100janovski

Thunderstorms were forecast to continue across the Southeast coast Friday as a weak trough in the upper atmosphere trough continued to sit across the region.
The storms would set up across the Carolinas and Georgia for the most part, though activity would also spread to the north and south from Florida into the Mid-Atlantic states. None of the storms in the region were expected to be exceptionally strong, although some very heavy precipitation was expected from some of the storms. Flooding was possible near the border of North Carolina and South Carolina where some of the heaviest precipitation was expected to fall.

The wet weather was expected to remain over the East Coast into the Weekend, but should begin to subside Sunday afternoon.

In the West, thunderstorms would continue over the Southwest and Rockies, where some flash flooding was also possible. These storms would contain frequent lightning, but strong winds or hail were unlikely.

The Northwest was also expected to be a bit wet as a Pacific Storm system continued to trek into Southwestern Canada. Most of the precipitation associated with this system would remain close to the border, though a line of thunderstorms was expected to dive as far south as southern Idaho.

California was forecast to cool a bit as a trough of low pressure approaches the coast, but temperatures would begin to climb into the weekend.

Temperatures in the Lower 48 states Thursday ranged from a low of 33 degrees at Truckee-Tahoe, Calif., to a high of 105 degrees at Blythe, Calif.

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India wants the new global climate change agreement to ban trade barriers targeting nations that refuse to accept limits on their carbon emissions, the chief Indian climate negotiator said Friday. As some 180 nations work on drafting a new climate accord, India proposed adding a clause to bar any country from taking action against another country's goods and services based on its climate policy.
The clause is largely directed against efforts by U.S. Congress to impose trade penalties on countries that do not commit to specific action against greenhouse gases.

Chief delegate Shyam Saran said such measures looked like "protectionism under a green label," and were complicating the latest round of climate negotiations in Bonn.

Trade issues are "extraneous to what we are trying to construct here, which is a collaborative response to an extraordinary global challenge," Saran told The Associated Press.

The talks in Bonn adjourn Friday after five days of meetings, and resume next month in Bangkok with the aim of reaching a new agreement by the December conference in Copenhagen. The new accord would succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Officials at the talks Friday said delegates have made no attempt to settle outstanding differences on key issues, and there has been little progress in whittling down a 200-page draft accord.

The U.S. House or Representatives has passed a climate bill that would impose trade penalties on countries that do not accept limits on their emissions, and the Senate is considering a similar bill. President Barack Obama has opposed attaching trade issues to climate and energy legislation.

The Kyoto accord required 37 industrial countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a total 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012, but made no obligations on developing countries.

The world's wealthier nations want developing countries, such as China and India, to share the burden and agree to slow their explosive emissions growth, even if they cannot yet make reductions.

The developing countries, however, have resisted specific commitments, holding out for pledges of hundreds of billions of dollars to help them adapt to climate conditions and move to low-carbon growth.

Poorer countries also want the wealthy ones to commit to reducing emissions further by up to 40 percent by 2020, from 1990 levels. So far, the wealthier bloc has pledged an aggregate reduction of 15-21 percent, the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said this week.

Those figures exclude the United States, which rejected the Kyoto Protocol but says it wants to join in a Copenhagen deal. The House bill called for a 17 percent emissions reduction from 2005 and a cut of more than 80 percent by 2050.

Environmental activists warned that progress in the talks was too slow, with just a few weeks of actual negotiating time left before the decisive conference in December.

Unless every country contributes more, the final agreement could become known as "greenwash Copenhagen," said Aileen Yang, the climate campaign manager for Greenpeace China.

In New Delhi, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said India "is not yet prepared to take on legal binding targets" regarding its carbon emissions, "but it does not mean that India is not ready to take on responsibilities."

Ramesh, who is heading to China on Aug. 24 for environment talks, said India would control its carbon footprint through measures including the formation of an environmental protection agency modeled on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He said the new Indian agency would likely be in place by December.

Saran said India already is spending 2-2.5 percent of its gross domestic product on adapting to climate change, from introducing new crops to researching the effect of melting glaciers and the need to build reservoirs. India also will spend $2.5 billion over the next five years to regenerate its forests.

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A rare Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, among the most complete specimens in the world, is to go on the auction block in Las Vegas in October, the auction house Bonhams & Butterfields has said. The T-Rex, which goes by the name "Samson," is believed to be some 66 million years old and was discovered in the midwestern state of South Dakota in 1992.
"We have been able to establish that we have approximately a 57 percent complete T-Rex, which means the third most complete ever found," said Thomas Lindgren, consulting co-director of Natural History in Bonhams & Butterfields.

