Skype announced that its highly anticipated application, Skype(TM) for iPhone, will be available on the Apple App Store beginning today. more

Rampage in Pakistan Shows Reach of Militants
Militants who have launched two audacious attacks in the Pakistani city of Lahore in the past month want to show they can strike at the heart of the country’s power establishment, police and an analyst said.

Militants firing rifles and throwing grenades stormed a police training academy in the eastern city on Monday, killing eight recruits, wounding scores and holding off police and troops for eight hours.

The attack, claimed by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, came less than a month after a dozen gunmen attacked Sri Lanka’s cricket team in the city, killing six police guards and a bus driver.

Polypill ‘could become a reality‘
A cheap five-in-one pill can guard against heart attacks and stroke, research suggests. The concept of a polypill for everyone over 55 to cut heart disease by up to 80% was mooted over five years ago, but slow progress has been made since.

While Japan Prepares for N.Korea Missile Launch
A North Korean rocket slated for launch sometime early next month can be clearly seen in a satellite photograph taken Sunday, the Institute for Science and International Security said Sunday.
The US, of course, won’t be left behind. For example, US destroyers set sail ahead of North Korean launch. A new beginning of WW II?

A power struggle has begun in Saudi Arabia? Take a look at my op-ed piece in Jawa Pos about the Kingdom system of succession here (in Bahasa Indonesia).
A dispute over Saudi Arabia’s royal succession burst into the open yesterday, revealing a power struggle in which one of the most senior princes in the oil-rich kingdom is reported to have disappeared. The prospect of instability in a country that is not only the world’s largest oil exporter but also a key Western ally at the heart of the Middle East will cause serious concern in Washington, London and beyond.

Rumours are rife over the position of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, 60, son of the heir to the Saudi throne, who has not been seen in public for weeks. Prince Bandar is better known abroad than almost any other member of the Saudi royal family, not only for his extravagant lifestyle, but because of his daring foreign policy initiatives during 22 years as the Saudi ambassador in Washington, where he played an important role after 9/11 and during two Gulf wars. His absence from public life comes at a sensitive time in Saudi Arabia: his father, Crown Prince Sultan, is gravely ill with cancer, throwing the succession to King Abdullah into question.

Modus Kejahatan seems having a lot of resources to tell his readers about modus operandi (MO) of some crimes in Indonesia. Written in Indonesian (would be better if written bilingual) this blog can be a good hang out to those who wanted to know everything crimes: street crimes, theft, robbery, etc. Especially important for Indonesian who stay abroad and want to come home or foreigners (expats) in Indonesia.

I suspect the blogger is a police officer himself. A good way to share information.

Interesting analysis by Rami G. Khouri
… When I hear people speak about “what’s wrong with Islam” or “Islam and the West”, my immediate response is to remind them that there is no such thing as a single “Islam” that can be diagnosed, analyzed or engaged as a monolithic whole. The variety and dynamism of changes in Islamic societies, and in the hearts and minds of individual Muslims, is staggering these days. This is understandable, given the intensity of the degradation that many Muslim-majority societies have suffered in the past half-century of foreign manipulation, domestic mismanagement, and abuse of political power, and local deterioration of social, environmental and economic conditions.

…. It is noteworthy that the overwhelming majority of Muslims and Islamist groups has rejected the violent strategy of the small Salafist militants such as Al-Qaeda. But it is also worrying that the core grievances of both the militants and the non-violent majority are virtually identical. Salafist militants decide to bomb foreigners and Muslims alike, but most disgruntled Muslims deal with their predicament of imprecise citizenship rights in slightly incoherent and often corrupt countries by trying to lead more pious lives, while challenging the status quo and the power elite as they can.

If we disaggregate Islamic societies or Muslim-majority countries into our six categories of individuals, community, political, transnational and nationalist groups, core religious values, and a handful of extremists, we would appreciate that most Muslims and Islamist groups have responded to their individual and national predicaments with patience, rationality and non-violence….
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