Even the tape cartridge machines still used in many stations to play sound effects and commercials are no longer manufactured, and spare parts are becoming scarce.
As the report notes, the company that makes GeneXpert, Cepheid of Sunnyvale, California, in August agreed to sell the cartridge the machine uses-which performs the polymerase chain reaction on sputum samples-at a 41% discount to hard-hit and resource-constrained countries.
Mr. Kutateladze said the truck was filled with about $50,000 worth of arms, including boxes of mortar shells; more than 50,000 cartridges for machine guns; pistols; explosives; and guns and shells designed for mountainous terrain.
That cargo also included 316,000 cartridges for Kalashnikov rifles, nearly 63,000 cartridges for PK machine guns or the Dragunov series of sniper rifles, more than 12,000 cartridges for 12.7-millimeter DShK machine guns and 95 RPG-7 launchers.
These include Izhmekh, a pistol maker, as well as Koshkina, an engineering company making cartridge cases and machine tools for the food canning industry.
"I have killed the Pharaoh!" Islambouli cried, after emptying the cartridge of his machine gun into the President, who stood defiantly at attention until his body was riddled with bullets.
Put a little food-filled cartridge into the machine, create a design on your computer and then, judging by the demo video, make a tiny maze from mortadella, a creepy, mashed-potato octopus or write someone a message in jam.
In the deal announced Monday, the two Russian investors are buying 49 percent of Izhmash and four related enterprises that make pistols, cartridge cases and machine tools for the firearms industry for 2.5 billion rubles ($78 million).
His job, according to Ed Bradley, who was then a reporter at WCBS, was "to sit in the control room and make sure the engineer had the right cartridge in the machine and keep a log of what was on the air".
But we've all had that moment of excitedly unwrapping the box, shoving the disc (or cartridge) into the machine and then... then comes the horrific realisation that you have wasted £45 on the interactive equivalent of a late-career M. Night Shyamalan movie.