"I think my estimate is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of six to eight million dollars," he said.

The owners of the 12-meter-long (39-foot-long) skeleton hope "a public museum or institution would actually be the buyer ultimately," he added.

In 1997, the skeleton of a T-Rex named "Sue," which were 73 percent complete, were sold for 8.3 million dollars.

Dozens of other fossils are also to be auctioned at the event, to be held in the Venetian hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

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Imitating others has long been seen as a useful way to explore the world -- monkey see, monkey do -- but imitation could also make monkeys popular, a study has found. Experts examining the habits of capuchins have discovered the monkeys build closer bonds with human playmates who mimic their behavior than with those who do not.
In the study some monkeys were exposed to researchers who imitated their behavior with a small ball; others were paired with researchers whose actions did not.

"After the imitation sequence, the monkeys consistently spent more time near the investigator who imitated them than with the investigator who did not," the researchers said.

And the same may be true for humans, according to the group's findings, published in the August 14 edition of the journal Science.

"Human beings prefer the behavior of other people who subtly imitate their behavior and other affects," said Duane Alexander, a senior expert at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), where part of the study was carried out.

While humans often assume the body postures, mannerisms or gestures of people they meet although neither party tends to be aware of the imitation, it nonetheless promotes social links, the researchers found.

It is hoped the findings "may lead to insights into disorders in which imitation and bonding is impaired such as certain forms of autism," explained Alexander.

The study was carried out by researchers at the NIH, the Italian National Research Council and the University of Parma.

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NASA is charged with spotting most of the asteroids that pose a threat to Earth but doesn't have the money to complete the job, a federal report says. That's because even though Congress assigned the space agency that mission four years ago, it never gave NASA the money to build the necessary telescopes, according to the report released Wednesday by the National Academy of Sciences.
Specifically, the mission calls for NASA, by the year 2020, to locate 90 percent of the potentially deadly rocks hurtling through space. The agency says it's been able to complete about one-third of its assignment with the current telescope system.

NASA estimates that there are about 20,000 asteroids and comets in our solar system that are potential threats. They are larger than 460 feet in diameter â slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans. So far, scientists know where about 6,000 of these objects are.

Rocks between 460 feet and 3,280 feet in diameter can devastate an entire region, said Lindley Johnson, NASA's manager of the near-Earth objects program. Objects bigger than that are even more threatening, of course.

Just last month astronomers were surprised when an object of unknown size and origin bashed into Jupiter and created an Earth-sized bruise that is still spreading. Jupiter does get slammed more often than Earth because of its immense gravity, enormous size and location.

Disaster movies like "Armageddon" and near misses in previous years may have scared people and alerted them to the threat. But when it comes to monitoring, the academy concluded "there has been relatively little effort by the U.S. government."

And the United States is practically the only government doing anything at all, the report found.

"It shows we have a problem we're not addressing," said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, an advocacy group.

NASA calculated that to spot the asteroids as required by law would mean spending about $800 million between now and 2020, either with a new ground-based telescope or a space observation system, Johnson said. If NASA got only $300 million it could find most asteroids bigger than 1,000 feet across, he said.

But so far NASA has gotten neither sum.

It may never get the money, said John Logsdon, a space policy professor at George Washington University.

"The program is a little bit of a lame duck," Logsdon said. There is not a big enough group pushing for the money, he said.

At the moment, NASA has identified about five near-Earth objects that pose better than a 1-in-a-million risk of hitting Earth and being big enough to cause serious damage, Johnson said. That number changes from time to time, as new asteroids are added and old ones are removed as information is gathered on their orbits.

The space rocks astronomers are keeping a closest eye on are a 430-foot diameter object that has a 1-in-3,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2048 and a much-talked about asteroid, Apophis, which is twice that size and has a one-in-43,000 chance of hitting in 2036, 2037 or 2069.

Last month, NASA started a new Web site for the public to learn about threatening near-Earth objects.

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A South Korean biotechnology firm will early next year open a centre capable eventually of producing up to 1,000 cloned dogs annually, a company executive said Friday. "We need this new facility to turn dog cloning services into a full-fledged business," Cho Seong-Ryul, director of RNL Bio, told AFP.
The centre in Yongin city south of Seoul will cost some five million dollars and focus on cloning pets, working dogs and endangered species including wolves.

