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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...

0-14 TowerDetailsArabian BladeDetails Burj DubaiDetailsDancing TowersDetails DubaiLand Snow DomeDetails Falcon City Of Wonders Details Madinat Al ArabDetails Dubai MarinaDetails Dubai Metro Details Dubai Old TownDetails The OpusDetailsDubai Pearl Details Dubai RenaissanceDetails Dubai Sports CityDetailsDubai Towers Details Dubai WaterfrontDetails Golden DomeDetailsDubai Hydropolis Details Palm IslandsDetails Sports Science WorldDetails The Cloud Details The WorldDetailsDa Vinci TowerDetailsArch Bridge DetailsUpdates (27-3-2008) Dubai MallDetailsDubai World Central International AirportDetails

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...

Chicago -- The Chicago Spire sales campaign launched yesterday with the official opening of its sales center in the NBC Tower overlooking the construction site. At 2,000 feet, the Chicago Spire is slated to be the world’s tallest residential building. It is designed by Santiago Calatrava. The Chicago Spire sales team began meeting with interested parties yesterday and are currently scheduling appointments with potential buyers around the world. The global marketing drive begins later this month and will feature an exhibition road show to 15 key cities across Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and South Africa. Scheduled stops include Dublin,...

China - After a more than a decade of delays, China's tallest building is slicing through Shanghai's hazy, skyscraper-studded skyline — a new trophy built by a Japanese property tycoon. The 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center, a 1,614 foot wedge-shaped tower with a rectangular hole at the very top, was topped out on Friday as its last beam was laid amid a drizzle that obscured the building's panoramic view of endless high rises. In a city whose skyline evinces the belief "the taller the better," the building is bound to be a major tourist destination and landmark. With China's economy...

A famous urban climber Alain Robert, aka Spiderman, who has “conquered” the Eiffel’s Tower, Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and Empire State Building, is coming to Moscow to climb the highest building in Europe – the Federation Tower.

Malmö’s famous Turning Torso skyscraper is among the tallest housing blocks in Europe. Behind the ultra-modern exterior is one of the world's most luxurious apartment complexes, writes Paul Steele. People in the south of Sweden are total sceptics to new projects until they’re finished. The Öresund Bridge – no one will ever use it. The City Tunnel – complete waste of money. Turning Torso – Ha! Who would ever want to live there? I for one, and probably half of south Sweden and greater Copenhagen for another. One of the tallest accommodation blocks in Europe, Turning Torso is the leading...

- Family of six - and 600 staff - need extra space In the most conspicuous sign yet of India's unprecedented prosperity, the country's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building a new home in the financial hub of Mumbai: a 60-storey palace with helipad, health club and six floors of car parking.

Dubai: The fast-changing Dubai skyline will sport at least six "supertowers" of more than 100 habitable floors, more than any other city in the world, as per information available. The supertowers are Burj Dubai (where work continues after the completion of 126 floors), Burj Al Alam (slated to rise to 108 floors), the 101-storey Marina 101, Princess Tower (107 floors), the 120-storey Pentominium and Al Burj (which is expected to have between 180 and 200 floors). Most of these buildings are in various stages of planning and construction although Burj Dubai - tipped to become the world's tallest tower -...

LOS ANGELES – Developers plan a $1 billion downtown condominium complex with twin towers – one rising 76 stories to make it the tallest residential building in the West. There would be 732 condos. Plans unveiled Monday for the Park Fifth complex overlooking Pershing Square park also call for a 14-story, 218-room luxury hotel. The two blue-green glass condo towers – the shorter one 43 stories – would rise above the hotel. It's the latest massive development planned downtown from Bunker Hill south to the Staples Center. “This is the first time in 30 years that all the stars have...

A 150-story lakefront tower that would be the nation's tallest building is a step closer to reality. The Chicago City Council on Wednesday approved a zoning change that clears the way for construction on the 2,000-foot, twisting Chicago Spire to start later this month. The Chicago Park District also approved the transfer of two parcels on the north bank of the Chicago River to the city. The completed structure would unseat the city's 1,451-foot Sears Tower as the tallest building in the United States. The spire would also be taller than New York's 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, currently under construction at...

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- The city's planning board has endorsed a proposal for a twisting lakefront tower that would become the nation's tallest building. With Thursday's approval from the Chicago Plan Commission, the design and site plan for the 2,000-foot Chicago Spire goes to the city zoning committee next week. "This is a wonderful project, and everyone is very enthused," said Constance Buscemi, spokeswoman for the city's planning department. The 150-story tower, which would feature 1,200 residences, would unseat Chicago's 1,451-foot Sears Tower as the tallest U.S. building. It would also top New York's 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, under construction at...

