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Cholo Abdi Abdullah is expected in federal court in New York later Wednesday A Kenyan man spent years training in the Philippines to conduct a 9/11-style attack against the United States, going through flight school and researching methods to get into the country and hijack a plane, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Cholo Abdi Abdullah was allegedly part of an al-Shabaab unit and taking orders directly from a commander in the African terror group -- one who was responsible for previously directing a deadly 2019 hotel attack in Nairobi, prosecutors said. "This chilling callback to the horrific attacks of September 11,...

China has restricted the construction of extremely tall skyscrapers in smaller cities as part of a crackdown on wasteful vanity projects by local governments. Without special approval, cities with populations of less than 3 million must not build skyscrapers taller than 150m, and cities with larger populations must not construct buildings higher than 250m, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said on Tuesday (Oct 26). SNIP While China acknowledges that high-rise buildings promote more intensive use of land resources, it is increasingly concerned that local officials are blindly pursuing construction with little attention to practicality and safety.

Architects around the world are reaching to infinity and beyond with new construction. Emporis, a database of construction projects, just released a list of the 10 tallest skyscrapers that are currently under construction, meaning they have a foundation laid. The buildings sport an average height of 1,857 feet — or more than one-third of a mile high. China leads the way, with six buildings on this list. Even amongst all this construction, Dubai's Burj Khalifa will still keep its spot as the world's tallest building at 2,717 feet tall. If other proposed building plans are put into motion, there...

New York City Council approved zoning and land use changes on Wednesday that pave the way for a new 67-story tower two blocks west of the 102-story Empire State landmark. The Empire State Building’s owner had tried to persuade the council to reject the project. Anthony Malkin says the proposed 1,190-foot (362.7-meter) glass office tower will ruin the view and forever alter the skyline.

The Empire State Building's owner lost his bid to stop a new skyscraper from rising in the neighborhood when the New York City Council approved zoning and land use changes Wednesday that pave the way for the 1,190-foot tower. The project, called 15 Penn Plaza, is still in the planning stages. Developer Vornado Realty Trust has not set a date for its construction and has yet to sign a major commercial tenant. But the plans alone for a glass office tower, which would stand higher than the Empire State Building's 86-floor observatory, infuriated the landmark's owner, Anthony Malkin, so much...

Terrified passengers were left stranded between floors in the world’s tallest building after a lift broke as they were descending in the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai. Visitors queueing to descend from the observation deck on the 124th floor of the recently opened 828-metre (2,717ft) tower heard a crash and the sound of breaking glass from the lift shaft. Dust then billowed back into the room through the small gaps in the lift shaft doors. The 15 passengers inside the lift were left stranded for 45 minutes before they were rescued by staff who dropped a ladder into the shaft...

SNIPPET: "Agents copied the contents of two computers and a thumb drive apparently used by Hosam "Sam" Smadi..." SNIPPET: "The hardware apparently belonged to Smadi's friends..." SNIPPET: "Attempts to reach the friends, who have been identified in court documents, were unsuccessful."

The world’s tallest building opens for business this week — if it can find any For years, Dubai boasted that whatever bling project it embarked upon, from carving its coastline into palm-tree-shaped resorts to building vast ski domes in the sand, it would be the “number one in the world”. After the credit crunch, however, it looked like the only record the Gulf city state would claim is the biggest boom and bust. Burj Al Arab hotel Tomorrow, though, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum, the emirate’s ruler, will celebrate at least one global milestone he can be proud of...

DUBAI (AFP) – Once-bustling Dubai will open the world's tallest skyscraper on Monday, boasting new limits in design and construction, hopeful of polishing an image tarnished by the debt woes afflicting the Gulf emirate. Emaar, the giant property firm part-owned by the government and which developed the needle-shaped concrete, steel and glass structure, has declined to reveal Burj Dubai's exact height. Apparently wanting to maintain the suspense, the company will say only that the tower exceeds 800 metres (2,640 feet), putting it far higher than Taiwan's Taipei 101 tower (508 metres). Bill Baker, a structural and civil engineer and...

DALLAS – A 19-year-old Italy resident was arrested by federal authorities after he attempted to blow up a prominent downtown Dallas skyscraper last Thursday. Italy, a town of 2,000 located south of Waxahachie, was home to the Jordanian born Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, who worked at a Shell gas station on Interstate Highway 35 and lived in a Monolithic dome house in town. Smadi was arrested in a sting operation when the phony bombs the Federal Bureau of Investigations provided to him to detonate failed to go off. FBI agents, in widely reported news accounts, monitored Smadi for several months...