RNL Bio is one of the world's few companies operating dog cloning as a business. Another is San Francisco-based BioArts, which is involved in a patents dispute with the Korean firm.

RNL Bio says it successfully cloned puppies of a retriever trained to sniff out cancer cells in humans. Four puppies are currently being trained in South Korea and Japan.

Last year it arranged to re-create a pitbull terrier for a US woman in what it claimed was the world's first commercial cloning.

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NASA has ordered some last-minute tests on the space shuttle Discovery's giant fuel tank to see if the spacecraft is safe to blast off later this month. Discovery is slated to launch toward the International Space Station on Aug. 24, but only if its fuel tank passes new round of pull tests to make sure that foam insulation in certain areas won't peel off and damage the orbiter during launch, mission managers said Thursday. An Aug. 24 launch would lift off at about 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT), if approved.

 

NASA shuttle program manager John Shannon said engineers this weekend will pull samples from part of the 15-story tank called the "intertank" - a ribbed, barrel-like area just above the mid-point of the tank. An unusually high amount of foam fell from a similar area during the launch of the shuttle Endeavour last month and NASA is not sure why.

 

After Endeavour's launch, engineers performed an initial round of pull tests on the backside of Discovery's tank and found the foam insulation in good health. The new tests will check regions on the front of the tank to be sure foam there won't pop free and damage Discovery, Shannon said.

 

Engineers are also using a special X-ray machine to scan a series of ice-frost ramps, essentially foam-covered brackets, on the next shuttle fuel tank to fly after Discovery's current mission. Some foam popped off a similar ice-frost ramp during Endeavour's launch and NASA wants to be sure there are no generic flaws with the fuel tanks before clearing Discovery for flight.

 

"We have a lot of confidence that we're in good shape," Shannon told reporters Thursday. Aside from the extra fuel tank tests, Discovery is in fine shape for its planned launch later this month, he added.

 

Foam tests ahead

 

NASA has kept a close watch on foam debris during shuttle launches since a piece of foam punched a hole in the wing-mounted heat shield of the shuttle Columbia, leading to its destruction in 2003. Seven astronauts were killed in the disaster.

 

Shannon and other top NASA officials will review the results from this weekend's fuel tank tests next week during a standard flight readiness review meeting. By then, mission managers should know whether Discovery can fly as is or be hauled back inside NASA's cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for repairs.

 

If any repairs are needed, they could delay Discovery's flight beyond its August window to mid-September or Oct. 17, Shannon said.

 

NASA hopes to launch Discovery by the end of August in order to fly the mission before the planned Sept. 10 launch of Japan's first unmanned cargo ship to deliver supplies to the space station.

 

A Russian unmanned cargo ship is also due to depart the station next month to set the stage for the arrival of a Soyuz spacecraft carrying new crewmembers and space tourist to the station. That Soyuz is slated to launch Sept. 30, adding more space traffic to the mix.

 

"So it's a really busy time for the International Space Station," said Kirk Shireman, NASA's deputy space station program manager.

 

Fresh supply run

 

Discovery is slated to launch seven astronauts on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station to replace one member of the outpost's crew and deliver vital supplies and new equipment to the orbiting laboratory. The shuttle will carry a cargo pod packed with new science racks, fresh food, a new astronaut sleeping berth and a treadmill named COLBERT in honor of American comedian Stephen Colbert.

 

Three spacewalks are also planned during the mission to perform station maintenance and replace a massive ammonia tank for the station's cooling system. The tank weighs as much as a small car and will require two spacewalks to replace.

 

"It's a big flight to fully utilize the International Space Station," Shireman said.

 

The mission is only the second time in history that 13 people, seven from Discovery and the station's core six-person crew, will be aboard the orbiting laboratory at the same time. Aside from a broken American-built oxygen generator, which astronauts are expected to fix in the next few weeks, the station is ready for its second shuttle visit in two months, Shireman said.

 

Veteran shuttle commander Rick Sturckow will lead the mission, which will replace NASA astronaut Tim Kopra aboard the station with fellow American astronaut Nicole Stott.

 

Discovery's flight will mark NASA's fourth shuttle mission of up to five planned for this year. NASA plans to launch seven more shuttle missions, including Discovery's, to complete space station construction by 2010, when the aging three-shuttle fleet is slated to retire.

