LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Firefighters battling a week-old wildfire raging in the mountains near Los Angeles got their first big break on Tuesday from higher humidity and cooler temperatures that helped them push towering flames away from threatened homes. More than 121,000 acres, or 190 square miles, have burned above the heavily populated foothills 15 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Some 6,300 homes are under evacuation orders and two firefighters have died. But the fire’s growth has slowed and fire commander Mike Dietrich said at daybreak on Tuesday he was “a lot more optimistic.” “We are still at 5 percent containment. However, with firefighting activity that occurred last night and the last several days, I expect that will increase substantially today,” Dietrich said. National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Mehle, who is assigned to the fire, said the change in weather was due mostly to wind patterns pulling in more damp air from northern Mexico and the Baja region– a phenomenon called monsoonal moisture. He said there may be an indirect benefit, too, from extra moisture spun off from Hurricane Jimena, a Category 4 storm that drenched the tip of the Baja Peninsula on Tuesday. Potential downsides of the weather change, which arrived sooner than previously forecast, were the likelihood of gusty winds that had been largely absent since the fire began and the possibility of dry lightning strikes that could ignite new blazes in dense brush that has not burned in decades. Fifty-three structures have been lost out of the 12,000 at risk in the area. Mount Wilson, a hub of broadcasting towers and telecommunications, as well as home to an historic observatory, was still very much threatened, Dietrich said. Two firefighters were killed on Sunday when their position was overrun by flames and their vehicle plunged 800 feet down an embankment. Several other firefighters suffered minor injuries trying to rescue them, authorities said. At least three civilians also have been injured, two of them badly burned when they were trapped by advancing flames after disregarding evacuation orders.

EVACUATIONS CONTINUE

Police continued to evacuate neighborhoods in the upper reaches of the foothills on Tuesday, although firefighters were able to conduct controlled burns overnight to push flames back into the San Gabriel Mountains of the Angeles National Forest. More than 3,600 firefighters battled the blaze with help from water- and retardant-dropping aircraft. Despite progress in controlling the fire, Dietrich said the crews working in 100-degree Fahrenheit (37 Celsius) heat “are fighting for every foot.” So far, the cost to battle the so-called Station Fire has risen to nearly $14 million, a worrisome figure for a state battling with a ballooning deficit due to the poor economy. This fire also comes before the most difficult months for wildfires in California, from September to November, when fierce winds increase the danger of big fires. The cause of the Station Fire, the biggest of several wildfires burning throughout the state, remains under investigation.

Canadian historian and author Alastair Sweeny is set to release the first such book in September. Called BlackBerry Planet: The Story of Research in Motion and the Little Device that Took the World by Storm, it tracks the evolution of the BlackBerry from RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis’ 1960s childhood to present day. Forbes reached Sweeny at his Ottawa home to discuss Lazaridis’ similarity to Steve Jobs, what RIM thinks of his book and why future BlackBerrys may morph into telepathic gadgets he calls “telebrain.”

Forbes: What inspired you to write a book about RIM, and why do you think no one has written one before?

Alastair Sweeny: Corporate history is my passion. I know people at RIM and people who do business with RIM who I knew would be helpful in terms of background. RIM is a great Canadian success story, so as a Canadian there’s a nice element there.

I also saw a business opportunity. This year is the 10th anniversary of the first true BlackBerry device. I figured someone would write about RIM sooner or later and it might as well be me. I was amazed no one had done a book yet when Apple and Microsoft have been done to death. It may be the remoteness of RIM, being up in Waterloo, away from Silicon Valley and all its tech reporters.

You mention you spoke to some people at RIM. How much access did the company give you?

It was a hard book to research. RIM was not too friendly. I interviewed some executives, like [former RIM director] Gary Mousseau and corresponded with the big guys [co-CEOs Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie] on e-mail, mostly on background.

I tried to chase some other people down and was unable to. Then I put Chapter 1 in its entirety on a public wiki site, which attracted the attention of several early engineers from RIM and RIM partners like Ericsson, BellSouth and [Canadian operator] Rogers. People came out of the woodwork in May and June, so we delayed the book for a month and added in more information. They were very forthcoming and would say things like, “No, you haven’t quite got it here.” I also have a friend with a BlackBerry collection that goes way back, who gave me some good insight on the devices.

