Tony Blair, Quartet Envoy, Faith healer, Ex PM, Ex Sedgfield MP promotes Durham hi-Tech company in Washington with Defence / Security interests

17/02/2009 UK Trade & Investment by COI News & PR North East. Press Release. COI ref 170693P Karen Bell, Tel: 0191 202 3603, EMAIL: karen.bell@coi.gsi.gov.uk

Kromek©, (http://www.kromek.com ) specialises in developing digital colour imaging for use in x-rays and scanners They have launched their new new liquid detection bottle scanner (with over 20 patents) at a a special events in Washington - where former Prime Minister Tony Blair™ provided the guest speech - he was of course MP for Sedgefield, County Durham here their factory is located. (Simultaneous launch in Dubai also)

“We’re not having a problem attracting the kind of staff we need, despite the perception of skills shortages in industry,” says founder professor Max Robinson - the firm employs some 30 people many with PHd's or equivalent - a tribute to the job finding skills of Sedgefield Job Centre

The company harnessed its new generation digital colour x-ray detectors to develop the new scanner that can identify and categorise liquids in bottles in less than 20 seconds, including liquid explosives, screening for alcohol and for dissolved narcotics in other liquids.This can be done without opening/ beaching the bottle / container or samping the liquid.

With Kromek’s © novel kit, it is possible to rotate a 3-dimensional X-ray image without moving the item being scanned, they claim they can identifydifferent materials, discriminating between different types of liquid.

John Holmes-Carrington, one of UK Trade & Investment's International Trade Advisers, said:

"As terrorism remains a very real threat, the safety and security of airline passengers is a key concern for those in the industry and Kromek has developed an innovative product that can be of real help.

"Its scanner also has more wide-reaching uses and as the inspection unit itself requires minimal operator training, it is something I'm sure will be of interest to clients around the world. (See launch story September 17th 2008) and also very good article here

Kromek © is a venture backed high technology company, which was spun-out in April 2003 as Durham Scientific Crystals from the Physics Department of the University of Durham where many Board Members were educated. Rebranded as Kromek in May 2008, it is pioneering digital colour imaging for x-rays and has brought ground-breaking innovation to materials technology and advanced 3D imaging that will literally change the way in which we see the world.They specialise in semiconductor materials within the Cadmium Telluride family.

From website - KROMEK © has raised an additional £1.45m from new investors and existing shareholders. This makes a total of over £3m raised by Kromek in the current round of funding. The Company now has a valuation of £48m. The company also secured a £250,000 R&D grant from the One NorthEast development agency in 2008.

The Board - * Prof Brian Tanner * Dr Arnab Basu (CEO) * Richard Morgan * Prof Max Robinson * Jerel Whittingham * Dr Andy Brinkman

Dr Arnab Basu, CEO, has a PhD in Physics from Durham University, specialising in semiconducting sensor materials. Dr Basu held senior management positions in his family business, which manufactured materials for the electronic industry. The business served over 250 customers in India, including Siemens, GEC and most of the major telecommunications and consumer electronics manufacturers. He has also worked for Elmwood Sensors Ltd, part of the Honeywell Group, in the UK where he was involved in commercial product development.

UPDATE :GMT 2300

This story and the placing of it by COI has absolutely nothing to do with the start of the trial of 8 men who are charged with ineptly plotting to use "home-made bombs" disguised as soft drinks to blow up transatlantic planes Woolwich Crown Court. Monday Feb 16th 2009

False Flags, Sneezing Turkeys and why we need to switch off your ISP. Now.

Patrick Thibodeau in Computerworld on February 12th reported on plans being made for the flu pandemic. the latest exercise from the Fear Circus, under the headline ,Flu pandemic could choke Internet, requiring usage restrictions - Expected surge in online traffic puts telework plans at risk.

He quotes a "John Thomas" vice president of enterprise systems at a large, New York-based financial institution (that he asked not be identified).

"Is there a need for a YouTube during a national emergency?"

Massed ranks of teleworkers keeping their operations running in the event of an influenza pandemic could make the networks fall apart as millions of people turn to the Internet for news, entertainment, communications , with the potential to produce a crippling bandwidth-choking surge in online traffic.

Such a surge would almost certainly prompt calls to restrict or prioritize traffic, such as blocking video transmissions wherever possible, according to business continuity planners who gathered on Friday at a SunGard Availability Systems hot-site facility in northern New Jersey to consider the impact of a pandemic on the Internet.