 

A blue-ribbon panel appointed by the White House is currently reviewing NASA's plan to retire the shuttles by 2010 and replace them with new spacecraft aimed at returning astronauts to the moon by 2020. One of the proposals reviewed by the committee calls for a more heavily shuttle-derived vehicle and extending shuttle missions for several years beyond 2011.

 

Shannon said any decision to continue flying the space shuttle beyond the final seven missions, even at a rate of one to two shuttle flights per year, must be made by President Barack Obama's administration before the end of this year. NASA currently plans to lay off some 1,200 people - 10 percent of the shuttle workforce - and would have to renew some contracts since the last external tank and shuttle main engine test, for example, have already been performed.

 

"We're getting to the point, if we don't have a decision late this year, we're going to end up having a gap between when we would stop flying the flights that are currently on the manifest and any new flights that would be out there," Shannon said. "So it's getting very late in the game for us."

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Maybe it was an accident or perhaps an ancient experiment. Many thousands of years ago, early humans somehow figured out they could make better stone tools by treating the rocks with fire. Evidence of that, dating 72,000 years ago, has been found on the southeastern tip of Africa, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science. The find pushes back the first evidence of such technology by at least 45,000 years, according to Curtis Marean, a paleoanthropologist at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, a co-author of the report.
"Heat treatment technology begins with a genius moment â someone discovers that heating stone makes it easier to flake," Marean said in a statement. The new discovery is then passed on and improved.

The researchers found items made from a stone called silcrete, which usually was poor for tool making. But heating it causes it to change color and alter its grain structure, making it more usable.

To test their idea, the researchers heated some silcrete overnight. In the morning, they found they could flake it into shiny tools similar to the ones they found at the archaeological site in Pinnacle Point in South Africa, overlooking the Indian Ocean near Mossel Bay.

The silcrete tools would have been excellent as hunting weapons, knives and for exchange, the researchers said.

"Here are the beginnings of fire and engineering," said lead author Kyle Brown, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

John Webb and Marian Domanski of La Trobe University in Australia said in a commentary on the report that the development of heat treatment may have played a role in allowing early modern humans to spread from the milder African environment to colder, more hostile regions such as Europe.

It may have given them an advantage over the Neanderthals, who lacked this skill, noted Domanski and Webb, who were not part of the research team.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Hyde Family Trust and Arizona State University.

"If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

 

If nothing else, this age-old adage might be the most important piece of advice to remember in your job search, especially in today's market.

 

Though job scams are prevalent at any point in time, today's tough economic times have increased the amount of scammers looking to take advantage of people desperate to make money and find a job.

 

"With the economy sliding, people who might otherwise be skeptical want to find a silver lining and too often mistake the glitz and glamour promises of a scammer's ad for their path to financial security," says Christine Durst, co-founder and CEO of Staffcentrix, a training and development company that focuses on home-based work. Watch how job scammers seek your information »

 

Durst says Staffcentrix researchers screen about 5,000 home jobs leads every week, and there is a "56-to-one scam ratio" among work-at-home job ads. Any opportunity where you can "make money fast," "no experience is necessary," or "work in your pajamas" is appealing to people, so they get thrown into the scam mix.

 

Mindy A. Bockstein, chairperson and executive director of the New York State Consumer Protection Board, agrees that people are trying to capitalize on the strong desire for work and income in different populations and communities.

 

"Don't fall for get-rich-quick schemes, work-at-home scams, pyramid schemes and numerous other approaches promising employment and wealth but being used to separate job seekers from their money," she says.

 

 

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Who's the target of job scams?

 

Anyone seeking a better job opportunity or looking to earn some money -- even smart people -- can get sucked into scams, says Robin Giroir, regional vice president of Spherion Staffing Services. With the wide scope of the Internet, every bogus "job" can reach hundreds of thousands of people, she says.

 

Durst says victims of work-at-home scams are typically -- and unfortunately -- those who can least afford to part with their money. For one particular scam reviewed by Staffcentrix, the demographics were primarily female, between the ages of 18-49, with children, less affluent and who did not have a college education.

 

"We are also seeing a rise in the number of seniors and retirees falling prey to these cons, as many of them are now looking for ways to supplement their income due to the declining stock market," Durst says.

 

Spotting a scam

 

While identifying a scam seems like it would be easy, you must remember that the people who create them are practiced con artists. Many scams are linked to what seem like legitimate Web sites that have professional photos, testimonials, audio and video -- all the things that can convince someone that it must be real, Durst says.

