Jenjie

work has air con. thank god!! don't like it this hot when I have to work, its rubbish

yeah! coz the way to deal with terrorists is to bomb the living daylights out of innocent civilians. that'll stop them and make them give in! it wouldn't be giving the terrorists exactly what they want, a reason to carry on the violence? chrissakes! the way to settle this isn't with violence, and a playground style he said/she said argument. both parties need to be dragged kicking and screaming back to the negotiation table. and if neccessary, the rest of the world needs to gang together and start imposing sanctions on both sides until they sort themselves out.

definitely needs to be Kate & jack action because I don't want Ana Lucia getting her claws into him

Its my big addiction!!! There are worse things I could spend my money on like cigarettes, drugs or alcohol! :D Although, I'm quite sure that Ian would argue that any of those three would take up a lot less space!! Anyways, do you like my new stylie thread? Figured I'd start a book thread every sat and post reviews & articles in it during the week, rather than fill up the board with threads which people read but don't post on. Anyone wanting to add to it is more than welcome.

It's not out on DVD until Mon, but UK viewers can watch Glastonbury tonight. Tune in to BBC2 at 22:30 GMT. ITV.com TV Listings Buy the 2-disc DVD for added extras including an interview with Coldplay. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000FDEVSO/202-7862714-9707014?v=glance&n=283926

THE World Cup so proudly taken home by the winning Italian footballers soon became a trophy of two halves. The players were accused yesterday of breaking it after the controversial final on Sunday. A piece of the 14in-high cup snapped off during the celebrations that followed Italy’s penalty shoot-out victory over France. Officials were said to be so alarmed that they considered cancelling a victory parade for the team. Concerns were raised after an Italian newspaper published photographs taken on the team bus as the heroes returned to Rome. One shows a worried-looking Fabio Cannavaro, the team captain, holding up a piece of the green edging at the base of the trophy they were given. Next to him is his Juventus club team-mate Alessandro Del Piero, who looks on in alarm. The newspaper suggested that the cup was damaged during the two-hour coach journey but added that the broken piece was eventually glued back on. The revelation is the latest controversy to hit Italy’s World Cup win. French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane has said he does not regret his vicious headbutting of an opponent. And 13 members of the Italian squad belong to clubs at the centre of a major match-fixing scandal. But the Italian officials needn’t be too worried about the damaged cup. Last night football’s governing body FIFA said the trophy the Italians were given was a gold-plated replica. The players handled the original for only a few minutes during the presentations. http://www.express.co.uk

Verdict: Why did he bother? What do people want from a summer blockbuster? The folks behind Superman Returns have come up with a conventional answer: spectacular effects, a dash of romantic comedy and a superhero. But they have overlooked the factors which will make Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 a far bigger success at the box office. Superman Returns has only one terrific action sequence — when Superman saves an aeroplane from crashing — and this takes place early on. From then on, we’re left waiting for a climax that never materialises. Even in the version I saw — which features five sequences in IMAX 3D — Superman Returns is less than thrilling. There is some humour, especially in the exchanges between the villainous Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey, camping it up) and his dim sidekick Kitty (Parker Posey, clearly unsure whether her character is truly stupid or secretly savvy). But you will search in vain for any wit in the newspaper office where Clark Kent, alias Superman (Brandon Routh), spars with his inamorata Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) and editor Perry White (Frank Langella). That part of the movie has definitely been dumbed down. We’re even asked to believe that Lois, supposedly a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, would ask her editor: ‘How many Fs are there in catastrophe?’ Director Bryan Singer intends this to be a homage to her lack of spelling ability in the first, 1978 Superman picture (and elicit a knowledgeable ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ from the buffs), but in the present day it beggars belief that a prestigious journalist would flaunt her ignorance so shamelessly. The romance between Clark and Lois is compromised by the plot, which has her seemingly unaware that she has borne Clark a son (er, why?) and happily engaged to her editor’s pleasant but plank-like nephew (James Marsden). The script is amazingly witless, with all parties tongue-tied, so it’s hard to see what Clark and Lois have in common, except their past. A bit of Beatrice and Benedick-style banter would not have come amiss. The casting is another weakness. Routh is content to be a carbon copy of Christopher Reeve, while Bosworth and Marsden are so callow, bland and underpowered that they seem to have walked out of a day time soap. The seemingly talentless child who plays Superman’s son stares at everyone like the creepy kid from The Omen, and the scriptwriters can’t think of anything much for Superboy to do, except teleport a piano. Imagine the fun that Robert Rodriguez (of Spykids) would have had. Singer is a respected director, thanks to his first hit The Usual Suspects and his successful launch of the X-Men franchise. But a sense of humour has never been his strong point and he takes the Superman legend way too reverentially, even drawing pretentious parallels between the man of steel and Jesus. This Superman is steeped in nostalgia, which may be enough for that sad minority of middle-aged nerds who take comic books desperately seriously and wear superhero T-shirts over their paunches. Singer has forgotten that a generation of teenagers has grown up without much knowledge of Superman — the last movie was 19 years ago. To them, he is (if they know him at all) a figure in a TV series, and not a particularly distinguished one either. Singer’s Superman is a solemn, nerdish figure with whom it’s hard to feel an affinity. He’s also a square-jawed American righting wrongs in a world where square-jawed Americans are now viewed with tremendous suspicion, especially when they claim omnipotence. Singer doesn’t seem to see this as a problem, but it is: a big one. There are good things in this movie, but I found it pseudo-religious, pedestrian and oppressive. Like Pirates 2, it is over-long at two-and-a-half hours. But unlike the Johnny Depp picture, it lacks the joy and sense of its own absurdity which make so long a stay in the cinema thoroughly entertaining. The simplistic plot unfolds at too leisurely a pace, and takes us in directions that are easily predictable. The one attempt at ingenuity — Lex Luthor’s fiendish plan to dominate the world by building an attractive new island-continent and flooding the east side of the U.S. — goes off at half-cock. All he does is create a small rocky island that doesn’t look habitable and appears to have no impact whatsoever on the U.S. coastline. It’s a rotten plan, and Spacey looks far too intelligent to have searched for a weapon of mass destruction but only come up with a real estate project. And, at the end, Singer doesn’t even deliver a satisfactory come-uppance for him. Despite some enjoyable sequences, on the whole Superman Returns is gloomy and cheerless: stodgily directed, mechanically scripted and boringly acted. The impression you come away with is that being Superman isn’t much fun, and Lois Lane isn’t worth saving. So why should we want to spend this much time with them? Chris Tookey http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Millions of young people are risking hearing damage because they are listening to iPods and other music players too loudly, experts warned today. A survey by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) found that more than half of 16 to 30 year-olds use MP3 players for more than an hour a day. And the devices are capable of playing music more loudly than ever before, increasing the risk of permanent hearing damage from listening to music. Many young people also admitted removing volume limits from their players by using unofficial software which is available on the Internet. Dr John Low, the chief executive of the RNID, said: "If young people don’t heed our warnings about safer listening, they could end up facing premature hearing damage. "Our initial findings show very clearly that young people are frighteningly unaware of the dangers of listening to their MP3 players too loudly. "New technology and ever-increasing storage capacity enables people to listen non-stop for hours – and at louder volumes than ever before." More than 6.3million MP3 players were sold during 2005 in the UK alone and they have become increasingly popular with teenagers and young children. The new research shows that 51 per cent of 16-24 year olds listen to their stereos for an hour or more a day with 20 per cent listening for more than 21 hours every week. Maximum volume Angela King, a senior audiologist at the RNID, added: "Reducing the volume slightly on these devices can go a long way to reducing the damage to your ears. "We’re also aware that some users are downloading unofficial codes to override the volume limiters of leading brands of MP3 players to increase their maximum volume levels. "A three-decibel increase may not seem like a lot, but sound pressure doubles at that level so users are effectively halving the time they can listen at low risk." The RNID has now launched a Don't Lose the Music campaign to warn young people of the risks they are taking by playing songs too loudly. The charity has published a new list of guidelines to safe listening so that young people do not damage their hearing. The advice includes: • Take regular breaks from your headphones to give your ears a rest. • Turn down the volume a notch - even a small reduction in volume can make a big difference to the risk of damage to your hearing. • Avoid using the volume to drown out background noise, for example the sound of the train or traffic. • If your MP3 player has a ‘smart volume’ feature, then use it, once you’ve set the volume of your player for comfortable listening. http://www.dailymail.co.uk