It’s more fun to talk about how RIM got to this point than its current status as a mature corporation, so I concentrated on the peripheral and early guys. There’s also a lot of stuff out there that hadn’t been pulled together. It was like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle.

In the book, Lazaridis, who founded RIM at age 23, is likened to a modern Leonardo da Vinci. What’s your take?

I consider him a visionary who is smart enough to take his vision to market. [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs is like that. In the book, I talk about young Lazaridis being a Star Trek fanatic, tinkering as a student, trying to make force fields. He always had this straight-ahead vision and childlike sense of wonder. I think the Star Trek Communicator is the inspiration for all the machines he builds.

The similarities end at a certain point. Steve Jobs supposedly gets involved in everything. He can drive people crazy, but you see the difference in Apple’s quality of design. Early on, Lazaridis divided engineering from marketing. It insulated the engineers but also meant RIM was using clunky fonts until a few years ago. With RIM, form is function.

With Apple, maybe it’s the other way around.

RIM has had the same co-CEOs since 1992. What accounts for that longevity?

They’re a good tag team. Balsillie’s job is to give feedback to the engineers. He believed in RIM from the beginning; he even mortgaged his house to buy RIM shares. He can execute, and that’s been a large part of RIM’s success. All of a sudden, he arrives and RIM is playing hardball.

You dedicate an entire chapter to patent issues. How central were patents to RIM’s evolution?

The battle with NTP was a big grow-up experience for RIM. The settlement was the largest technology patent settlement in U.S. history, but I argue it was worth every penny. It was great publicity and by the time the trial was over, RIM’s business had quintupled or more, and $650 million was something they shrugged off. Plus, the settlement ensured that NTP had a whole bunch of cash to go after RIM’s competitors like Palm. Those battles are behind RIM now. Lazaridis now says, when anyone has a good idea, RIM patents it right away.

What do you see as the other defining events in RIM’s 20-plus years as a company?

Like any high-tech company, there are a lot of stories about subsisting on Coke and pizza, writing code for 36 hours straight. One of Lazaridis’ teachers told him the real technology breakthrough would be in mobile texting. After college, Lazaridis bounced from one contract to another, assembled a team and discovered a way to do two-way paging. When operators brought in Internet mail, RIM was ready. They had the market to themselves for a few years before people started to catch up.

Sept. 11 and the 2001 anthrax scare really made a case for BlackBerry’s necessity as a security device. The American government has half a million BlackBerrys in operation, making it, far and away, RIM’s biggest customer.

You include twin chapters on BlackBerry’s benefits and its social ills. Has all the talk about “CrackBerrys” affected RIM?

Linda Duxbury, a professor at the Carleton University School of Business did a multi-year study about BlackBerry use and how tough it is on some families. In her study, 66% of spouses felt the only appropriate use of BlackBerrys was during business hours, and 55% felt their partners inappropriately used their BlackBerrys several times a day. My personal view is that businesses should be aware of the damage that can be done if BlackBerrys are not controlled. Every business should have a policy on smart-phone use.

When RIM talks about this issue, it only says people can develop BlackBerry dependence, not addiction. The irony is that RIM thought BlackBerrys would improve quality of life because it allows for a quick, quiet connection that doesn’t bother other people.

What do you think RIM’s next move will be?

They’ve stumbled in a few areas. The company is getting big and bureaucratic; they have to watch that. I think they rushed the Storm to market, but they’re so passionate about getting it right, I imagine they will. RIM also didn’t take the Web experience as seriously as it should have, but I have no doubt it will pull up its socks and do a proper BlackBerry browser.

The real question is, how will they innovate, how will they keep up the pace? I was talking to an engineer who worked with RIM in the early days and asked, “Will RIM ever get away from the BlackBerry form factor and put its operating system out there for laptops and [Internet] tablets?” And he said, “I’ve been trying to get Lazaridis to do that for years!”

