King Abdullah Greets Obama

Riyadh, 3 June.
President Obama landed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, today for the start of a trip planned for months as part of a bid to improve the tattered U.S. relationship with the Muslim world.
American flags are hanging next to the green banner of the Saudi kingdom on the street-light poles of this desert capital, a celebratory nod to the arrival of President Obama. He landed here to begin a five-day tour through the Middle East and Europe.
At a tarmac welcoming ceremony, Obama was greeted by the 84-year-old Saudi leader. The two strode down a red carpet lined by ranks of Saudi soldiers, U.S. and Saudi flags flying taut in a brisk, dry wind. A military band then played the Star-Spangled Banner.
The leaders were then scheduled to travel to King Abdullah's farm at Jenadriyah, not far from Riyadh. The king hosted a dinner there last year for then-President Bush featuring an Arabian horse show and a falconry exhibition.
Shortly after Obama landed in the Saudi capital, the television network Al-Jazeera aired a new audiotape, reportedly from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, saying Obama was planting seeds for "revenge and hatred" towards the United States in the Muslim world, wire services reported. The taped message said Obama was following former President George W. Bush's policy of "antagonizing Muslims," and warned told Americans to be prepared for the "consequences" of the White House's policies.
The centerpiece of the president's trip will be a speech Thursday in Cairo, billed as an address to the Muslim world, in which advisors say Obama will transmit a message based on shared roots, common experience and mutual respect.
At this first stop, the president was to hold private talks with King Abdullah on Mideast peace negotiations, regional security and energy issues.The president will deliver his long-promised address to the Muslim world from the campus of Cairo University in Egypt on Thursday.

Naked Bar is write on form

EVERYONE'S guilty of writing notes on their hands - but BAR REFAELI has taken skin-scribbling to a new extreme.
The Israeli stunner has stripped naked for the new 'stories of our time' edition of US Esquire mag.
In keeping with the literary theme of the issue, Bar had the opening words of a STEPHEN KING novel penned onto her bare flesh.
(The sun)

Google to sell e-books in 2009

BEIJING, June 2 (Xinhua)
Google plans to launch a program of selling e-books later this year, a move to compete with e-commerce leader Amazon.com Inc., the company confirmed Monday.
Google stated that it aims to build a "digital book ecosystem" to allow publishing partners to sell access to their titles, even if buyers don't have dedicated book readers.
Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said "by end of this year, we want to build and support a digital book ecosystem to allow our partner publishers to make their books available for purchase from any Web-enabled device."
A key difference between Google and Amazon would be that the search giant aims to let Google Book Search users "buy access" to copyrighted books with any Web-enabled computer, e-reader or mobile phone.
The spokesman also said consumers would not be able to download books in the same way Amazon's customers can buy copies of specific titles and store them on their Kindle. Instead, people who access books through Google would be able to read titles online and temporarily cache them in their Internet browsers so they could also read them offline.
The advantage for google is its vast reach on the Internet because it could in theory highlight relevant books for sale every time a consumer punches in a search query.
Publishers will be allowed to set their own prices, although google reserved the right to discount titles at its own expense, said the company. Amazon typically charges consumers 9.99 dollars per e-book.
Google said it was still in talks with publishers and specific details of the project remain to be determined.

Obama hopeful on Mid-East peace

BBC News : London, 2 June.
US President Barack Obama has told the BBC he believes his country can help to get serious Middle East peace negotiations back on track.
His comments, in his first interview with a UK broadcaster, come on the eve of a trip to the Middle East and Europe
On Iran, he said he hoped to see progress by the end of the year, through "tough, direct diplomacy".
But he said rather than imposing its values on other countries the US should act as a role model.
Speaking to BBC North America Editor Justin Webb, Mr Obama said he believed the US was "going to be able to get serious negotiations back on track" between Israel and the Palestinians.
"Not only is it in the interest of the Palestinian people to have a state, it's in the interest of the Israeli people to stabilise the situation there," he said.
"And it's in the interest of the United States that we've got two states living side by side in peace and security."
Asked about Israel's rejection of his call for a halt to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the president urged patience, saying it was early in the conversation.
"Diplomacy is always a matter of a long hard slog. It's never a matter of quick results," he said.
However, Mr Obama said he had not needed convincing by Israel of the need to address Iran's programme of nuclear development.
"What I have said is that it is in the world's interests for Iran to set aside ambitions for a nuclear weapon," he said, and the best way for that to be accomplished was "through tough direct diplomacy".
"Although I don't want to put artificial time tables on that process, we do want to make sure that, by the end of this year, we've actually seen a serious process move forward".
Nuanced message
Mr Obama is due to arrive in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday in the first stage of his tour of the Middle East and Europe.
He will travel to Egypt on 4 June, where he is set to give a key speech on US ties with the region, before carrying on to Europe to attend D-Day commemoration events.
The president has faced criticism over his decision to give a speech in Cairo, with human rights groups pointing to Egypt's patchy reputation for political freedom.
But he said while there were "obviously" human rights issues to address in some Middle Eastern countries, the job of the US was not to lecture but to encourage what he said were "universal principles" that those countries could "embrace and affirm as part of their national identity".
"The danger, I think, is when the United States, or any country, thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture," he said.
Instead, the president said that the most important thing for the US was to "serve as a role model".
"Part of what we want to affirm to the world is that these are values that are important even when it's hard, maybe especially when it's hard and not just when it's easy."
"That's why, for example, closing Guantanamo from my perspective is as difficult as it is important."
Mr Obama is facing domestic resistance to his plans to close the Guantanamo detention camp, with critics citing concerns over what would happen to inmates still considered to pose a risk to the US.
Justin Webb says the president chose to speak to the BBC now because his team want to reach the parts of the world the BBC reaches, with a message that is nuanced and thoughtful.
But Mr Obama is not apologising for the actions of the Bush White House, our correspondent adds.
Instead, the president said he wanted to "open a dialogue" between the West and the Muslim world to overcome what he said were "misapprehensions" on both sides.
He stressed that there were no "silver bullets" to overcome problems but instead some "very real policy issues that have to be worked through".
"Ultimately, it's going to be action and not words that determine the progress from here on out."

French plane missing over Atlantic

PARIS, 1 June.
An Air France plane carrying 228 people from Brazil to France has gone missing over the Atlantic.
Paris Charles de Gaulle airport said contact was lost with the flight from Rio de Janeiro at 0600 GMT.
Brazil's air force confirmed the plane was missing and said a search and rescue mission was under way near the island of Fernando de Noronha.
An airport official told AFP the Airbus 330-200 had been expected to arrive in Paris at 1110 local time (0910 GMT).
Another official said it was possible that the plane had a transponder problem but this was very rare.
"We are very worried," he said, quoted by AFP news agency. "The plane disappeared from the screens several hours ago."
Flight AF 447 left Rio at 1900 local time (2200 GMT) on Sunday. It had 216 passengers and 12 crew on board, including three pilots.
Airport authorities have set up a crisis centre at Charles de Gaulle.
An Air France official told AFP that people awaiting the flight would be received in a special area at the airport's second terminal.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his "very deep concern" and asked the government "to implement every effort to find the plane," according to a statement from his office.
The missing aircraft is an Airbus 330 -- a state-of-the-art plane and only about four years old, the airline said.Its last maintenance check was on April 16, the airline said.