I wouldn't mind but depending which petrol station you got to depends upon the price. There's no point me getting petrol at the Tesco near my house as its almost £5 a tank more expensive than the Tesco near work!! Wouldn't mind if they were different companies but I don't see how the same company can justify such different prices at stores within 8 miles of each other!!

from mooching through Google news, it sounds like the US and most european countries are actively doing what they can to get their citizens out. Britain gets very little mention, apart from telling the people trapped there to remain inconspicuous!

In his vest and tracksuit trousers, jobless David Bradley looks an unlikely stud. But the 53-year-old with the long white hair has fathered 16 children by seven women. His lovers include two sisters, both nearly half his age, who live with him and are the mothers of nine of his clan. It is a dubious feat that has earned him the nickname 'the Peter Stringfellow of Stafford'. That nickname, however, is just about all layabout lothario Bradley has earned through a hard day's work for as long as most people can remember. For despite having obviously exerted himself in the bedroom, he claims he cannot work because of a heart condition - and gets more than £32,000 a year from the taxpayer in benefits for himself and those of his children who live with him. As if that wasn't enough, Bradley, who insists he is just a 'normal family man', and one of the sisters, Diane Gilbert, 27, yesterday(fri) admitted a £3,000 housing and council tax benefits fiddle. With three failed marriages behind him, Bradley shares a housing association semi on an estate in Highfields, Stafford with Diane and her sister Tina, 33. Diane and Bradley both appeared before Cannock magistrates court yesterday. They were prosecuted after council investigators acted on a tip off. The court heard Diane and her children moved in with Bradley in July 2002, but over the next two and a half years continued claiming £2,641 housing and council tax benefits for her old home. Bradley claimed £333 more than he should have done in housing and council tax benefits after Diane turned 25 in January 2003. He failed to declare that an adult over 25 had joined the household, a fact that would have reduced his benefit. Diane claimed she moved in with Bradley to help the family after he suffered heart problems. Bradley was given a 12 month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £173 compensation. Diane was sentenced to 50 hours community service and ordered to pay £200 compensation. Judge Graham Patterson said: "These are offences against the public purse and the public at large has suffered from money being wasted. "A house was also wasted. There is pressure on housing in this area as there is across the country." Last night one of Bradley's ex-wives Sarah Payne, 41, a shop worker, said: "He's a drain on the state and should be ashamed of himself. "I was only 17 when I met him and naive. God knows what all those other women see in him - he's no charmer and he's lazy. "When I heard the Peter Stringfellow nickname I laughed because apart from the long hair, he couldn't be more unlike a jet-setting millionaire. "I was with him for six years before we divorced and during that time he did 12 months work. 'Since we split he hasn't done a thing for our two kids. They don't even get a birthday card, he just hasn't bothered. "His current home is a funny old set up, to say the least. But those two sisters are welcome to him as far as I'm concerned." Bradley married his first wife Sheila, 52, in 1981. They had one child Shaun, 25, but that marriage lasted only three years. In 1984 he met his second wife Sarah, with whom he had two children Daniel, 21, and Rebecca, 19. He married wife number three, Cheryl, 38, in 1990. They had two children Michael, 13, and Zoe, 11. Four years later he set up home with one of his current partners Tina Gilbert, 33. Together they have children Stephanie, nine, Hazel, seven, Liam, five, Chloe, four, Owen, two, and Samantha, nine months. With Tina's sister Diane, 27, he has three more children - Tanya, eight, Victoria, five, and newborn Britney. As well as the sisters and the nine children they have produced between them, Bradley shares his home with another daughter from one of his previous affairs, Emily, nine. Another son, Ryan, lives with yet another of Bradley's conquests whose name he can't remember. Bradley gets at least £32,000 a year in benefits, based on £43.88 income support a week for each child living with him, £17 a week child benefit for the first-born and £11.40 for each other, plus about £70 a week incapacity benefit for himself. Before going to court yesterday, former railway worker Bradley told of his pride in his children - and moaned of the 'unfair' way he has been treated. "It's amazing to have 16 kids,' he said. 