YOKOSUKA: Japanese shipbuilders and steel makers on Tuesday unveiled the world's biggest floating airstrip as a fresh solution for the nation's biggest aviation headache -- shortage of land.

Across a harbour wall crowded with anglers, the 1,000-metre long and 60-metre wide, orange-coloured steel platform lies on the waters of Tokyo Bay. The 40,000-tonne experimental platform is laid out with an airstrip, partially covered with fresh asphalt and lined with white paint for the first test landings next June. The three-year ``megafloat'' project, costing 18.9 billion yen, was inaugurated in July last year by a team of major Japanese builders.

It is jointly funded by the government and private contractors. Constructors included the world's largest Nippon Steel Corp, Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd, Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd, Kobe Steel Ltd, NKK Corp and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co Ltd.

Publication of Eichmann memoirs getsgo-ahead

JERUSALEM: Israel will allow memoirs written by Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann while in an Israeli prison to be published, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper quoted Attorney-General Eliakim Rubinstein as saying that the memoirs would be released ``together with commentary and appropriate accompanying material''. A lawyer representing one of Eichmann's sons on Monday officially asked the Israeli government for a copy of the manuscript. Rubinstein said he would make every effort to complete the legal and other investigations so that the manuscript could be published, along with the accompanying commentary as quickly as possible.

Eichmann, a high-ranking officer in the Nazi SS, was one of the main organizers of the so-called ``final solution'' -- the Nazi plan to exterminate Europe's Jews. He fled to South America after the war, but Israeli agents kidnapped him in 1960 and brought him to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity. He was foundguilty and executed in 1962.During his trial, he received permission to write his memoirs, but Gideon Hausner, prosecutor at the trial, advised then Israel premier David Ben-Gurion not to allow the manuscript to be published. The manuscript was locked away in the Israeli state archives and lay all but forgotten for many years.

US matinee idol Victor Mature dead at 86

LOS ANGELES: US film actor Victor Mature, matinee idol of the 1940s and 1950s and one of the first in Hollywood to be dubbed a ``hunk'', died recently at his home in southern California. He was 86. The cause of his death is unknown, but US media outlets report that Mature suffered from cancer for many years. The San Diego coroner's office was informed that Mature died on Wednesday, US media reported late Monday.

The muscular Mature made his name in such mega-productions films as the John Ford Western My Darling Clementine (1946), and Cecil B DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949). The Hollywood press dubbed Mature `a beautifulhunk of man' around the time of his second film, One Million B C (1940). During his career Mature portrayed a variety of strong men roles including Chief Crazy Horse (1955); a Roman slave in The Robe (1953) and its sequel, Demitrius and the Gladiators (1954); to the lead role in Hannibal (1960). Mature appeared in few movies from the 1960s onwards, and had a final role as Samson's father in a 1984 television production of Samson and Delilah.

A star is reborn: The digital Marlene Dietrich

LONDON: Marlene Dietrich, the sultry-voiced actress who died in 1992, is returning to the screen in an unlikely Hollywood comeback, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

A digital clone of the German-born actress is being created by computer technology to star in films, television shows and adverts.

Dietrich's grandson, Peter Riva, licensed the actress's image to Virtual Celebrity Productions. The on-screen clone will make her debut at a German film museum later this year greeting visitors.Engineersat Virtual Celebrity Productions are using a projection and sensor system that can record an actor's face on film and turn it into a three-dimensional model in a computer. When the clone is ready to debut, a live actor will play its role on the film set with the animation rendered and substituted afterward. Other candidates for resurrection include John Wayne, Lucille Ball and Fred Astaire, the newspaper reported.