Tackling the global mobile market will be up to Balsillie. In order to beat Nokia, RIM will have to [sign deals] country by country, carrier by carrier. If anyone can do it, Balsillie can. He’s a take-no-prisoners guy.

You have this theory that RIM wants BlackBerrys to be “telebrains.”

The idea of the telebrain is a brain in your pocket. Experts say the future will bring many radios on a single chip, mobile storage as big as the human brain, high-definition mobile video and wireless spectrum galore. Lazaridis has been funding an institute of quantum physics [in Canada] for years. One engineer I spoke to said Lazaridis is interested in marrying quantum physics with mobile devices. You could also call it techno-telepathy; technology that allows people to stay in such close touch, it’s almost like telepathy.

A Brief History Of The BlackBerry
Elizabeth Woyke, Forbes

French researcher Clotilde Reiss, 24, sits in a Tehran courtroom where she is being tried on charges of plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic. In the background to the left is defendant Ahmad Zeidabadi, a prominent critic of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Fars News Agency)

  PARIS —After a mediation by Syria , The French academic who is part of a mass trial in Iran has been freed from prison on bail and turned over to the French embassy in good health, French leaders said Sunday, urging that charges against her be dropped.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said “that nothing can justify” the case against Clotilde Reiss, 24, and an embassy employee, who are accused of fanning a revolt aimed at bringing down Iran’s Islamic rulers.

The president spoke with Reiss as soon as she left Tehran’s Evin prison and reported that she was in good health and spirits, his office said in a statement.

Sarkozy “noted the dignity and courage with which Clotilde Reiss has faced this challenge,” the statement said.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner later said on the iTele TV station that bail was paid but that the sum was “not enormous.”

While she stays at the embasssy, Reiss will prepare her defense “to make her innocence known,” Kouchner said in a statement. Like Sarkozy, he reiterated that the charges against her and the French-Iranian embassy employee, Nazak Afshar, are “unfounded.”

Reiss was arrested July 1 and jailed after attending a postelection demonstration at the end of a five-month teaching job in the city of Isfahan. Reiss and Afshar went on trial Aug. 8 alongside more than 100 others. All were charged with fomenting revolt following Iran’s disputed presidential elections.

Sarkozy credited the European Union and Syria for helping obtain Reiss’ release, echoing language he used when Afshar was let out of prison on Aug. 11. She also still faces charges.

He thanked them for “the solidarity and support they have brought us and will continue to bring until our two compatriots have recovered their full freedom.”

Since taking office in 2007, Sarkozy has worked to bolster ties with Damascus, which is a strong ally of Tehran and is trying to emerge from its diplomatic isolation in the West.

Sarkozy has backed a go-between role for Damascus to bring across Western demands on Tehran. He met with President Bashar Assad in January as part of an international bid at the time to stop an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, and Assad was a guest of honor at France’s July 2008 Bastille Day parade.

The weekend edition of the French daily Le Monde, quoting Syrian sources, said that Assad could travel shortly to Tehran to meet the Iranian president but would use the visit to use his influence to help gain full freedom for the French women.

Obtaining freedom for Reiss has become a cause celebre in France, and authorities have worked hard to obtain her release.

Reiss and Afshar both apologized before the court for attending at least one demonstration, saying she did so because she was curious. She has been charged with acting against national security by joining protests, gathering information, taking photos and sending them abroad during postelection unrest in Iran.