'With Tina and Diane, it's like one big happy family. "But I'm sick of people saying a load of sh** about me, especially my ex-wives. I’m worried about how all this will affect my kids. "People have got it in for me. I’m just a normal family man who treats his kids nicely, gets them off to school, looks after them and spends time in his garden. I’ve done nothing wrong." Bradley added he wishes he could work again, but was told by his doctor that if he did 'it could kill him'. He and Diane both refused to comment after sentencing. http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Petrol prices are set to rise by 5p a gallon as oil and pump prices hit new record highs spurred by the conflict in the Middle East. The Petrol Retailers' Association said motorists should brace themselves for an immediate ovenight hike of 5p a gallon - 1 p a litre - with worse to come. But if a full scale Middle East war breaks out then 'the sky's the limit' said PRA executive Ray Holloway. Motoring groups warned that the average price of petrol is set to soar above £1 a litre - towards £5 a gallon - after it hit record highs in the UK. He said: "Motorists face a tough few months. Demand for oil is high at this time of year because its when Americans take to the road for their holidays. The tension in the Middle East is driving up the price. Hurricanes hitting oil fields is another worry. "If there's a full-scale war, then the sky's the limit. Anything could happen to the price. Some analysts are even talking of oil hiting $200 a barrel." He was speaking as oil hit a new record of $78 a barrel in New York and London. The cost of unleaded is set to rise 1p a litre overnight from 97p to 98p a litre, he said. It is the first time that the average price at the pumps exceeded 97p, and with the cost of crude now spiralling to new levels amid intensifying violence in the Middle East. Crude oil traded at more than 78 US dollars a barrel yesterday (FRI) driven by growing tensions in the Middle East where fighting between Israel and Lebanon has escalated. The conflict in Nigeria has also seen oil installations targeted, while the diplomatic stand-off between the West and Iran has added to fears over the security of oil supplies. Energy analyst Victor Shum, of Purvin & Gertz, said: "We are certainly in uncharted territory." The AA Motoring Trust said it could break the £1 a litre barrier by the end of the month. Its petrol prices analyst Ruth Bridger said: "If oil prices edge over the 80 US dollar a barrel mark, we will certainly see diesel go over £1 a litre and petrol will follow later in the summer." Oil prices rose in August and September last year after hurricanes Katrina and Rita wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico and damaged a number of refineries. Miss Bridger said: "If you throw all of this into the mix, you come out with higher oil prices." She added: "The current oil prices are at an all-time high and they will start flowing through to the pumps in the next two or three weeks. "Today, oil is trading at 78 US dollars a barrel and that will take two or three weeks to filter through. If the political tensions in the Middle East continue, then oil prices will remain high." http://www.dailymail.co.uk

ROUNDUP: European Countries Evacuating Their Citizens From Lebanon European countries were evacuating their citizens from Lebanon Saturday in view of the ongoing military Israeli offensive and blockade on the country. Italy and Spain had already acted to move their nationals to safety, while Britain, France and Nordic states were preparing similar operations. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said buses and cars were being organized to drive people to the Syrian capital Damascus and Jordan's capital Amman. The foreign minister said an evacuation centre was being set up on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus and a ferry had been chartered to transport 800 to 1,000 French citizens there on Sunday. Two air force transport planes, three helicopters, a frigate and a ship capable of carrying 1,000 passengers were being readied to evacuate foreigners, Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said. Around 20,000 French nationals, including tourists and business travellers are estimated to be in Lebanon, that was briefly ruled by French mandate in the aftermath of World War 1. The Italian embassy in Beirut had helped 420 foreigners, including 300 Italians, to evacuate from Beirut by bus to safer areas in northern Lebanon, Italian state television reported. Around 1,300 Italians live in Lebanon, most of whom "have been living in the country for years and want to remain there," the embassy said. The evacuees were mostly business people, tourists and students. Authorities in Spain confirmed they had bussed about 120 Spanish citizens out of Lebanon to Damascus, from where they left for Madrid in a military plane that was expected to arrive later in the day. An additional 650 Spaniards living in Lebanon had chosen to remain there. The Norwegian government said it would try to evacuate people by bus to Damascus on Sunday, while the Swedish foreign ministry was looking to a sea route by ferry to Cyprus. There are several thousand people from Nordic countries in Lebanon. Switzerland and Germany have jointly organized the departure of their citizens for Damascus. Fifty-four Swiss citizens and 30 German nationals had left Beirut aboard a bus Friday night and had arrived Saturday in Damascus, a spokesman for the foreign ministry in Berne said. Around 838 Swiss nationals reside presently in Lebanon. Germany also advised its citizens not to travel to Lebanon and told the 1,100 Germans who live there to contact the German embassy, if they needed assistance. The foreign ministry in Berlin was unable to confirm media reports that three members of a German-Lebanese family were killed when an Israeli missile hit a house in the village of Shoher. Britain also called on its estimated 20,000 citizens in Lebanon to be prepared to flee the country, the BBC reported. The British Foreign Office was urging its citizens to report to the British embassy in Beirut in preparation for an eventual evacuation and also urged them to remain inconspicuous. http://www.playfuls.com

