Iran cancels all Saudi flights in Ramadan

JEDDAH: Iran has canceled all flights to Saudi Arabia during Ramadan to minimize the spread of swine flu, an aviation official was quoted as saying by Jumhuri Eslami newspaper on Monday.
“In order to prevent the spread of swine flu, there will be no flights from Iran to Saudi Arabia during the holy month of Ramadan,” Reza Jafarzadeh, spokesman for the Iranian civil aviation organization, said.
Iran will bring back all its citizens currently in Saudi Arabia before the start of Ramadan, he said.
Iran has banned Umrah during Ramadan to control swine flu. The country has so far reported over 130 cases of the H1N1 flu strain, the majority of them among returning pilgrims.
A senior Saudi Haj official said the Iranian decision would not have an impact on the Ramadan Umrah season, which begins in about 10 days.
“The financial losses expected to result from the absence of Iranians during Ramadan Umrah may not exceed 5 percent on the sectors providing services to visitors and pilgrims in Makkah,” Chairman of the National Haj Committee Saad Al-Qurashi said.....more

UK's Royal Opera House to perform 'Twitter' opera

Music lovers and Twitter fans are enjoying a rare chance to help write an opera for London's venerable Royal Opera House.
Excerpts from the work being produced on the popular micro-blogging site will be performed in September.
Opera officials said Tuesday that the use of Twitter is part of a plan to get more people involved in the storytelling process.
Each line of the opera's libretto will be written by Twitter users whose creative work will be limited by the site's 140-character limit for contributions.
The work-in-progress is strange even by opera standards. So far, it features the story of a man kidnapped by birds and has a talking cat.....O B News

Facebook in challenge to Google...?

Facebook has turned up the heat on Google by purchasing content-sharing service FriendFeed, say industry watchers.

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Many expected Google or even Twitter to buy the company, which has been praised for its "real-time" search engine.
This type of search is valuable because it lets you know what is happening right now on any given subject.
"Google look out, Facebook knows the real money is in real-time search," said respected blogger Robert Scoble.
"Google is the king of regular search. FriendFeed is the king of real-time search. This makes the coming battle over this issue much more interesting," Mr Scoble told the BBC.
Back in May, Google founder Larry Page admitted that the search giant had fallen behind other services like that of Twitter, which boasts nearly 45 million users worldwide.
"People really want to do stuff real time and I think they (Twitter) have done a great job.
"We've done a relatively poor job of doing things that work on a per second basis," Mr Page said at the time.... more

Human tests begin on H1N1 Vaccine

WASHINGTON: Human trials of a vaccine against the H1N1 (swine flu) virus begin in United States.Researchers plan to inject roughly 25 volunteers per day over the next five days. They hope to determine not only the vaccine's safety and effectiveness, but also whether one or two doses are required to produce full immunity to the disease.Emory is among eight research institutions around the country testing H1N1 vaccines. According to the Word Health Organization, a vaccine could become available to the general public as early as September.....O B News