AP and Aleppous

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton set off tremors in the Middle East this week when she said a nuclear Iran could be contained by a U.S. “defense umbrella” — an offhand remark that appears to have emerged from obscure Washington policy debates and her own presidential campaign rhetoric. Clinton’s comments raised eyebrows because they seemed to go beyond the Obama administration’s current thinking on Iran, which has been strictly focused on preventing the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. Since making the remark on a television chat show in Thailand, Clinton has backpedaled, saying she was only restating existing policy and not referring to any sort of formal guarantees of protection under an American “nuclear umbrella.” And when Israeli officials raised alarms that she seemed to suggest the U.S. was resigned to a nuclear-armed Iran, Clinton and senior State Department officials hastily insisted such a prospect was still unacceptable and that no policy had changed. But her comments sounded uncannily like the harder-edged “nuclear umbrella” approach toward Iran that Clinton and several other top advisers to President Barack Obama had pushed before they joined his administration. Bringing both Arab allies and Israel under a protective U.S. “nuclear umbrella” is an idea that has been batted around Washington since fears of Iran’s ambitions first percolated in the late 1990s. Clinton herself raised the notion of such a policy during her unsuccessful presidential campaign last year. “We should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel,” she said in an April 2008 debate with Obama. “Of course, I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States. But I would do the same with other countries in the region.” During that debate, Obama affirmed support for Israel’s security but did not suggest protecting Arab states. Some policy experts say Clinton’s umbrella reference was simple carelessness. Others wonder if it is indicative of an administration that has yet to show discipline in foreign policy thought and action. “This is something that a secretary of state, in an academic or off-the-record setting, might muse about,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast peace negotiator now with the Woodrow Wilson Center International Center for Scholars. “But saying it on the road and on-the-record is something else,” he said. “It reflects to a certain degree a problem. It reflects a certain confusion in the administration’s approach and the absence still of a coherent and cohesive strategy.” During her trip last week, Clinton mentioned a “defense umbrella” during an interview on Thai television Wednesday. “We want Iran to calculate,” she said, “what I think is a fair assessment: that if the United States extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to develop the military capacity of those (allies) in the Gulf, it is unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer because they won’t be able to intimidate and dominate as they apparently believe they can once they have a nuclear weapon,” she said. A day later, she insisted to another interviewer that the “defense umbrella” was “nothing specific.” “It is a sort of general term that is used to describe our commitment to making sure that Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon,” she said. The White House declined to comment on what options may now be under consideration for dealing with Iran. But it refused to rule out any measure. “As the president has said many times, we are using all elements of American power, including diplomacy, to ensure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons,” said spokesman Tommy Vietor. Despite Clinton’s insistence that her phrasing was general, the concept of an American “nuclear umbrella” protecting Mideast nations from Iran has wafted through Washington think tanks for several years. The concept is based on the Cold War era of deterrence and aims to stop a nuclear-armed country from threatening an unarmed neighbor. Dennis Ross, who worked for Clinton at the State Department and now heads Mideast policy at the National Security Council, and Robert Einhorn, now a special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control at State — both lent their names to consideration of the concept. Both advisers were formerly affiliated with the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, which in March of this year published a report that recommended studying the idea closely. The study noted that Ross and Einhorn, who had already resigned to work with Obama, had endorsed drafts of the report. The report noted there were some pitfalls with the idea. For one, Iran may not feel deterred by such a move, it said. For another, Israel would object on several grounds, including the possibility that it would limit its own deterrent capability. Ross, testifying before Congress in April 2008, also warned that “our security assurances may not be particularly relevant to the threats that most worry Middle Eastern regimes.” The concept of a “nuclear umbrella” to deter Iran first crystalized around 2004, according to experts. Patrick Clawson, Ross’ former colleague at the Washington institute, wrote about it in 2004, saying that “extending an explicit nuclear umbrella to those threatened by Iran” should be considered. But there is a sharp line, Miller said, between weighing policy notions in private and putting them out in public before they have been carefully explored and vetted. “You don’t discuss something like this in the open, particularly when you haven’t decided on policy,” Miller said, “because everything you say is going to be put under a microscope and dissected for clues about how we’re going to act.”

A book in Arabic about gay travel in the Middle East is running into problems because of what gay-rights groups perceive as a derogatory translation of the word describing homosexuals.

The book, ‘Gay Travels in the Muslim World’, is a compilation of stories penned by gay Muslim and non-Muslim authors. It was translated into Arabic by the Lebanon-based publisher, Arab Diffusion.

The Arabic-speaking gay community is taking issue with the publisher’s translation of the word gay into the Arabic word shadh, which means abnormal or deviant.

The book’s editor, however, is pleased, as the controversial translation is fueling a positive debate in a region where homosexuality, for the most part, is taboo.