U.S. Embassy works on Lebanon evacuation BEIRUT (AP) — The United States is working on a plan to evacuate American citizens from Lebanon to the neighboring island of Cyprus, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday. "We are looking at how we might transport Americans to Cyprus. Once in Cyprus, Americans can then board commercial aircraft for onward travel," an embassy statement said. The State Department said Friday that Americans in Lebanon should consider leaving when it is safe to do so, and officials made contingency plans for the evacuation of people who cannot leave on their own. "Our best advice is for people to assess their security situation," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday. "Right now ... from the U.S. government perspective, there aren't any reliable ways to get out by air, land or sea." Israeli airstrikes targeting runways have closed down Beirut international airport. Israel has also imposed a naval blockade on the country and has made road travel dangerous by targeting the main highway between Lebanon and neighboring Syria. Hezbollah has fired dozens of rockets and mortars into northern Israel in response. The U.S. estimates 25,000 Americans live or work in Lebanon, but U.S. officials assume that far fewer would choose to leave if they could. Saturday's embassy statement said the State Department was continuing to work "around the clock" with the Defense Department on a plan to help American citizens leave Lebanon safely. A statement posted on the embassy's website on Friday urged Americans in Lebanon to be extremely vigilant and avoid non-essential travel because of the escalating violence in the conflict with Israel. Other countries were also working on similar plans. The French foreign minister said Saturday his government would use a ferry to evacuate its citizens from Lebanon starting on Sunday. Philippe Douste-Blazy said the ferry would transport to Cyprus any of the thousands of French who want to leave Lebanon. They would then be flown to Paris by special Air France flights. Some 17,000 French citizens reside in Lebanon and 4,000 to 6,000 others are visiting, he said. http://www.usatoday.com

European citizens to be evacuated from Lebanon PARIS, France (AP) -- European nations lined up ferries, buses and airplanes to evacuate thousands of their citizens from Lebanon, increasingly under siege from Israeli attacks. France, which has historic ties to Lebanon and 17,000 citizens residing there, announced plans Saturday to ferry French nationals to Cyprus where Air France flights would be waiting to bring them to Paris. The voluntary evacuations will begin Sunday. In addition to French residents, up to 6,000 other French citizens were estimated to be in Lebanon visiting. "We want to take all the necessary measures for the security of our citizens," Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said at the end of a crisis meeting Saturday morning. The government would evaluate the situation in Lebanon "hour by hour" and adapt measures if needed, he said. He did not raise the possibility of mandatory evacuations. So far, no country is known to have ordered all of its citizens out of Lebanon. A convoy of 410 Italians and others, mainly from the EU, packed up and fled on Saturday, traveling by land to Latakia, Syria. They were boarding military flights to Rome, some going first to Cyprus, the head of the Italian Foreign Ministry's crisis unit, Elisabetta Belloni, said. More than 1,000 Italians remain in Lebanon. Israeli warplanes struck Lebanon's transport routes and infrastructure for a fourth day on Saturday in response to the capture Wednesday of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas who crossed the Israeli-Lebanese border. Two Romanian lawmakers and their families also were evacuated to Syria on Saturday, cutting short a vacation. Nicolae Bara told private news television Realitatea TV that the group of 13 people were then going on to Turkey. Another 160 Romanians requested to leave Lebanon, Romanian Ambassador Aurel Calin told Realitatea and the embassy in Beirut was looking for bus transport to Syria. Germany, meanwhile, urged an estimated 1,100 German citizens in Lebanon to stay put but avoid unnecessary travel and stay away from potential Israeli targets such as airports and harbors. Diplomats in Berlin were monitoring the situation closely, preparing for all possible scenarios, the Foreign Ministry said without elaborating. European Union countries' embassies in Lebanon were reported to be in close contact. Cyprus said Friday that it was prepared to help the EU with an evacuation plan. "They have asked us for the facilities (ports and airports) in case this mission is conducted and it will concern all European citizens," Foreign Ministry official Sotos Zackheos said. "The government of Cyprus has given its consent." Zackheos said France was looking at ways to coordinate EU efforts. No decision was known to have been reached. The Greek government has said it had chartered an Olympic Airways plane and was ready to fly it to Jordan should any Greek or EU citizens ask to return home. The plane could leave on three hours' notice, the Greek Foreign Ministry said. As early as Thursday, a group of 115 Cypriots and other foreign nationals, were bussed to Syria then evacuated to Cyprus. The evacuees -- 102 Cypriots, six Britons, four French, two Czechs and one American -- made the journey out. http://www.cnn.com

