims around the world who have lost money in the same scenario, and build that into a substantial case as quickly as possible.
The reality is that most law enforcement agencies are not allowed to work cases that represent relatively small amounts of money-$100 is probably below the investigative threshold. But most bad guys are online to expand the scope of their victimization and moneymaking opportunities; a cyber crime almost never involves just one victim. So if IC3 investigators can link related complaints and turn them into a $10,000 or $100,000 case with 100 or 1,000 victims, then the crime becomes a more significant matter and law enforcement agencies will be able to investigate it.
IC3 sometimes helps law enforcement agencies by researching and building the initial case. In the first two and a half years of the project, despite an effort to build cases and refer them quickly to law enforcement agencies, IC3 investigators found that not all cyber crime task forces are equipped to quickly follow or investigate Internet-related crimes. Some task forces may not have the ability to do an undercover operation or the equipment to follow the digital trail of evidence the IC3 passes on to them, so it's increasingly important for IC3 to develop and follow the trail and build the initial case.
For example, the IC3 might identify 100 victims and determine that the criminal activity seems to be coming from a server in Canada, but actually that server is just a compromised machine. The bad guys are using it as a "bounce point" to mask their real location. So it is useful for IC3 analysts to learn more about the bounce point. It might be that a group in Texas, West Africa, or Romania is using the server in Canada to collect victim information.
Industry Alliances
Because IC3 analysts have found that it is better in some complex technical cases to follow the early investigative trail, the center created a spin-off for that purpose in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, called the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit (CIRFU). CIRFU analysts eliminate false leads and refine a case before it is referred to a local or international law enforcement agency or task force.
CIRFU is supported by some of the biggest targets of cyber criminals-online organizations and merchants like Microsoft, eBay/ PayPal, and America Online, and industry trade associations like the Business Software Alliance, the Direct Marketing Association, the Merchant Risk Council, the Financial Services Industry, and others. Investigators and analysts from these organizations, many of whom are already working on cyber crime issues, have joined CIRFU to identify Internet crime trends and technologies, develop significant cases, and help law enforcement agencies worldwide identify and combat Internet crimes.
At the CIRFU, federal agents and analysts from industry and academia work together to find out where the crime originates, who is behind it, and how to fight it. When the CIRFU hears from an industry group about a specific trend or problem, the unit forms an initiative to target some of the top offenders and make arrests, and not only prosecute them but learn more about how they operate. Then IC3 informs the public about the trends and scams through a public service advisory or alert that is posted on the IC3 Web site or disseminated in other ways.
Based on consumer complaints and industry data, the investigators monitor trends and problems and form six to 12-month initiatives with industry partners to target specific criminal activities, including the following:
• Reshipping: An operation in which conspirators or unwitting accomplices in the United States are hired to receive packages of electronic or other merchandise bought with fraudulent or stolen credit cards, then repackage the merchandise for shipment, usually abroad. By the time the merchant finds out that the credit card was fraudulent, the merchandise is already in another country.
• Criminal Spam: Unsolicited bulk e-mail that is used to commit financial institution fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, and other crimes. Spam can also act as a vehicle for accessing computers and servers without authorization and transmitting viruses and invasive software to other computers.
• Phishing: Attempts to steal passwords and financial information by posing as a trustworthy person or business in a seemingly official (spoofed) electronic communication, such as e-mail or a Web site.
• Identity theft: The result of an offender using someone's stolen personal information to commit fraud or other crimes. One bit of personal information is all someone needs to steal an identity.
International Outreach
The IC3 also works with international organizations, such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria, where a high level of economic and financial crimes like money laundering and the advance fee fraud, or 419, have had severe negative consequences for the country.
Named for the violation of Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, the 419 scam combines the threat of impersonation fraud with a variation of an advance-fee scheme. A potential victim receives a letter, e-mail, or fax from people posing as Nigerian or foreign government officials, asking for help in placing large sums of money in overseas bank accounts, and offering a share of the money in return. The scheme relies on convincing a willing victim to send money to the letter's author in several installments for a variety of reasons.
In Nigeria, the menace of such crimes led to the establishment of the EFCC. Over the past year and a half, IC3 has made many new merchandise seizures and arrests in West Africa as a result of this and other alliances. IC3 also works closely with the Canadian organization, Reporting Economic Crime On Line (RECOL). RECOL is administered by the National White Collar Crime Center of Canada and supported by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other agencies. RECOL involves an integrated partnership between international, federal, and provincial law enforcement agencies, and regulators and private commercial organizations that have a legitimate investigative interest in receiving economic crime complaints.
A growing group of international agencies are involved in fighting cyber crime. The IC3 works with law enforcement officials in many countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom. IC3 representatives also attend periodic meetings of the G8 (Canada, France, Germany Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) Subgroup on High-Tech Crime, part of which works to combat cyber crime and enhance cyber investigations.
