]
]
] 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

] 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

This is absolutely the driest humor I have ever come across. Two parts, slightly dated to winter of last year but spot on humor. Don't miss the analysis of the instabilities inherent in The Shire's pipe-weed based economy in Part 1.

] Chomsky: Is there any kind of idea that men should live
] in peace with the Orcs?
]
]
] Zinn: Think of the scenes in the prologue with all the
] arrows hitting these thousands of Orcs. We're supposed to
] think that this is a good thing.
]
]
] Chomsky: I think this is a tragedy, this story. Because
] it's about two cultures. And poor leadership. It's a
] human tragedy, and an Orcish tragedy.

Unused Audio Commentary By Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer, 2002, for The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition) DVD, Part Two

] Talk Time: Val McDermid
]
]
] Crime author Val McDermid's book, The Distant Echo, is
] out now
]
]
] Interviewed by Hamish Mackintosh
]
] Thursday August 7, 2003
]
] The Guardian
]
]
] Do you keep up with advances in computer profiling and
] databasing? I try to stay as up to date as I can but I
] tend to rely on carbon sources rather than silicon. It is
] much better to talk to the people who do this kind of
] stuff as they tell you what you want to know, but also
] stuff you didn't realise you wanted to know! The science
] is changing very quickly. When I wrote Killing The
] Shadows, the geographic profiling software was only being
] beta tested and wasn't being used in live situations.
] When the book came out, people were beginning to trial it
] in live situations. By last year's Washington sniper
] case, the FBI called upon Dr Kim Rossmo, the guy who
] developed the system I use in my book.
]
] How involved are you in running your site? I have a
] webmistress who takes care of all the practical stuff -
] it could eat up my entire life if I did it myself. She's
] known me since I was 18 so she knows how I want to come
] across. We do newsletters and I'm pretty active on the
] forum, which has become its own little discussion group.
] I sometimes want to bang on the computer screen and shout
] "never mind about Jeffrey Deaver and Michael

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Talk Time: Val McDermid