Swiss nationals evacuated from Lebanon The foreign ministry says around 50 Swiss nationals have been evacuated from Lebanon, as the violence in the Middle East continues to escalate. On Saturday Israel resumed strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, where numerous civilians are reported to have been killed. The conflict has prompted several countries, including Switzerland, to start evacuating their nationals from Lebanon. "Fifty-four Swiss and 30 German nationals left Beirut late on Friday afternoon in buses arranged by the Swiss embassy in Lebanon in collaboration with the German embassy," confirmed Jean-Philippe Jeannerat, spokesman for the Swiss foreign ministry. "The passengers arrived safe and sound in [the Syrian capital] Damascus at 5am after a long and roundabout journey," he added. Jeannerat pointed out that the convoy had been forced to avoid the main Beirut-Damascus highway because of artillery and air strikes. The evacuees are now awaiting repatriation or preparing to head to other destinations. Officials say there are 838 Swiss nationals living in Lebanon, of which 713 hold dual nationality. But the foreign ministry told Le Matin newspaper there could also be "several hundred" Swiss tourists who had travelled independently to Lebanon. The Swiss government has advised those still in the country to contact the Beirut embassy, which has four staff, and to stay away from potential trouble spots. Other European countries, including France and Italy, have also begun evacuating nationals from Lebanon. With Beirut airport closed following Israeli air strikes and ports blockaded, the only way out of the country is by road. Artillery strikes The Israeli army said on Saturday it had struck about 150 targets in Lebanon so far, fewer than a dozen of them linked directly to Hezbollah. Most have hit civilian installations. Hezbollah fired more than two dozen rockets at towns in northern Israel, slightly wounding several people. At least 88 people have died in Lebanon, most of them civilians, in the four-day Israeli offensive, sparked by Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. On the Israeli side, at least 15 have been killed – four civilians and 11 soldiers. Four Israeli sailors are also believed to have died after a Hezbollah missile struck their warship off the Lebanese coast on Friday. Arab foreign ministers held an emergency meeting in Cairo on Saturday to discuss ways to end Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. President Bush, in Moscow for a meeting of G8 leaders, blamed Hezbollah for the violence and called on Syria to exert its influence to persuade the Lebanese Shi'ite group to stop attacks on Israel. http://www.swissinfo.org

A drug counsellor from the north-east of England trapped in Lebanon by Israeli air strikes has said she fears for her life. Clair Vainola, 31, from Newcastle, has been working in the capital Beirut since last November. She said she was just sitting in a hotel and waiting, and had heard nothing from the British government. The Foreign Office has urged British citizens to keep a low profile and warned against travelling there. The Israeli offensive began after the militant group Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers. More than 70 Lebanese have been killed in the past four days. Ms Vainola said she could hear the sound of missiles and aircraft flying over where she was. She said: "No one from the embassy is saying I am going to get evacuated at any minute. "This is not a game, it's not eggs from the sky, it's missiles and they are right over my head. What more can I say? "I would say I feel a little bit threatened. I would feel safer in a Sunderland game with a bunch of Sunderland supporters wearing a Newcastle shirt." She said she could not get to the British Embassy and she was by herself. "The only thing I can do is sit and wait and hope that I get out alive," she said. "I was going to make a run for it yesterday and get a taxi to Syria. The problem is I am a single woman, on my own. I mean I could be murdered or captured by terrorists or anything like that." Up to 20,000 British and UK-Lebanese citizens in Lebanon have been told to "keep a low profile" amid the crisis in the Middle East. A Foreign Office spokesperson said: "The advice we're giving people at the moment is to stay put in your homes; to keep an eye on the media - that is the radio, the television and of course the newspapers. "If we need to get any messages out, we will be putting them out on English language radio here, pass them to the newspapers and to the local television." http://www.bbc.co.uk

The BBC has pulled together an interesting set of quotes from news agencies in the Middle East. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5182796.stm

read a paragraph a day and you'll get there :P its a fascinating read. some very interesting points

is that at the length of the article or the content?

Why do these people always wait for things to make laods of money before objecting??? The first film, with the Black Pearl, came out last summer so why not start proceedings then?

A screenwriter is accusing Disney of stealing his ideas for the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Royce Mathew has filed a legal suit alleging he produced detailed plans for a story about a supernatural pirate ship in the 1980s. He contends he created and wrote screenplays and storyboards which he filed with the US Copyright Office and pitched to Hollywood. Disney and distributors Buena Vista said the action had "no merit". Record opening The legal action, filed in Los Angles, also names Jerry Bruckheimer, one of Hollywood's most powerful film and TV producers. He said the original Pirates of the Caribbean film, released in 2003, was based on a theme park ride. Mr Mathew says his plans for a "super natural pirate movie" included drawings of a boat named the Black Pearl, the name of the ship in Pirates of the Caribbean. He is seeking a unspecified damages and an injunction against the movie franchise and related "infringing works". The Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, Dead Man's Chest, has been doing robust business at the box office, taking a record $135.6m (£73.7m) in its opening weekend in North America. http://www.bbc.co.uk