The IC3 and the CIRFU projects are a constantly evolving work in progress. Along the way, IC3 agents and analysts revisit what is working and what is not working, and constantly seek out experts and sources of intelligence to get smarter about cyber crime and learn how to more effectively fight it. That is the constant charge at IC3.
Text courtesy: Global Issues/March 2006.eJournal USA. American Center in Kathmandu-ed
Export development of B'desh: Policy Support and Initiatives
Mir Shahabuddin Mohammad, Vice Chairman, Export Promotion Bureau, Government of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh's economic growth for the last two decades and more has been quite notable. The average annual real increase in GDP of about 5 percent in 1990s and drop of almost 10 percent in the poverty rate are both very significant achievements. The past decades exports with earnings in 2004-05 (of $ 8. 65 billion) about four times the level of 1991-92 and the success in halving the 1980s average rate of population increase have helped raise the country's per capita growth This record of one progress is one guide to Bangladesh's potential to grow and to score well in the world markets. Now Bangladesh has attained a level of macro-economic stability with a G.P growth of 5.5%, export growth, stable exchange rate and low rate of inflation in 1972-73 an amount of US $ 348.00 was earned by exporting only 29 items in 67 countries. But now in 2004-2005 our export earning amounted to US$ 8.65 billion and number of exportable items is about 160, which were exported to 186 countries of the world. It is now increasingly recognized that our economic mainly depends on the accelerated development of the country's export base and foreign investment. The government decision to "look east" market policy is being followed by EPB and as such we are trying to find new markets in relevant countries.
The export development strategy largely depends on our ability of developing and diversifying export products and markets. However, our main weakness in export sector is narrow export base and limited number of markets abroad. In view of such a situation, Government has emphasized a policy of export development rather than export promotion. The government has also liberalized its trade regime in phases by reducing tariff restriction on trade; rationalizing tariff rates and improving export incentive measures. The policy of trade liberalization pursued by Bangladesh over the recent past has three distinct phases. The first phase constitutes widening of a number of steps towards liberalization of the import regime for facilitating export production by changing the base of the import for the positive to a shorter negative list. To provide package of incentives to the export sector, duty-draw-back schemes on imported input were instituted. In the second phase, important steps like reduction in the number of items under quantitative restriction (QR), rationalization and simplification of tariff structure were undertaken. Major thrust of the trade policy in the third phase had been to carry forward the reforms initiated earlier in a more productive way.
Government initiatives on export development were focused on expansion of non-traditional export and policy support was given accordingly. As a measure to broaden the export base, the government has identified a number of non-traditional items having high export potentials for its further development. In the export policy 2003-2006, these are grouped under Highest Priority Sector consisting of Software and ICT products Agro-products and Agro-processed products, Light Engineering Products including auto parts and bicycles: Leather products, High Priced Ready-made garments. In addition, ten items such as Pharmaceutical products, cosmetics and toiletries, Luggage and fashion goods, Electronic products, C.R Coil, Cards and calendars Stationery products, Silk Clothes, Handicrafts and Herbal medicines and medicinal plants identified as potential products have also been incorporated in the Special Development Sector in the present export policy.
The incentives and facilities provided for the development of those products are furnished below:
# Project loan with lower interest rate on priority basis.
# Income tax exemption
# Financial incentives including cash assistance Export loan on easy terms and lower interest rate Air transport facility with reduced transport rate
# Tax return/bond facility and duty-draw back system.
# Assistance for setting up infrastructure and related units to reduce production cost.
# Expansion of institutional and technical facilities for developing product quality and quality control.
# Assistance in marketing products.
# Assistance in exploring markets abroad.
# Assistance in foreign investment.
In order to strengthen the products base, three products, promotion councils namely (a) ICT Business Promotion Council, (b) Leather Sector Business Promotion Council, (c) Light Engineering Products Business Promotion Council have already been formed The representatives from both Government and private sectors are representing in these councils. It may be mentioned that the formation of Pharmaceutical Product Business Promotion Council and Medicinal Plants and Herbal Products Business Promotion Council is in the offing.
With view to encouraging the exporters to export more and make the prices of the products competitive internationally a package of cash incentives have been accorded which includes Frozen shrimps and other fishes (10%), Bi-cycle (15%), Agro-Products and agro-processed products (30%), RMG made of local fabrics (5%), Jute goods (77%), Leather products (15%), Potatoes (20%) Handicrafts ( 15-20 %), bone crushed (15%), Tobacco (10 %) and Hatching eggs and one day old chicks (25%).
The Ministry of Commerce has also taken initiatives to seek duty free/quota free market access of Bangladeshi products in markets of Developed and Developing countries. As a result Bangladesh has already received duty free/quota free market access from a number of countries, which included Australia, New Zealand. Norway, Canada. EU Besides, we have got some tariff concessions for export to India, Pakistan, China. Thailand, Russia and Turkey.