The Burj Dubai, slated to be the tallest building in the world when it’s done in 2009, is rising 160 stories or more (the final height is a secret) in the desert. It’s no anomaly. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 seem to have whetted the global appetite to build taller and taller. Most of the new mega-skyscrapers are in Asia and the Middle East, but the engineers and architects are American. Why the boom? A combination of economic imperatives and powerful egos, both national and personal. Coming soon: the fulfillment of Frank Lloyd Wright’s dream of a mile-high building. In...

San Francisco is aiming to become one of nation's first large cities to require that new, privately developed buildings meet rigorous standards of environmental friendliness. The decision to pursue such standards, which will need Board of Supervisors approval, follows similar actions taken in Boston and Washington. Smaller cities have also adopted such mandatory rules, including several in the Bay Area. It is part of a nationwide "green building'' revolution that experts say is prompted by government incentives and mandates, growing consumer demand and fears of global warming. "It's a virtual tsunami of green buildings,'' said Charles Lockwood, a real estate...

SAN FRANCISCO The construction is everywhere in San Francisco, as one high-rise after another has been approved by the city, and about to be built. Chronicle Writer Marshall Kilduff has covered the city since growth was a dirty word. "20 years ago, 30 years ago when you had these high-rise fights, you had a much more homogenous town. Little neighborhoods, people who remembered things, landmarks were always under the gun," Kilduff recalled. CBS 5 asked if the skyscrapers would have been approved 20 years ago. "Never," Kilduff said. "We had 5, 6 ballot fights. Not (each of them) won. But...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The Burj Dubai skyscraper under construction here reached its 100th story on Tuesday, nearly two-thirds of the way in its relentless climb to become the world's tallest building. With 3,000 laborers adding a new floor nearly every three days, the $1 billion spire is at 1,140 feet and days away from surpassing a neighboring skyscraper, the razor-blade resembling Emirates Office Tower, at 1,165 feet. The Emirates Office Tower is currently the tallest in the Middle East, Dubai-based developer Emaar Properties said. "The tower is a symbol of the city's pride and a statement of our...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Tiny Dubai has big plans. Armed with riches seemingly as endless as its ambition, Dubai aims to exploit its Persian Gulf perch to become an aviation superpower. Leaders of this booming Middle Eastern financial center have budgeted $82 billion to construct the world's largest airport on barren desert 30 miles from its downtown and make its home-town carrier, Emirates Airline, one of the biggest on the planet. Dubai wants to make the most of its setting, a crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa and a natural link between new economic powers like China and India....

NEW YORK (CNN) -- From Shanghai to Dubai, skyscraper construction is booming. Over the next 10 years, 434 new buildings more than 50 stories are expected to be built around the world, according to Emporis Buildings, an international database of building information. That compares to the construction of 630 buildings of similarly lofty proportions during the past 100 years; 375 of those went up in the last decade, according to Emporis. One of the leading boomtowns is Shanghai, China, said David Scott, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and an engineer with the global design firm...

CHICAGO -- The development company that plans to build the new Chicago Spire released its final design on Thursday, and said it plans to apply for final approval with the city on Friday. Architect Santiago Calatrava designed the 2,000-foot tower, which upon completion will be the tallest residential building in the world, according to a press release by the Shelbourne Development Group. Calatrava said the building said he believes the final design is "more mature than it was initially." The building will stand at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive, at the mouth of the Chicago River. The tower's final plan...

Southern Nevada has long been a place where architectural imagination runs wild (think volcano, pyramid and New York skyline), where would-be developers ignore the constraints of reality and hope their spectacular - if not fantasy-based - visions will take root and become tomorrow's icons. Now come two wildly contrasting visions of where Las Vegas-bound tourists can escape - one, a towering Strip hotel that would be the second-tallest building in the world and the other, an artists' village in the nearby desert that might best befit a world of unicorns and rainbows. As intriguing as each might be, they both...

Record-breaking towers are sprouting around Russia's capital as local developers think big IN THE last decade of his rule, Stalin ordered the construction of seven high-rise skyscrapers to symbolise the strength of the Soviet Union. Fifty years later, a new wave of skyscrapers is being constructed in Moscow, vaunting Russia’s rising petro-power. The most noteworthy project nearing completion is the Federation Tower, which will have a spire taking it to 448 metres (1,470ft), making it the tallest building in Europe. However, the building may not hold the title of Europe’s tallest for long. In the same construction complex, plans are...

The height restriction is a prime example of one of that industry's most notorious products, the unfunded federal mandate. In 1899, Congress passed the Heights of Buildings Act in response to the 14-story Cairo apartment tower, which at the time was reviled as a monstrosity overshadowing its Dupont Circle neighborhood. (It is now admired as one of Washington's most beautiful residential buildings.) The original law limited buildings to the height of the Capitol, but was amended in 1910 to the width of the adjacent street plus 20 feet, so a building facing a 90-foot-wide street could be only 110 feet...