Sam Mills's top 10 books about the darker side of adolescence Sam Mill's first novel, A Nicer Way to Die, is a dark thriller about a group of 30 pupils who travel to France on a school-trip. A horrific coach crash kills 28 of them, leaving two boys behind: Henry and James, two stepbrothers who share a troubled relationship. "When I was growing up, there seemed to be two main types of teenage fiction around. The first was fluffy (Sweet Valley High et al) and portrayed growing up as a hunky-dory experience, where beautiful boys met beautiful girls, the greatest trauma in life was not being selected for the cheerleading squad, and all lived happily ever after. The second type, which I feasted on with glee, explored reality. They captured just what a difficult and jagged experience growing up can be. Some teen books can be terribly depressing; they focus too heavily on 'issues' (drugs, teen pregnancy etc) and become unrealistic in their bleakness. The most interesting books about teenagers are not afraid to explore the darker side of adolescence, but with humour, insight or humanity. As a result, they become classics because their readership is universal; their protagonists may be teenagers but anyone aged 13 to 80 can enjoy them. Hence, the list I have chosen is a blend of books that have been either published as teen or adult fiction..." 1. Lord of The Flies by William Golding Lord Of the Flies was published in 1954 but is still utterly relevant today. It centres on a group of boys who, following a plane crash, are stranded on a desert island. At first they work together, building shelters and gathering food. But soon group tensions split the group as Ralph tries to maintain reason, order and structured discipline, opposed by Jack and his band of painted savages. Primal instincts take over and civilisation crumbles into animal savagery and violence. Golding uses the playing field of adolescence to explore the roots of evil, tracing the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral of the story is that the backbone of a society depends on the ethical nature of the individuals who founded it, and not any government, or politics. 2. The Outsiders by SE Hinton SE Hinton wrote The Outsiders while she was still a high school student, inspired by her determination to change the negative stereotype of teenagers who were labelled 'greasers.' She tells the story of two groups of teenagers whose bitter rivalry stems from socioeconomic differences: the greasers, the lower-class hoods, who continually clash with the Socs, the rich kids in town. The novel is narrated by the 16-year-old Greaser Ponyboy and, like many of the finest teen novels, Hinton pins down her hero's colloquial voice perfectly. Though it is a violent and at times bleak read, Hinton offers a spark of hope as Ponyboy begins to realise that the hardships that greasers and Socs face may take different practical forms, but that both groups share the same fundamental difficulties of growing up. Published in 1967, The Outsiders was a groundbreaking piece of fiction that set the precedent for the uncompromising, realistic fiction for young adults that soon followed it. 3. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess Burgess's novel far excels Kubrick's film. This is a novel which explores the very darkest side of adolescence. 15-year-old Alex and his friends set out on an orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex relates his tale in an idiom called Nadsat, a glorious invention by Burgess: a kind of musical Russian-English slang. When Alex is arrested, the book takes on Orwellian overtones when he is used in a scientific experiment to regulate adolescent violence in a new and alarming way. The original American edition of the book (and hence the film) failed to include the final chapter of the book, where Alex grows up and gives up his violent ways. Burgess believed that all individuals, even those as violent as Alex, could reform, and that moral growth could come with age - but his US editor felt the last chapter was too 'bland' and forced him to omit it. Later Burgess got the chapter reinstated, arguing that he objected to his work being used to send a message that some humans are simply evil by nature. 4. Boy Kills Man by Matt Whyman Many of the best teen books highlight real problems happening in the world today and Boys Kills Man is a perfect example. Inspired by the true story of child assassins in Colombia, it tells the tale of Sonny, aka Shorty, who is hired by the crime lord El Fantasma to become a assassin on the streets of Medellin. It is a powerful and moving book that swings between tenderness and brutality. Whyman takes care not to moralise or offer easy answers - Sonny is a complex character who does the wrong things for what he believes are the right reasons. 5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan Many of the most interesting novels about adolescence explore the theme of children who are abandoned by their parents or find themselves in a situation where they are free from adult authority. Like Lord of the Flies, the four children in The Cement Garden, are left to their own devices when their parents die. Fearing adoption, they keep their mother's death a secret by burying her in a cement locker in their basement. But, unlike Lord of the Flies, the children do not descend into animal savagery. Rather, they are torn between the impulses to progress and regress. Julie, the eldest of the siblings, takes on the role of a surrogate mother as the children attempt to carry on as normal a life as possible. But, as they seek to emulate their parent's roles, an incestuous relationship develops between Julie and Jack... 6. Catcher In the Rye by JD Salinger The Catcher in The Rye is narrated by 16-year-old Holden Caulfield. At the start of the story, Holden has just been expelled from school and stands poised on the cliff separating childhood and adulthood. Holden's voice is superb: colloquial, savagely comic, and utterly persuasive, sucking you in so swiftly that it is hard not to read the book in one sitting. It is also captures the complexity of adolescence. Holden feels deeply cynical about the adult world; like the 'catcher in the rye' he wishes to wipe out corruption from the world and protect children from becoming a 'phonie' - an adult. Yet, at times, he behaves like a 'phonie' himself and is frustrated by his desire to fit into the adult world and be taken seriously by adults. You can guarantee that any brilliant and honest book for teens will be frequently banned in schools and The Catcher In the Rye has certainly suffered from this fate many a time. 7. The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce Though Joyce's novels are shelved in the fantasy sections in bookshops, his books are about as far away from Tolkien as you can get. The Tooth Fairy begins firmly in reality, exploring - with wonderfully deft observation - the adventures of a boy called Sam Southall growing up in England in the 1960s. At the age of seven, Sam loses a tooth and is visited by a Tooth Fairy. But this is no fluffy sprite: Joyce's Tooth Fairy smells rank, peppers his language with swearwords and makes sinister threats. Joyce blends together fantasy and reality as the Tooth Fairy becomes a superb metaphor for his hero's adolescence, metamorphosing as Sam shifts from boyhood to manhood. 8. A Kestrel For a Knave by Barry Hines A teenage novel about a boy called Billy who is trying to survive his harsh existence in a small mining town in Yorkshire. His family are impoverished, his teachers mistreat him and he is entirely friendless - until he finds a form of love and redemption in a kestrel that he trains and rears from a chick. A profoundly touching novel, its greatest achievement is the depiction of Billy. He might have been an unsympathetic narrator - he is at times violent, ill-tempered and bad-mouthed - but Hines (like Whyman in Boy Kills Man) shows that his troubled adolescent behaviour is a result of the society he is brought up in rather than his true nature. 9. The Republic of Trees by Sam Taylor A dark fable about four English children who run away to the French countryside to establish their own Utopian community. There, in the Republic of Trees, the children hunt, fall in love and educate themselves in the principles of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract. The novel is narrated by Michael and the first half of the book explores his sexual awakening as he falls in love with Isobel and loses his virginity to her. But then a new member, Joy, joins the group, bringing new disciplines and the mood of the camp begins to alter. Gradually their utopian paradise descends into a dystopian nightmare as the novels powers towards a shocking, violent and terrifying conclusion. A fantastic novel with shades of Lord Of the Flies and 1984. 10. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre Surely the best Booker prize-winner in recent years, Vernon God Little has been described by some critics as a modern day equivalent to Catcher In the Rye. It swings from savage satire to black comedy to sweet lyricism to poignant tragedy from one page to the next - all captured in the voice of 15-year-old Vernon, when he is wrongly accused of a high school massacre. Like many adolescent heroes, Vernon finds himself rebelling against a corrupt adult society. http://www.guardian.co.uk

