]
]
] British Airways will resume flights to Saudi Arabia today
] as the company considers fitting anti-missile technology
] to its aircraft.
]
] The UK's biggest carrier suspended flights to the kingdom
] on August 13 after a warning that one of its planes might
] be shot down in Riyadh. Plans for an attack were
] apparently uncovered during raids in the Saudi capital
] between August 10-12.
]
] The decision to resume a normal schedule came after BA
] sent its own security experts to Saudi Arabia, working
] with the kingdom's authorities to implement new "robust
] and sustainable" security measures.
]
] Earlier this week, it was reported that Saudi authorities
] had seized a lorryload of missiles near Jeddah airport
] capable of bringing down a passenger aircraft.
]
] The missiles, which had been smuggled from Yemen, were
] seized last month, but it was unclear how many had been
] found.
]
] BA confirmed that the risk of missile attacks on
] commercial jets had prompted it to begin talks with
] manufacturers Boeing and Airbus about adapting military
] technology to at least 350 planes.
]
] Last November, shoulder-fired missiles narrowly missed an
] Israeli charter plane with 260 tourists on board which
] had just taken off from Mombasa airport in Kenya.
]
] Earlier this week, Britain lifted its ban on flights by
] British airlines to Mombasa. The ban on UK flights to
] Nairobi was lifted

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | BA resumes Saudi flights amid new fears

] A low budget British movie from the Oscar-nominated
] writer of The Full Monty will today be the first in the
] world to be given a premiere on the internet.
]
] This Is Not A Love Song, a gritty Deliverance-style film,
] was shot in less than a fortnight.
]
] The thriller will be streamed online today at 6pm, as
] well as simultaneously being shown in a handful of
] cinemas.
]
] It stars David Bradley - best known for his roles in Our
] Friends In The North and as Argus Filch in the Harry
] Potter films - and John Henshaw from BBC2's The Cops and
] Early Doors.
]
] Filmmakers will take note. One of the major downfalls of
] the UK film industry is the difficulty of getting
] distribution for the movies that are produced. It means
] often their only outlet is to go straight to video.
]
] But now British movie bosses are keen to see how much
] interest there is in watching movies on the internet as
] it could become a way of making them more widely
] screened.
]
] Paul Trijbits of the UK Film Council, which funded the
] movie, said: "We are keen to use it as a test bed now the
] technology is there."
]
] The cat and mouse film sees two fugitives on the run from
] a group of vigilante farmers after an accidental killing
] on a remote farm. It was made for under £500,000. Simon
] Beaufoy, who created The Full Monty, wrote the screenplay
] in a matter of days%2

Guardian Unlimited | Online | British film premieres online

] Microsoft has stolen a march on rival Apple by signing a
] deal with a digital music company backed by singer Peter
] Gabriel to launch the first internet download service in
] Europe to sell individual tracks.

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Microsoft beats Apple to the music

] An American company looks set to attract a storm of
] controversy next year when it launches a computer game
] featuring graphic video footage captured by US troops
] during the Iraq war.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Iraq war game comes under fire

It was the beginning of India's biotechnology industry.

How India's Mother of Invention Built an Industry

] To reward those who can attract a paying audience, and
] the firms that support them, much shorter copyrights
] would be enough. The 14-year term of the original
] 18th-century British and American copyright laws,
] renewable once, might be a good place to start.

The economist presents a radical copyright proposal.

Economist.com | Copyrights

Steve Albini writes an essay for the Negativland site about how screwed the music industry really is, particularly if you're a young indie band looking for a "Big Break."

Never mind any "artists rights" noise you might hear - examine the hypothetical numbers he includes toward the end of the article and you'll see exactly why the music industry hates MP3s.

The Problem With Music

How would Bush like to have "observational research" in the Oval Office?

William Safire on postmodern privacy.

The Intrusion Explosion

] BIO
]
] Edward Hopper was an American painter whose highly
] individualistic works are landmarks of American realism.
] His paintings embody in art a particular American
] 20th-century sensibility that is characterized by
] isolation, melancholy, and loneliness. Hopper was born on
] July 22, 1882, in Nyack, New York, and studied
] illustration in New York City at a commercial art school
] from 1899 to 1900. Around 1901 he switched to painting
] and studied at the New York School of Art until 1906,
] largely under Robert Henri. He made three trips to Europe
] between 1906 and 1910 but remained unaffected by current
] French and Spanish experiments in cubism. He was
] influenced mainly by the great European
] realists%u2039Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Goya, Honore
] Daumier, Edouard Manet%u2039whose work had first been
] introduced to him by his New York City teachers. His
] early paintings, such as Le pavillon de flore (1909,
] Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City), were
] committed to realism and exhibited some of the basic
] characteristics that he was to retain throughout his
] career: compositional style based on simple, large
] geometric forms; flat masses of color; and the use of
] architectural elements in his scenes for their strong
] verticals, horizontals, and diagonals. Although one of
] Hopper's paintings was exhibited in the famous Armory
] Show of 1913 in New York City, his work excited little
] interest, and he was obliged to work principally as a c

Edward Hopper-Bio

] Hopper, Edward (1882-1967). American painter, active
] mainly in New York.
]
] Interior scenes
]
] Street scenes
]
] Landscapes
]
] He trained under Robert Henri, 1900-06, and between 1906
] and 1910 made three trips to Europe, though these had
] little influence on his style. Hopper exhibited at the
] Armoury Show in 1913, but from then until 1923 he
] abandoned painting, earning his living by commercial
] illustration. Thereafter, however, he gained widespread
] recognition as a central exponent of American Scene
] painting, expressing the loneliness, vacuity, and
] stagnation of town life. Yet Hopper remained always an
] individualist: `I don't think I ever tried to paint the
] American scene; I'm trying to paint myself.'

WebMuseum: Hopper, Edward