Saudi anti-terror chief escapes murder attempt

Deputy interior minister survives Qaeda suicide bomb
......................
RIYADH: Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, deputy interior minister responsible for anti-terror fight, escapes an assassination attempt late on Thursday in Jeddah after a suicide bomber who claimed wanted to give himself up to authoritiesin got close to him and detonated his explosives.
Prince bin Nayef was meeting well-wishers for the Moslem fasting month of Ramadan on Thursday when a man blew himself up with explosives he was carrying, the Saudi News Agency said reported.
Qaeda’s role
The suicide bomber was a wanted militant who had insisted on meeting the prince to announce he was giving himself up to authorities, SPA added. It said the man, whom it did not name, was the only casualty.
The Saudi wing of al-Qaeda was swift in claiming responsibility. In a statement posted on an Islamist website late Thursday, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said it was behind the bomb, according to the U.S.-based monitoring group, SITE Intelligence.
The attack was the first to directly target a member of the royal family since the start of a wave of violence by Qaeda sympathizers in 2003 against the saudi monarchy.
"This will only increase our determination to eradicate this (terrorism)," said Prince bin Nayef, apparently slightly injured, in a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz who was visiting him in the hospital.
Jamal Khashaqji, editor-in-Chief of the Saudi newspaper al-Watan, told Al Arabiya that targeting Prince bin Nayef, as a member of the royal family, represents Qaeda’s fight for power and authority, not for reform as it claims.
Earlier this month, Saudi authorities announced the arrest of 44 Qaeda-linked suspects and the seizure of explosives, detonators and firearms.
In 2004, suspected terrorists rammed a vehicle laden with explosives into the entrance of the Interior Ministry headquarters in the capital Riyadh.

File-sharers' TV tastes revealed

Millions of television viewers are now using illegal file-sharing services to access free and unauthorised copies of programmes, research has revealed.
....................
US drama Heroes was the most popular illegal download this year, according to research firm Big Champagne.
Around 55 million people downloaded the show, whilst 51 million chose to access Lost, the second most popular show.
Visits to leading "torrent" sites, which index video and music files, have also nearly doubled in the last year.
The proportion of file-sharing involving films and television rather than music is continuing to rise, the research shows.
"Millions of television viewers now access free, unauthorised versions of favourite shows at least some of the time," says Eric Garland the chief executive of Big Champagne.
"This is a socially acceptable form of casual piracy - and it is replacing viewing hours."
Film show
All of the programmes in the top 10 were American, but the survey also examined unauthorised downloads of popular BBC show Top Gear.
During the most recent series, the figures show around 300,000 downloads of each episode in the days immediately following their broadcast in the UK.
But the UK accounted for just 4% of the download activity, with 47% coming from the United States.
Big Champagne says Top Gear has been among the most pirated television programmes internationally.
The series appears on BBC America some time after it is shown in the UK, and it appears that some American fans are eager to download it before it is available legally.
The research also looks at unauthorised film downloads and shows they are getting lower audiences than those for TV programmes.
Top of the chart was Watchmen, downloaded nearly 17 million times, followed by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with 13 million.
The Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, a relatively low budget film compared with the two Hollywood blockbusters, was viewed by nearly 9 million unauthorised downloaders.
The research will be presented on Saturday at the Edinburgh Television Festival in a session on what television can learn from the music industry's experience with online piracy.
Mr Garland says there are major differences between the two industries and the impact on television may not be as severe as some TV executives fear: "We may see a lot of disruption but it is premature to say 'we're next'."
"The effect on the business is going to be very different."
Big Champagne's research also shows that the rate of piracy for live events, such as sport or talent shows, is much lower than that for popular drama series.