Realizing the need for market development activities, the government continues to provide support and assistance in widening the market network, the objective of which is to achieve a greater penetration and consolidation in the existing markets and diversification into new markets. To familiarize our products in different countries, Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) has organized Bangladesh Single Country Exhibition Trade Shows in Moscow Yangon, Paris Toronto, Sydney, Milan, London and Kathmandu during 2003-2005. Besides, to encourage the exporters to establish the markets in the potential and unexploited markets participation in different international trade fairs have been organized which have resulted in familiarization of our products like ready-made garments knitwear, ceramics, tableware, handicrafts, bicycle, Home textile, leather goods footwear, food items, frozen shrimps pharmaceutical, CR coil, cement, melamine products and jute goods internationally. Marketing missions comprising the delegation both from private and public sectors have been sent in order to explore the potential of our products in the globe.
During 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 Special Marketing Missions were sent to a number of African countries namely Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania. Malawi, Egypt, Algeria. Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Sudan in order to explore the potentials of Bangladesh Pharmaceutical products and had business negotiation with the importers as well as the Drug Registration Authorities to facilitate export activities from Bangladesh. Due to these activities export orders of pharmaceutical form the countries mentioned above have beer, received and about 516 pharmaceutical companies of Bangladesh have taken initiatives to engage their agents in those countries to work on behalf of Bangladesh.
Due to various support and activities undertaken by the government. export of some non-traditional items like pharmaceuticals, light engineering products, cut flower & foliage have been possible.
Pharmaceutical product
It is worthwhile to mention that Bangladeshi pharmaceuticals industries today not only meet 95% of our local demand but are also exporting medicine to about 62 countries of the world. In the year 2003-2004, we exported medicine worth of US$ 12.69 million. As against this, an amount US$ 21.26 million was earned during 2004-2005. The percentage of increase is therefore 67.53. It may be mentioned that Bangladesh as an LDC, will be able to manufacture patent medicine under TRIPs till 2016.
Light Engineering Products:
The export earning from light engineering products like iron-chain, coil assemble, machineries parts, motor/vehicle parts, diesel engine & generator in 2004-2005 amounted to US$ 85 million while we earned only 41 87 million during 2003-2004 thereby registering an increase of 103,06%.
Cut Flower and Foliage:
The most non-traditional items have now become a promising one, the export of which registered a phenomenal growth of 856. 79% over the period of one year. In the year 2004-2005 the performance of this sector was US$ 7.34 million while in 2003-4, the figure was just US$ .076 million only.
Agro Processed Products:
An amount of US$ 8.88 million was earned form this sector which includes spices mustered oil, jam/jellies, fruit juice, biscuits & dry food during 20042005 while the performance was US$ 6.31 million during 2003-2004 thereby registering an increase of 40.73%.
Bicycle:
Bicycle is new entrant in our export basket. In 2004-2005 our export was exported US$ 39.67 million in 2003-2004 thereby registering an increase of 03.30%.
Leather Footwear:
During 2004-2005 an amount US$ 87.55 million worth of footwear was exported while the figure was US$ 68.30 million during 2003-2004. The percentage increase is 28.18%.
As part of development activities Bangladesh missions abroad have been activated and made more dynamic and target oriented in order that all stakeholders in Bangladesh may have benefits by using missions services and information with regard to market intelligence of those countries.
Export Promotion Bureau has been conducting National Export Training Programme (NETP) in order to make the stakeholder aware regarding the recent changes taking place in the field of export business due to the present liberalization and globalization policy under WTO. Seminars and workshop on various topics have been organized for the exporters stakeholders and other to meet the demands of the present situation.
The government in order to make it more efficient and market oriented and to cater to the demanded of the exporters has also initiated capacity building of Export Promotion Bureau as an institution. EPB is now working more closely with private sector organization. The private sector plays a pivotal role in the economic development of the country. Keeping this in view, the Private Sector Development Support (PSDSP) has been designed in the context of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme (PRSP). The objective of the proposed projects is to help the private sector enhance its competitive strength and successfully meet the challenges of a post MFA world. Under the auspices of the design phase, three groups have been formed from amongst the key stakeholders of PSID in Bangladesh. The GOB PSD Task Force, the PSD Core Groups and the Private Sectors Consultative Group are focusing on each of the key component of the proposed PSDSP Regulatory Reform, Capacity Building and Special Economic Zones. Export Promotion Bureau is playing vital role in designing the PSD programme where Vice Chairman. EPB is a member of the Task Force and four officials are in the Core Group.
Besides, EPB has been maintaining close liaison with different international agencies like World Bank, ITC, UNDP, European Union, USAID, Trade Facilitation office of Canada (TFOC), SIPPO Switzerland and GTZ of Germany, etc for technical and marketing collaboration. Recently EPB has jointly organized a seminar in collaboration with TFOC regarding marketing prospect in Canada. All these policy supports have contributed towards export development of the country.
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