Jason Burke examines four new books that seek to explain the methods and motivations of radical Islam to readers from the west The Osama bin Laden I Know by Peter L Bergen (320pp, Simon & Schuster) Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden edited and introduced by Bruce Lawrence, translated by James Howarth (224pp, Verso) The Secret History of al-Qa'ida by Abdel Bari Atwan (180pp, Saqi Books) Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror by Mary Habeck (224pp, Yale) The man sitting opposite me in the hotel room in downtown Baghdad was adamant. His group did not ever combine forces with al-Qaida. They had never done so and they never would. "We met some of them, but we have refused to work with them because it is too dangerous," he said. "They are really bloodthirsty people. They do not care if they kill honest Iraqi people. They are crazy, I tell you." The man was an Iraqi civil servant who had taken up arms against coalition forces in the summer of 2004. He had been fighting ever since. A Sunni, he did not know how many American soldiers he had killed because, he admitted, it was difficult to tell who had been wounded, who had died outright after one of his group's attacks and who was just lying down. But one thing the man did know was that he was not "al-Qaida". "They are terrorists," he told me. "We are freedom fighters." Perhaps it is not a distinction that many others would make. But it was important enough for my talkative freedom fighter/terrorist leader to insist that I made the difference clear in my report of our interview. For him, "al-Qaida" meant hardline militants, often of non-Iraqi origin, who were motivated primarily by a radical global militant agenda. This was his definition of al-Qaida and he was sticking to it. There are many other definitions, of course. Some think al-Qaida is a global terrorist network run by Saudi-born "mastermind" Osama bin Laden. Some differentiate between Bin Laden and his close associates, and other militants, such as those fighting in Iraq. For others, al-Qaida is the modern equivalent of the "evil empire", a vast and nebulous dark force threatening reason and all that is good and right. For still more, al-Qaida is an idea, not an organisation. There are several reasons for this variety. The first is that everybody, not just heads of Iraqi resistance groups, uses the label al-Qaida in very personal ways. Heads of states and taxi drivers are happy to use the term despite only being able to respond with vague platitudes when asked to define what they are referring to. A second reason is that the vocabulary used to describe modern Islamic militancy and related violence is still evolving and that in the absence of better, more precise terms, reflecting a better, more precise knowledge, we naturally fall back on broad labels. A third reason is that nobody really knows what "al-Qaida" currently is. For the general public - and in all honesty most journalists too - detail on "al-Qaida" now depends on selected leaks from intelligence services, the statements of those who claim to be a part of the group itself, and occasional bomb attacks. These last, the violent actions that we all fear so much, are in fact the only intervention of "al-Qaida" in the real world. Otherwise its presence is almost virtual. So all well-researched and intelligent additions to the vast stack of "al-Qaida" studies are obviously very welcome. Though few recent contributions to the genre have been written by people who actually know what they are talking about, no one could accuse either Peter Bergen or Abdel Bari Atwan of lacking ground experience. Both men have met Bin Laden and have been studying radical Islam for more than a decade. I have to declare an interest here, as both authors are friends and contacts, but, even to someone who does not know them or their work, what shines out of their books is a profound desire to investigate and reveal the truth. Though Atwan occasionally allows his own views to colour his thinking, Bergen's analysis is the antithesis of the ideologically driven cant so often spouted by retired police officers, former spooks, superannuated soldiers or sundry other "terrorism experts", most of whom who have barely travelled beyond Bexhill-on-Sea, the Dordogne or Washington's beltway, yet appear so often on our TVs or in our newspapers. Both authors have written intelligent and informative books, though Bergen's is the more useful. It is simply one of the most important works to have been published on the subject. Bergen, a journalist and academic, has spent the past four years tracking down people who have firsthand knowledge of Bin Laden and adding their testimonies to a collection of key documents and statements that shed light on the militant leader's activities, motivations and strategies. There are interviews with relatives, comrades in arms, old opponents, old friends, current enemies. At every point Bergen provides useful commentaries synthesising and explaining the material. Many are gems of succinct analysis. "In the United States Bin Laden is commonly seen as an avatar of 'Islamofascism' or simply as an evil criminal," Bergen writes, but he is in fact "an intelligent political actor who is fighting a deeply felt religious war against the west ... Bin Laden, like others before him, has adopted terrorism as a rational choice to bring certain political goals nearer and as a shortcut to transforming the political landscape." A useful supplement to Bergen's book is Messages to the World, a collection of Bin Laden's speeches and statements. As the cover blurb notes, his actual words are very poorly known in the west. Again, as with Bergen's work, this book performs the invaluable function of bringing the reader face to face with the material. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent and Bin Laden expert, has said: "Western media have made no consistent effort to publish Bin Laden's statements, thereby failing to give their audience the words that put his thoughts and actions in cultural and historical context ... Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons has anything to do with our freedom, liberty and democracy but everything to do with US policies and actions in the Muslim world." Mary Habeck's Knowing the Enemy is also useful. It is a level-headed, intelligent, thorough and accessible survey of modern Islamic militant thinking. It is based on the published statements of the militants themselves, and Habeck's profound knowledge of the ideological background informing the development of "jihadism" is evident. The sections on the relevance of key historical events to contemporary militants, most notably the crusades, are perceptive, as is the observation, made forcefully and convincingly, that the militants' project of raising a revolt throughout the Islamic world has failed. Interestingly, there is one huge lacuna in Habeck's book. Though Israel is mentioned 15 times, Iraq is not mentioned at all. This is astonishing, given the critical role that the war in Iraq has played in fomenting support for the radicals. The only possible explanation is that Habeck, or her publisher, felt that the question of the role of the war in Iraq, especially while so many US soldiers are being killed there, was too hot too handle. If so, this seriously undermines her stated aim of providing a cogent account of how the militants think. One element