 

Here are some things to keep in mind when spotting a job scam:

 

1. Hold tight to your cash

 

"No legitimate employer asks you for money. This is a foolproof tip off that something's not right," Giroir says. "There are a number of scams that work this way. You deposit your money in an offshore account and wait for your investment to make you wealthy, or you purchase a list of high-paying jobs you can do from home. Whatever the scam is, don't fall for it."

 

2. Make money while you sleep!

 

"Beware of ads that make outrageous claims, don't specify job duties and don't require that you send a résumé. Legitimate employers are seeking candidates with specific skills, knowledge and education. Watch for ads, even for entry-level jobs, that use the phrase 'no experience necessary,' especially when there is a promise of big money," Giroir says.

 

3. "Work at home" appears in the header

 

"'Work from home' is not a job title," Durst warns. "If it appears in the ad header, there's a good chance it's a come on. Scammers can rarely resist including it in the header -- it's the bait of their 'hook' as they fish for desperate people to reel in."

 

4. Miracles arrive in your inbox

 

"How could this man from Romania have known you were looking for home-based work? Miracles do happen, but not via SPAM," Durst says. "Move [the e-mail] to your trash file without using the 'remove me from this list' link you're likely to find at the bottom of the page. These links are often used to confirm that your -email address is active and using them can result in even more SPAM."

 

5. Palm trees, mansions, beaches and bikinis

 

"Successful scammers often bag their prey by dangling enticing things in front of them -- much like kidnappers do," Durst says. "'If you get into my car I'll give you this candy bar...'"

 

6. Put on your detective hat

 

There are essentially two ways to get listed with the Better Business Bureau: Buy a membership or get reported for bad business practices, Durst says.

 

"While the absence of a company's name in their listings is not unusual -- not every business is a paying member of the BBB -- a C, D or F rating and multiple complaints are a flashing warning signal."

 

Durst adds that you must be careful about ads that look legitimate and that contain the name and Web site of well-known companies but carry a "free" e-mail address for a reply.

 

"Reputable companies have been victimized by scammers using their company names and reputations to scam unwitting job seekers. Always take the time to stop by the company Web site before responding to a job ad," she suggests. "You may find a notice warning you of the scam. What you won't find, is a job listing for someone to accept checks and wire funds to someone."

 

Too little, too late

 

Unfortunately, many job seekers still fall victim to job scams, informed or not. So what happens when you realize that you're involved in something you probably shouldn't be?

 

Consequences include identity theft, loss of savings, unauthorized charges to your credit card or, at worst, a run-in with the law. At minimum, you lose some money and a little pride, but consider it a lesson learned, Durst says.

An international search was under way Wednesday for a cargo ship that vanished after its crew reported they were hijacked -- at least briefly -- nearly two weeks ago. The last known contact with the Arctic Sea was July 31. Mystery surrounds its movements and the fate of its crew.

 

The Russian-crewed Arctic Sea, carrying a 6,500-ton cargo of timber from Finland to Algeria, was last heard from on July 31, when crew members spoke to Swedish police.

 

Its crew has told authorities that eight to 12 masked people posing as drug enforcement officers had boarded the vessel and bound and beat its crew in the waters off Sweden on July 24, according to a statement from the Maltese Maritime Authority.

 

The Arctic Sea sails under a Maltese flag.

 

"All of our staff in our company are working very hard to get back in contact with the ship," Victor Matveev, director of Solchart Management AB, the company that owns Arctic Sea, told CNN on Wednesday night. "It has been a really hard time for us."

 

On Wednesday, Russia said naval vessels authorized to use force were searching for the Arctic Sea with the aid of "space-based" detection systems. The Maltese Maritime Authority said Wednesday that the ship appears to have headed into the Atlantic Ocean, but mystery surrounded the ship's movements and the fate of its crew.

 

Russia's Defense Ministry said on its Web site that the Black Sea Fleet patrol ship Ladny was heading the search operation and had passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic.

 

 

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has instructed Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to "take all necessary measures to locate, monitor and, if necessary, to free the missing vessel," a statement issued by the president's office said.

 

The ship's crew said its troubles began about 3 a.m. July 24, when the masked group boarded and stayed on board for about 12 hours, according to Swedish police and the Maltese Maritime Authority. Watch an account of the crew's alleged ordeal �

 

According to witness accounts, the intruders restrained the 15-man crew and questioned them about drug trafficking before locking them in their quarters.