On February 19, 2007 Patrick Thibodeau is at it again in Computerworld as a new breed of pandemic planners is upping the ante ..

" .... if the World Health Organization raises its pandemic threat alert from the current level of Stage 3 on its six-stage scale, demand for backup communications services could outstrip vendors’ ability to provide them, said forum participants."

Corporate America is already planning ...

"nothing can be taken for granted. Elizabeth Byrnes, a continuity planner at AT&T Inc., was asked how the telecom company would handle a hurricane or another secondary problem if one were to occur during a pandemic. Byrnes said the issue has received consideration within AT&T." (The folks who organise the warrantless surveiilance which has never skipped a beat)

Security risks loom large and for the Gubment are you "complying with COOP/COG and Homeland Security policies"..SunGard’s Government Impact Analysis (GIA) delivers actionable data and recommendations about the functions and processes that are critical....

"George Johnson,( Ex Security and Intelligence Office at DARPA) founder and chief technology officer at The ESP Group LLC, ***an application service provider in Arlington, Va., said that increased numbers of teleworkers may expose networks to security risks. “If you’re going to ask people to work from their home computer,” Johnson said, “how reliable is that?”

All this spells regulation - that means Gubment regulation (which will require International Co-ordination) and you ca be sure that someone has decided "

"Is there a need for a YouTube during a national emergency?"

After all Gubments don't want people to see things like the torture of their citizens which these mobile videos showing the Egyptian security services at work do they ? Like this ? (WARNING very nasty) - The first blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman has been locked up for 5 years in Egypt for being disrespectful to President Sadat the democratically elected leader who has ruled Egypt (with a little helpfrom his US allies) for 28 years whom he called a dictator. He also called the country's top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university the University of Terror.

" .... a false flag takedown of the Internet , by the " terrorists” for threatening economic collapse, and a neat way to wipe away evidence of past crimes ... and ooops the destruction of / consfiscation of servers (this has already happened in the UK)"

Bird killing - continuing the flu meme - with the fewest stones

1) Silence the critics.
2) Cut off people sources of "real" information.
3) Cut off people like blogistes from communicating.
4) People, rendered helpless, jobless, Tescoless, Walmartless, etc, would beg for the government to save them.
5) Speaking out against Gubment control would be seen as renegade / insurgency / terist and result in mob attacks.
6) Corporate crime, military misdemeanour, stolen pensions, evaporating cash ? Of what do you speak ? Oh yeah, the theft of trillions of dollars? What are these trillions of dollars you speak of, Senator? Who? Where?
7) Meanwhile we can communicate over our handy Extranet which we prepared earlier.

***The ESP Group, LLC, a privately held company, was formed in 2000 to provide a secure solution to various governmental and private organizations for collaboration based on the ESP technology. On June 27, 2006 – NC4, the National centre for Crisis and C-ordination , a Laguna Niguel, CA based leader in situational awareness, incident monitoring and crisis management took them over. See General Alexander Haig (83) in a 6 minute video explain NC4.(pic) Haig is so old he was on McArthur's staff.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Department's R&D organization that originally created the Internet (ARPANet) and other projects, such as the stealth bomber, from its earliest days, recognized an internal need to communicate and collaborate securely over the web.

Security Policy Board launched the Extranet for Security Professionals (The ESP – www.xsp.org ). The ESP is a highly secure collaboration system equipped to handle Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information over the Internet. This private external network (Extranet) portal, accessed over the web, is used by security-cleared national and cyber-security professionals to share and collaborate on sensitive information.

CEO William Potvin ex Deloitte and Touche, and company founder. Matt Donlon his co-founder, was the Director of the Security and Intelligence Office at DARPA. He has also served as the Security Official in charge for the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology at NASA HQ; the Program Security Officer, where he supported DARPA’s highly classified R&D programs for the Department of Navy; the Security Specialist for TRW, Inc.; and a member of the CIA.

Kyoto - Money changers driven from their temples - nearly

On the day that the IPCC crypto scientists and ersatz pols announce that the levels of the ocean will only rise 600 cms in 100 years ( and not 10 metres) the carbon market in the ETS aproaches terminal collapse. EUA DEC 2007 contract closed at €2.28 - Ah! those far off, dim remembered days of 9 months ago, heady days when contracts were changing hands amongst the money jugglers at Euros 32 a ton !