“Arab Diffusion didn’t mean any harm in using the word,” Michael Luongo, editor and co-author of the book told The Media Line.

He said the word was commonly used in the Arab world to describe gay people, and that gay-rights groups were trying to change this habit.

Gay-rights groups in the Middle East take offense to having their sexual orientation described as a perversion and would much prefer the word homosexual be translated with neutral word such as mithli, which means same.

“Arab Diffusion was very happy to put out the book and it wasn’t their intention that this would be a problematic word, because the word is part of common discourse in the Arabic world,” Luongo said.

The issue of the translation is being debated in the blogosphere and in academic circles.

Algerian blogger L’Algerie en Rose, who claims openly that he is gay and that “the majority of young people are frustrated because of the taboos”, wrote that “the terminology in Arabic related to homosexuality is very derogatory”.

“There is a need for a neutral terminology to identify us; we must work to translate such terms, and enrich the Arabic dictionary,” he added.

But some, like Luongo, see the benefit of this translation, as it vitalizes the debate on homosexuality and the need to be more sensitive to this sector.

The editor of Huriya Blog wrote, “I would have rather they used the word mithli, which literally means same (i.e. same-sex), but it is so nice that there is an Arabic translation to this great book, that one might even overlook the crude word.”

‘Gay Travels in the Muslim World’ (Harrington Park Press, 2007) is a compilation of 18 edited non-fiction stories written by individual gay authors, both Muslims and non-Muslim, looking into gay life in these areas.

U.S.-based Luongo, a Western photojournalist who contributed a segment about homosexuality in Afghanistan, insists it is not a guide book but rather a peek into a world that is widely under-covered.

“A huge reason I did the book is that there are many people who write about homosexuality in the Muslim world-Westerners in particular-who have actually never been there,” he said. “I found things were not as black and white as the news would have you believe.”

“Interestingly, the whole debate about the language issue – academics love it and I think some people are even thinking of doing a thesis on this,” he said, notably amused. “It’s a new audience that we discovered with the Arabic translation.”

Gay-rights groups have been arguing about the use of the word shadh for some time, and the controversy over the book helps them put their argument forward to the media using a live example, he said, and educate their publics about problems that arise in naming things.

While the book in English challenged stereotypes that Westerners have about gay Muslims and about Muslims in general, the Arabic translation will serve to shatter prejudices within the Muslim world about gay people, he said.

Luongo hopes it will also draw more Muslims into the debate about gay rights.

The book is groundbreaking in that is the first book of its kind to be translated into Arabic before being translated into any other language.

Luongo was advised he would be better off translating it first into French, but he said this would have limited the target audience to educated people in the Maghreb and in Lebanon.

Now that it has been translated into Arabic, he hopes it can reach a broader audience, but he is under no illusion as to the distribution limitations of a book on such an explosive topic.

“I don’t know how people are going to get the book,” he admitted, “and not a lot of the books will be published. But just having the book out there allows a valuable discourse.”

The Media Line website

ZURICH – AFP— Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey on Sunday defended Switzerland’s decision to meet with a Hamas delegation, saying the militant Palestinian group is “an important player” in the Middle East.

“Hamas is an important player in the Middle East conflict that cannot be ignored,” said Calmy-Rey in an interview with NZZ am Sonntag, a Sunday newspaper in Zurich.

She added that a research institute conference in Geneva last month — where Swiss diplomats met a Hamas contingent that included hardline leader Mahmud Zahar — had achieved “great progress” regarding an unofficial peace plan.

Israel’s foreign ministry voiced anger at the meeting, recalling on Wednesday that Hamas is seen as a terrorist organisation by the European Union, which Switzerland is not a part of.

“By officially receiving a Hamas delegation, Switzerland is not placing itself among those who support moderation,” foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

The unofficial peace plan, launched in Geneva in 2003 under Swiss auspices, aims to resolve the Middle East stalemate. Calmy-Rey said a 400-page report on the initiative will be going out to “different players” in the conflict.