 

"During their stay onboard, the members of the crew were allegedly assaulted, tied, gagged and blindfolded and some of them were seriously injured," the maritime authority said in a written statement.

 

During the reported hijacking, the vessel's radar and satellite systems were off-line for two hours, during which time the ship was witnessed performing "extreme maneuvers," said Maria Lonegard, a spokeswoman for the Swedish police.

 

Also, Lonegard said, there were no witnesses who saw the black rubber boat the pirates were reported to have used. "We have no suspects and no witnesses," she said.

 

The "ship managers" reported the incident to police in Helsinki, Finland, on July 28, the Maltese Maritime Authority said. That same day, the ship made radio contact with the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency as it passed through the English Channel, but the crew reported no trouble, said the agency's Mark Clark.

 

Three days later, on July 31, Swedish police reached the ship by phone and spoke with someone they believe to be the captain, Lonegard said. It was the last known communication with the vessel, which was believed to be off the coast of France then.

 

Matveev said he spoke to the ship July 30, and "all looked normal, like normal day-to-day business." But he said he was unable to raise the ship August 1.

 

The ship failed to make its scheduled arrival in North Africa on August 4. Its last known position, Matveev told CNN, was off the coast of Portugal.

 

CNN tried to call the ship directly, but the ship's satellite phones appear to be turned off.

 

Experts say maritime crime is rare in heavily policed European waters and more common around areas, such as Somalia, where governments have little or no control over their ports.

 

"Attacks on ships are extremely rare; basically, they don't happen," said Jeremy Harrison of the British Chamber of Shipping.

 

The International Maritime Bureau in London, which tracks piracy worldwide, said it did not believe the Arctic Sea had fallen into the hands of pirates.

 

"We are not going to classify this as a piracy event, mainly because of the location and circumstance," spokesman Cyrus Mody said, adding that the bureau is unaware of any piracy in recent memory in the waters off Sweden.

 

A spokesman for the Swedish Coast Guard said the last known hijacking of a vessel in Swedish waters occurred in the 16th century.

 

 

The white BMW Mr. Liu drives around this humid coastal city in southern China may be real, but the spiffy little black smart phone he carries with him is definitely fake. Phone clones: China's "bandit" mobile phone market is huge.

 

more photos » "But it has Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, FM radio, a digital video camera, hundreds of games, even a voice recorder," says Liu. "And I invested over $500,000 to make it."

 

Liu, a 31-year-old who studied fine arts in college and designs cigarette cartons on the side, is one of countless thousands here who've earned big bucks manufacturing "gray market" mobile phones, millions of which are not only being sold across China but also exported to dozens of developing countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and other regions around the world.

 

"They are everywhere," said Karl Weaver, a wireless evangelist and mobile device specialist for the Chinese handset ecosystem. "You can find them in major department stores and malls, in back alleys and in underground markets. Everyone is selling them. It is really very entrepreneurial."

 

In 2008, an estimated 150 million, or 20 percent, of the 750 million handsets produced in China were either counterfeit or off-brand phones, according to CCID Consulting, a market research firm based in Beijing. Of those, over 51 million were sold in China while the remainder were sent to foreign markets.

 

Known here as "shanzhai ji", or bandit phones, China's gray market handset industry was virtually non-existent just a few years ago. While a handful of illegal companies produced black market mobiles, they often were of poor quality mainly because the technology needed to make them was hard to come by and even harder to master.

 

 

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This all changed in 2005 when Mediatek, a microchip design company from Taiwan, developed what experts call a turnkey solution -- a platform that integrated many complex mobile phone software systems onto a single chip. This made it much easier and cheaper to build handsets and churn out new models at astounding speeds.

 

"[Mediatek] basically commoditized the entire market," said Jonathan Li, founder of Shanghai-based technology design studio Asentio Design. "They made it really simple and really cheap to make your own phone. Almost anybody could do it."

 

The shanzhai business got another boost a couple of years later when the Chinese government relaxed regulations limiting the number of companies that could manufacture handsets, lowering the entry barrier for hundreds of entrepreneurs eager to have a piece of the world's biggest mobile phone market.

 

"It is so easy to do because this whole ecosystem is in China," said Weaver. "It isn't so complex for a guy to figure out by watching how the global supply chain works in the mobile handset space to do his own thing."