CHICAGO - In this city where the skyscraper was born, it is thriving like never before. Luxury condominium towers and office buildings that climb 600 feet and more are sprouting up all over downtown. Along the Chicago River, the Trump International Hotel and Tower is inching its way up to a planned 92 stories. Plans are in the works for a nearby 124-story skyscraper, the Fordham Spire, that would knock the Sears Tower from its perch as the tallest building in the United States. Since 2000, no fewer than 40 buildings at least 50 stories high have been built, are...

Chicago is already home to the tallest building in the United States. Now, the city is reaching new heights. CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine looks at how a new project will make its mark on the city’s skyline. You’ll have to crane your neck quite a bit to see 2,000 feet up. That’s how tall the city’s newest skyscraper will be. The Fordham Spire would be built at 420 E. North Water Street in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood, looking downriver toward the Loop. The project is a residential and hotel tower. But the question remains as to whether it will...

SHANGHAI: Move over, New York. This year alone, Shanghai will complete towers with more space for living and working than there is in all the office buildings in New York City. That is in a city that already has 4,000 skyscrapers, almost double the number in New York. And there are designs to build 1,000 more by the end of this decade. China's real estate market is so hot that miniature cities are being created with artificial lakes, and the country's nouveau riche suddenly seem eager to put down as much as $5.3 million for a luxury apartment in skyscrapers...

Taipei 101 (link for photos - http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=100765 ) Location Street 8, Sung-Chih Road District Xinyi [Hsinyi]* City Taipei Country Taiwan Technical Data Height (tip) * Height (struct.) 509 m 1,671 ft Height (roof) * Height (main roof) * Height (top floor) * Height (obs. floor) * Height (obs. deck) * Floors (OG) 101 Floors (UG) * Floor overview * Construction start * Construction end 2004 GFA * UFA * Height Floor-to-ceiling * Elevators * Escalators * Parking places * Building in General Type of construction high-rise building Structural materials * Facade systems * Facade materials * Facade colors * Main...

On New Year's Eve 2005, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian officially opened the world's tallest building, Taipei 101. The bottle-green, 1,667-foot, $1.8 billion structure was designed by native architect C.Y. Lee to reflect a distinctly Chinese aesthetic, calling to mind stacked pagodas or, according to some, a stick of bamboo. "Chinese people love bamboo because it's very strong and very flexible," says Cathy Yang, vice president of Taipei Financial Center Corporation, the company that owns the building. "Bamboo is hollow inside. Chinese philosophy teaches us that the hollow bamboo reminds us to be modest and humble inside." Well, perhaps it's a...

August 11, 2004 -- A Pakistani who lives in Queens is being held in Charlotte, N.C., after videotaping skyscrapers in six major U.S. cities and making mysterious money transfers totaling $120,000, prosecutors said yesterday. Kamran Shaikh, 35, a father of three who lives in Elmhurst, also videotaped mass-transit systems in four of the cities and a dam in Texas, prosecutors said. Shaikh, who has lived in the United States for 13 years and has used the alias Kamran Akhtar, is being held without bail on immigration charges. He was busted in Charlotte on July 20 after Police Officer Anthony Maglione...

Last Updated: Thursday, 16 December, 2004, 14:59 GMT Fast lifts rise into record books Reach for the skies: The Taiwan 101 tower Two high-speed lifts at the world's tallest building have been officially recognised as the planet's fastest. The lifts take only 30 seconds to whisk passengers to the top of the 508m tall TFC 101 Tower in Taipei, Taiwan. The Guinness Book of Records has declared the 17m per second speed of the two lifts the swiftest on Earth. The lifts also have a pressure control system to stop passengers' ears popping as they ascend and descend at high...

The construction of what will be the world's tallest building is set to begin in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The building contract was awarded to a consortium led by the South Korean Samsung Corporation on Thursday. The Burj Dubai tower will stand 800 metres tall - just 5 metres shy of half a mile - once completed in 2008. That will be a full 350 metres taller that the tallest floored in the world today, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. The new tower’s unique, three-sided design will ascend in a series of stages, around a supportive central core and...

More than three years after terrorists crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, most skyscrapers still the lack armor plating that could help reduce casualties in a future attack, according to a report released by Congress. "The Bush administration has devoted almost zero resources to up-armoring our nation's tallest buildings," said an unnamed official who had seen parts of the report. "We have anecdotal evidence of stock brokers dragging dumpsters into their offices and actually working inside the dumpster to get that extra layer of protection." The report's release comes just days after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld faced a...