Boeing 787 to fly by year's end

The first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner will take place by the end of 2009, the company has announced.
..................
Boeing also said it hoped to deliver the first plane for service in the last quarter of 2010.
There have been a series of delays in the development of the aircraft, and it is now running almost two years behind its original schedule.
Boeing chairman Jim McNerney said the extra time would enable the remaining work to be completed.
"The design details and implementation plan are nearly complete, and the team is preparing airplanes for modification and testing," he said.
Write-off
The delay was partly caused by an area within the side-of-body section of the aircraft which needed to be reinforced, Boeing added.
The latest delay in the project, announced in June this year, was the fifth time the launch had been put back.
The company estimated that the cost of the first three test planes, which have no commercial value, would be $2.5bn. This, it said, would be included as a one-off charge in its July to September results.
"This charge will have no impact on the company's cash outlook going forward," Boeing said.
While analysts generally welcomed Boeing's announcement, some cautioned that future delays may still have to be announced.
"Risk remains the new schedule could slip given the current challenge of re-fitting the wing-body join, the possibility of changes to the electrical and environmental control systems, and simply the poor 787 track record," said Credit Suisse analyst Robert Spingarn.
Important plane
Boeing hopes to be making 10 of the 787 planes a month by the end of 2013.
Last month, the firm said it already had 850 orders.
It also revealed that it had received 13 new orders for 787s between April and June, but that airlines had cancelled 41 others.
The 787 Dreamliner is a hugely important plane for US-based Boeing in its long standing rivalry with Europe's Airbus.
It was the first unveiled in July 2007 and is the firm's first all-new jet since 1995.
It is designed to make use of carbon fibre to make it much lighter and more fuel efficient than traditional aluminium planes.

US envoy 'in angry Karzai talks'

The US special envoy to Afghanistan has held an "explosive" meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the country's election, the BBC has learnt.
................
KABUL: Richard Holbrooke raised concerns about ballot-stuffing and fraud, by a number of candidates' teams, sources say.
The US envoy also said a second-round run-off could make the election process more credible, the sources said.
Concerns have already been raised about Afghanistan's election, although final results are not due until September.
A number of senior sources have confirmed the details of a meeting between Mr Holbrooke and Mr Karzai held on 21 August, one day after the election.
The meeting was described as "explosive" and "a dramatic bust-up".
Mr Holbrooke is said to have twice raised the idea of holding a second round run-off because of concerns about the voting process.
He is believed to have complained about the use of fraud and ballot stuffing by some members of the president's campaign team, as well as other candidates.
Mr Karzai reacted very angrily and the meeting ended shortly afterwards, the sources said.
However, a spokeswoman for the US embassy in Kabul denied there had been any shouting or that Mr Holbrooke had stormed out.
She refused to discuss the details of the meeting.
A spokesman for the presidential palace denied the account of the conversation.
There have been many doubts raised about the Afghan presidential election, about the turnout and irregularities.
But this is the first time that a leading Western official has apparently expressed it quite so openly.
It will raise more uestions about the credibility of the whole process and could well make the plan to establish a meaningful government in a stable country all the harder to achieve.

Sex braggart trial may net others

JEDDAH: Investigations in the case of Mazen Abdul Jawad, the Saudi who appeared on LBC’s “Bold Red Line” last month bragging about his sex life, may lead to charges against other individuals, an anonymous source at the Investigation and Prosecution Commission (IPC) told Arab News on Thursday.
Already three other men who appeared in the segment and whose names have not been released have been detained as accomplices.
“This has led to the delay in taking suspects to the court for trial,” said the source, adding that the four men are probably going to spend Ramadan and Eid behind bars. “They cannot be taken to court before sometime in October.”
The source would not elaborate on who else if anyone would be facing charges, but it has been suggested in previous reports that the producers of the program could become involved. Saudi authorities recently shuttered LBC’s Saudi offices. LBC is a major Saudi-owned, Lebanon-based broadcaster.
For his part, Abdul Jawad claims that the show’s producers took four hours of footage of him talking about sex and reduced it to a few minutes of the most extreme off-the-cuff comments where, among other things, Abdul Jawad claims he engaged in pre-marital sex at 14 and regularly cruises the streets of Jeddah looking for hook-ups with women via his mobile phone’s Bluetooth application. He could face charges of promoting sinful behavior (publicizing vice), which is considered a crime in Shariah law.
The IPC has brought in voice experts to prove that the video footage wasn’t dubbed or creatively edited and LBC producers have been subpoenaed to verify that Abdul Jawad participated in the program and that it was he who made the incriminating comments.