GAZA CITY, Jul 15 (IPS) – “No one is buying meat these days,” says Yousef Al-Jerjowi, sitting next to his butcher shop devoid of customers. “There are some people who buy frozen meat, because it’s much cheaper: 20 shekels (five dollars) per kilo versus 60 shekels for fresh beef.” According to the 45-year-old father of ten, while business is in general terrible, the better days are early in the month, when those with salaried jobs often receive their pay. “On average, I might make 200 shekels a day in the first five days of the new month. Before the siege, it was 450 shekels a day. I do have some more regular customers. But they have no money. They keep a tab, and pay when they can.” Like many Palestinians, Jerjowi used to work in Israel. “When Israel closed the borders, I had no work. So I opened a butcher shop.” On a normal day, Jerjowi says he only earns at best 100 shekels, not enough to cover the rent of his shop – 4,000 dollars a year – nor that of his family’s homes. “My three sons are all married. Together, our house rents are 200 shekels per month. We’re not earning that money. And there are daily expenses, like electricity and water.” With unemployment rates at 50 percent in Gaza, and 80 percent of Gazan Palestinians dependent on food aid hand-outs, it’s no wonder that Jerjowi’s business isn’t booming. But the problem lies not only with Gaza’s siege-shattered economy and the great poverty this has created; it is also the scarcity of beef. After the three weeks of the Israeli air, land and sea bombardment which killed over 1,400 people, Gaza’s agricultural sector is devastated, and that includes the beef farmers. The United Nations Development Project reports that 17 percent of Gaza’s livestock and nearly ten percent of the poultry were killed during the war. And even before the Israeli attacks, in November 2008 Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture was already warning of a “real food disaster” due to the siege on animal feed and livestock, directly affecting the well-being of what livestock did exist in Gaza. Gazan Palestinians have tried to make up for the deficit of cattle by bringing calves and sheep through the tunnels from Egypt. Yet, the prices are high, above the budgets of most. On Jun. 19, for the first time since Oct. 31 2008, Israel allowed livestock into Gaza: 15 trucks. This number falls far below not only the nutritional needs of Gaza’s residents, but also the capacity of the border crossing to receive trucks. In 2008 and 2007, according to the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) the monthly total of livestock trucks entering Gaza varied from 20 to 207, keeping with the trend of severely restricting Gaza’s livestock imports under the Israeli-led siege. Prior to Jun. 19, the only cattle shipment overland into Gaza was on Oct. 31 2008, with a monthly total 78 trucks…to last nearly nine months. The Coordinator of the Israeli Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) previously suggested an amount of 300 cows weekly as the minimum for the nutrition of Gaza’s 1.5 million people. According to the UN and various non-governmental organisations, the trickle of goods entering Gaza now is just a quarter of that prior to the siege, the majority of which is limited to basic food aid items. The aid-dependent families have moved from a balanced diet to one consisting mainly of sugar and carbohydrates, lacking in vitamins and proteins. The World Health Organisation (WHO) cites an increase in growth-stunting malnourishment, now at over 10 percent of children, attributed to a chronic lack of protein, iron, and essential vitamins. The WHO further warns of increasing anaemia rates: 65 percent among children below 12 months of age, and 35 percent among pregnant women. The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and Gaza’s Ard Al-Insan centre for nutrition, among various bodies, note the link between malnutrition and a deficiency of protein and vegetables in the diet. An International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) June 2009 report notes that the effects of a restricted diet also include “difficulty in fighting off infections, fatigue and a reduced capacity to learn.” The ICRC warns of the long-term ramifications on Gaza’s malnourished children. In June 2009, 38 NGOs, including Oxfam, Care World Vision, and UN bodies, called for an end to the siege, citing the need for normalised trade with Gaza. The ICRC June report likewise called for resumption of imports and exports, but warned that the situation has deteriorated to an extent that Gaza will need years to recover. For Yousef al Jerjowi, who has scaled down his opening hours due to the lack of customers, the siege couldn’t end soon enough. Jerjowi’s three sons work in his shop, saving him 40 shekels daily wages for an employee. “If my sons didn’t work here, I’d have to close the shop.”