that Habeck could have made more of are the similarities between radical secular ideologies and their religious counterparts. To push the parallels too far would be wrong, but the coincidences are striking and clearly suggest similarities in the function that such packages of ideas perform for individuals and groups. The standard profile of leaders of Islamic radical movements - usually men between the ages of 18 and 35, often from middle-class families and often educated to graduate level - is very close to that of many leftwing radical activists. So is their interest in "propaganda by deed" - an idea originating in anarchist and nihilist circles of the end of the 19th century - and in the radicalisation of the masses through spectacular violence. The very concept of a small number of enlightened men struggling to raise the people against a tyrannical power, though very much a part of Islamic religious thinking and culture over centuries, also clearly shared much with the Leninist concept of the revolutionary "avant-garde". Marxism and its offshoots offered, like radical Islam does now, a dogmatic explanation of the evils of the world and an equally dogmatic programme that would lead to their apparent solution. Marxists saw history in terms of an inevitable dialectic and consulted and selectively cited key and immutable texts; so, of course, do men like Bin Laden, as the volumes under review make very evident. Radical leftwing groups and systems of governments had their rituals, their languages, their semi-god-like individual leaders, their mythologised histories, their hierarchies, their globally applicable identities that ignored national boundaries and, of course, their martyrs. So, plainly, do the contemporary Islamic militants. Then there are the more obvious direct links. Many of the radical Muslim groups set up in the 1970s and 80s made no secret of the fact that they had learned their tactics and organisation from the left, and a surprising number of Islamic militants have actually flirted with leftwing activism before becoming involved in religious radical movements. There is also the anti-semitism that marked much leftwing and all radical Islamic thought. Interestingly, all this has escaped neither President Bush nor the militants themselves. Bergen quotes Noman Benotman, a Libyan-born former militant living in London, saying that "in the 1970s, 80s and even the 90s all these jihadi groups failed to overthrow the governments [of their native lands] ... because [they] could not recruit the people ... That is the rules of the war, especially guerrilla warfare. I think the godfather for all these things is Mao Zedong. That's the theory. It's ... Mao. We failed to recruit the people." And Bush: "The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century." Perhaps predictably, Bush does not explore the reasons why communism might have appealed to so many people. There is much, too, that radical Islamic militants, though they would undoubtedly deny it, share with ultra-rightwing ideologies, both those that gripped half the population of Europe in the middle of the 20th century and more modern varieties. There are parallels in terms of the social groups from which the leaders are drawn - the frustrated middle classes who have historically so often provided political activists. There was the common anti-semitism and the traditions of martyrdom. Then there is also the snarling association of modernity with mediocrity or degeneracy, an insistence on morality and racial or religious purity, an appeal to a mythic past imagined as a perfect era of stability and firm values. In addition, there is the strong sense of being rooted in a real or imagined space and territory, a distrust of urban environments coupled with a glorification of rural ones, and a powerful, radicalising, quasi-millenarian sense of threat and impending doom. There was also the obvious appeal to a higher authority, whether that is God, the Nazi party or a mixture of the two, and the common emphasis on demagogic, charismatic leaders drawn from outside the standard political classes. All contribute, in both secular rightwing and radical Islamic activism (and indeed in many of the other fundamentalisms that have attracted so many in the late 20th and early 21st centuries), to a powerful and convincing argument that it is the responsibility of every individual (or at least every adult male) to act and act quickly in defence of his community and way of life. One element common to both left- and rightwing ideologies seems to me to be particularly important. Leftwing ideologies took hold in western and central Europe and then, slightly later, in eastern Europe at times of massive social change, when everything that was certain and reassuring was dissolving in the face of massive industrialisation - and a wave of globalisation - coupled with very rapid technological advance. Rightwing ideologies had been particularly popular, a few decades later, among the swathes of people who felt themselves as suffering in or at least not benefiting from the new order of "the modern world". This all seems to suggest that contemporary radical "Islamic" militancy might share more than just structure and language with more secular ideologies. Rather than being rooted in "Islam", as many maintain, it might, at least in part, be a product of very major shifts on a worldwide scale that have provoked a sense of alienation and uncertainty among hundreds of millions of people as well as, crucially, a simultaneous sense of grievance and anger at what is perceived to be the unjust nature of the distribution of power in the contemporary world. If radical leftwing thought was a product of the massive changes in the late 19th century, and rightwing extremism a consequence of the political, social and cultural instability of the early and middle decades of the 20th century, then radical Islam, as well as the resurgent fundamentalisms elsewhere across the globe, might be a function of the inherent instability, both creative and destructive, of our own era. This is an interesting if not particularly consoling line of thought. After all, it took the best part of a century, significant concessions and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union to reduce all the various strains of radical leftwing violence to the relatively minimal nuisance they were by the last decade of 20th century; and even now no one can be certain they have gone for ever. The hard right, ranging from radical conservatism through to outright neo-nazism, still has the potential to cause very real problems despite the horrors of the past. So what might be the timeline on the demise of radical Islam? Well, if radical Islam is indeed a function of the instability and inherent chaos of the process of development and globalisation of our modern world, a process which is not going to stop soon, then we are in for a protracted struggle. The Pentagon recently talked of "the long war" against terrorism. In that, for once, the planners of America's response to the threat from "al-Qaida", however you define it, were right. How long? As Habeck, Bergen, Atwan and others make clear, Bin Laden and his followers are thinking in terms of centuries. · Jason Burke's Al-Qaida: The True Story of Radical Islam is published by Penguin. His new book, On the Road to Kandahar, was published by Penguin in May. http://www.guardian.co.uk