 

Small operations, big rewards

 

By 2008, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 shanzhai businesses had emerged, many with fewer than a dozen employees operating in offices sometimes comprised only of a back bedroom in a small apartment or basement of a private home. Some blatantly copy major brands, producing knock-offs with slight twists in their names, others come up with special makes of their own.

 

Either way, the shanzhai phenomenon has not gone unnoticed by legitimate handset manufacturers. The gray market phones, which typically sell for around $100, have already driven down the prices of brand name mobiles and are beginning to take away their market share, too.

 

"You cannot compete with them. You can't," said an employee of Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It is almost impossible to make a profit [from handsets] now because of shanzhai."

 

Some manufacturers, like Nokia, say they are working with the Chinese government to crackdown on the counterfeiting companies as well as raise awareness about the potential dangers of the fake phones, some of which have had exploding batteries or expose consumers to abnormal amounts of radiation.

 

"We have a very good working relationship with the Chinese authorities," Lucy Nichols, Nokia's global director of intellectual property rights and brand protection, told CNN. "They recognize this is an issue that needs to be addressed."

 

Aside from also trying to highlight the risks of using shanzhai mobile phones, Beijing has yet to take serious steps to curtail the proliferation of the underground mobile phone industry.

 

Some experts say this is because the companies involved in it blur the boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate enterprises. Even though they may still partake in shady practices, such as evading taxes, avoiding safety checks and using pirated software, a growing number of bandit phone firms are becoming licensed, creating brands with nearly as much recognition as established domestic ones.

 

And whether licensed or not, nearly all the grey market firms place orders with mobile phone component companies that work with major manufacturers as well, which keeps factories up and running especially as handset sales plummet amidst the economic downturn.

 

Not just faking it

 

Many shanzhai companies have begun to move beyond mere copying and into the realm of creativity. Some have been developed to suit the needs of the local market, with two slots for SIM cards for businesspeople traveling between Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland. View the gallery of the phones »

 

Some have gimmicky appearances, like cigarettes boxes or watches, but others have special lights that can be used to identify fake money, large screens and keypads for the elderly or extra loud speakers for farmers who may not be able to hear their phones while working outside.

 

"This is an important way to cultivate grassroots innovation," said Jack Linchuan Qiu, a communications professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong who has studied the shanzhai industry.

 

"There is a lot of raw power in the development of these bandit phones that could be channeled into normal, productive creativity from the bottom up."

 

Fierce competition among bandit phone firms continues to drive prices down while prices for more advanced technology continues to go up, causing many of the companies to close simply because they can't make the margins they did a couple of years ago.

 

Thousands of shanzhai companies have disappeared in recent months or have moved into new areas of opportunity, making shanzhai laptops and digital cameras.

 

Mr. Liu is now planning his exit strategy, too. He says he is not sure what he'll do next, but whatever it is, he hopes it will involve making lots of money. "I am trying to realize a big dream," he said. "But every success has a shortcut

Apple's (AAPL) iPhone App Store is most popular for its free and cheap apps. As a result, most apps and casual games are available for 99 cents or less. But there are plenty of expensive apps in the App Store, too, and people do buy them.

Click here to see the 10 most expensive iPhone apps →

The most expensive app in the U.S. App Store today is called iRa Pro: It's a dashboard to access and control live feeds of video surveillance cameras, and it costs $900.

The company that makes it -- Lextech Labs, outside of Chicago -- won't say how many copies it has sold. But Lextech president and CEO Alex Bratton says it's more than the five people who have reviewed the latest edition on iTunes. He's "pretty happy with the number."

Why charge so much? Because for the people who are buying the app, it's actually a relatively small cost.

Bratton says his target customers are monitoring security systems for corporations, government organizations, universities, etc., that can run more than half a million dollars. For them, a $900 app is just part of the cost of doing business. Especially when the alternative -- getting a custom piece of hardware developed, instead of using off-the-shelf iPhones and iPod touches -- costs thousands per gadget.

iRa Pro wasn't always the most expensive iPhone app. About a year ago, a German developer had an app briefly approved by Apple called "I Am Rich." For $999.99, it did absolutely nothing, and was controversial. After a day or so, Apple pulled it from the App Store -- but not before the developer reportedly sold eight copies.

That developer, Armin Heinrich, currently has 12 apps in the App Store, including the similarly utility-free -- but just $0.99 -- "iShaver."

Today, no $1,000 apps, but plenty that cost more than $100, ranging from medical references to audio tools.

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