HICAGO – Visitors to the Sears Tower's new glass balconies all seem to agree: The first step is the hardest. "It's like walking on ice," said Margaret Kemp, of Bishop, California, who said her heart was still pounding even after stepping away from the balcony. "That first step you take — 'am I going down?'"

At the turn of the 20th Century, New York's Woolworth Building and Chicago's Monadnock Building set a trend that transformed the skylines of US cities. New construction methods - and the egos of America's top businessmen - meant that buildings could be higher than ever before.Through this collection of archive photographs, Professor David Reynolds, presenter of Radio 4's landmark series America, Empire of Liberty looks at the birth of the skyscraper.

Renaldo Clarke, one of two men who scaled the Midtown headquarters of The New York Times on June 5, pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of reckless endangerment in the second degree. Alicia Maxey Greene, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, said that Mr. Clarke would be sentenced to one day of community service, under a plea agreement, and that the charge would be dismissed if he stays out of trouble. Mr. Clarke, 32, is due back in court on Feb. 10, Ms. Greene said. Mr. Clarke climbed the facade of the 52-story...

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The enormous steel ball you see in the photos (and the incredible video below) is the world’s largest ‘tuned mass damper’ and sits near the top of the world’s largest completed skyscraper on earth, taipei 101 in taiwan. the idea behind a tuned mass damper is quite simple: as a building sways (resulting from high winds, earthquakes etc), its tuned mass damper, essentially a finely tuned and ridiculously heavy pendulum, will move in opposition to the structure’s oscillations and minimise any movement. if that makes no sense, watch the crude gif below. due to both the immense size of taipei...

NEW YORK (AFP) - The iconic Chrysler and Flatiron skycrapers may soon join New York's GM Building as landmarks sold in part to Arab or European investors as the weak dollar spurs property grabs in the Big Apple, reports said Friday. The 50-story General Motors Building, constructed in 1968 and which includes the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, has already been sold -- for a record-breaking 2.8 billion dollars -- to US real estate firm Boston Properties, backed by investors from Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar. The deal, concluded on Tuesday, makes the GM Building the most expensive skyscraper in the...

One in every 4,500 people in the world lives in Dubai. Yet the emirate’s busy construction sector employs about one of every four construction cranes world-wide, according to a widely repeated statistic that appears to be wildly exaggerated. The source of this popular myth about Dubai is unclear, and it has been debunked almost as long as it has been repeated. Yet it may have reached false-stat immortality thanks to its dovetailing with the true story that Dubai is construction-mad (one project aims to build the world’s tallest skyscraper; another involves the fabrication of islands with luxury residences and hotels)....

Dubai (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The Gulf States are racing for the tallest building and Saudi Arabia is planning an incredible mile-high skyscraper in the city of Jeddah for the “modest” sum of US$ 10 billion. News about the plan was reported by Middle East Economic Digest but a veil of secrecy covers the whole project, including the names of the building companies involved. Kuwait has also unveiled a plan to build a 1,001-metre tower. Its height is a reference to the classic work of Arabic literature, One Thousand and One Nights. The monumental tower will rise in the city of Subbiya...

As G7 economies battle the subprime crisis, emerging markets continue to power ahead. So does construction there. The huge number of companies setting up in the region is driving demand for office and residential space. Driven by a mix of compact cities, expensive land and corporate ego, 16 of the 20 tallest buildings in the world are already located in Asia or the Middle East, the tallest being Taiwan's 508 meter-high Taipei 101 Tower. This spring, Mori Building Co. will add to the list the Shanghai World Financial Center, No. 2 at 492 meters tall. In Shanghai's Grade A office...

CHICAGO — This may be the only city in the world where architecture ranks as a sport. Bleachers are erected around construction sites so the locals can sit and watch cranes swing steel beams into place. In fact, Chicagoans are so engaged in the state of their skyline, public opinion in 2001 sounded the death knell for initial renderings of the Chicago Trump Tower. Critics argued that the proposed structure would not look right among its iconic brethren. Two renderings later, Chicago Trump Tower now edges its way upward. The handsome design will tickle the sky by 2009, along with...