Samsung to build tallest building The tower is set to change Dubai's skyline South Korea's Samsung Corporation has won the contract to build the world's tallest building, the Burj Tower in Dubai. Samsung won the $306m(£160m) deal, after an 11-month bid process. The concrete and steel tower will be part of an $8bn(£4.2bn) 500-acre project in the United Arab Emirates. Workers have already started to clear the ground for the 800-metre high, 160-floor skyscraper and it should be completed by November 2008. Construction work on the Burj tower will begin in January, and when completed it will be taller...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Larry Silverstein, developer of the World Trade Center site, says he is building the safest building in America. He has to. The 52-story skyscraper will be the first new building on the site where attacks by two hijacked planes felled the Twin Towers, killing nearly 3,000, including four Silverstein employees, on Sept. 11, 2001. The fire that engulfed the Twin Towers spread to the No. 7 World Trade Center building nearby and destroyed it, too. "Jeez, what a hunk of building that is," Silverstein, 73, said, approaching the new No. 7 WTC structure four days before...

Neighbors: Can't live with them, can't shoot them. But you can always inform on them to the authorities. Such were the conditions in which poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko found himself when he moved into the giant Taganka vysotka on Kotelnicheskaya Naberezhnaya, or Ironmonger's Quay, in the late 1960s. Over the years, the vysotka, one of the city's seven original Stalin-era skyscrapers, became home to a glittering list of writers, artists, actors, ballerinas and architects. But as Yevtushenko and other residents would learn, the building was riddled with telephone taps and listening devices tucked away in ventilation shafts, while many neighbors were,...

A look at some of the building technologies that are enabling new skyscrapers to shatter height records. Seizing the title of “world’s tallest building”—be it Joseph Pulitzer’s 20-story New York World newspaper building in lower Manhattan in 1890, the Empire State Building in 1931, or Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s gargantuan Petronas Towers in 1998—has always been about pushing the limits of architecture and engineering. But three years after the attacks of September 11 demonstrated how vulnerable such buildings are to terrorists, a surprising new competition is under way. The latest skyline king is a vaguely pagoda-like tower in Taipei, Taiwan, called...

Report: Trade Center Towers May Have Been Structurally Weaker Based on Faulty Wind Tests Michael Weissenstein/Associated Press Jun 18, 2004 NEW YORK (AP) - The World Trade Center's designers may have severely underestimated the forces that wind exerted on the twin towers, leading them to design skyscrapers less able to handle the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report says. Wind tunnel tests conducted as part of litigation over the buildings' collapse found wind loads 20 to 60 percent higher than those found in tests performed during the towers' design in the 1960s, according to the report released Friday by a...

Bin Laden's Stature To Rise With World's Tallest Building Commentary, Mamoun Fandy, Pacific News Service, May 10, 2004 Editor's Note: No matter how much the Bin Laden family tries to disassociate itself from Osama bin Laden's name and deeds, the construction of the tallest skyscraper in the world -- planned for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and to be built by the Bin Laden Group -- can only benefit Osama's stature in the Islamic world. Perhaps the Bin Ladens should get out of the skyscraper business. The Bin Laden Construction group recently won a bid to build the tallest...

BinLaden group to build world's tallest skysraper Monday May 10, 2004 (0120 PST) Osama bin Laden's family business is on the short list of contractors bidding to build the world's tallest skyscraper. It may seem tragically ironic that the name most closely associated with the destruction of New York's World Trade Center may soon be associated with the construction of the world's tallest building. But, nevertheless, according to officials in Dubai – the site of the Burj Dubai, scheduled for completion in 2008 – that is more than a distinct possibility. The Saudi Binladen Group, the biggest developer in the...

JEDDAH, 10 May 2004 — The Saudi Binladin Group has been short-listed to build the world’s tallest building. It is the only Arab company on the short-list for the construction of the 705-meter Burj Dubai in the emirate, scheduled for completion in 2008. The skyscraper will outstrip by more than 250 meters the current contender, Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and will house a hotel wing, apartments, offices, entertainment centers and restaurants. A spokesman for UAE developer Emaar Properties earlier told the Gulf News daily the projects also included one of the world’s largest malls — the Dubai Mall with...

IT makes a chilling picture. The mastermind behind the September 11 attacks has told interrogators that he and his terrorist nephew leafed through almanacs of US skyscrapers when planning the operation. Sears Tower in Chicago and Library Tower in Los Angeles – which was "blown up" in the film Independence Day – were both potential targets, according to transcripts of interrogations of al-Qa'ida operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. "We were looking for symbols of economic might," he told his captors. He recounted sitting looking at the books with Ramzi Yusuf, his nephew by marriage, who was the man behind the...