LEBANON: Alien robot invades Beirut for groundbreaking Arab animation fest

A new invader has descended on Beirut: He is Grendizer. 

The iconic Grendizer of 1970s anime fame is the official poster boy (bot?) of the Beirut Animated film festival, which opens today as a collaboration between  Beirut-based Samandal Comics and the Metropolis art cinema.

Grendizer is a unifying figure for an entire generation of Lebanese who grew up during the country's bitter 15-year civil war. When Beirut was being torn to pieces by local warlords and their foreign-funded militias, the Grendizer cartoons were a welcome distraction for children who were more likely to miss school because of shelling than chicken pox.

Although Grendizer has been a great marketing tool, Metropolis' Rabih Khoury said he and the other organizers tried to emphasize the artistic range of animation, which is often dismissed as kid's stuff. To this end, Beirut Animated will feature 40 animated films and shorts, with a special emphasis on Arab productions.

The festival already has generated buzz with a number of clever mixed-media Internet shorts reimagining Beirut under siege by aliens, monsters and robots, both benign and menacing. The clip below features a somewhat awkward encounter between the cameraman and the robot guarding the entrance to the Candlelight Bar, an infamous prostitution den known locally as a "super nightclub," in West Beirut.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Named after famed scientist, robot readied for life of mall drudgery

He has facial expressions, speaks classical Arabic and wears elegant traditional robes. 

Perfect, scientists say, for directing hungry shoppers to the food court.

Students and faculty at United Arab Emirates University in Al-Ain have created what a team at the university's lab says is the world's first Arabic-speaking socially interactive robot.

Nicholas Mavrides, a professor of computer science, said the human-like Ibn Sina, named after the Islamic philosopher and scientist commonly known in English as Avicenna, said the robot could be used as a receptionist, salesman or shopping assistant at one of the Persian Gulf's many shopping malls.

"We're very close to being able to get him to work as a receptionist or a helper in a mall," he told Agence France Presse. "If we work on it in a group of five people, we will be able to develop those skills in six months to make him ready for full operations."

-- Los Angeles Times

Photo: Karim Sahib / AFP/Getty Images

UAE: Government to create DNA database of all residents, starting with children

Within a year, the United Arab Emirates will become the first country to begin building a national DNA database of all residents, the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper reported today.

Authorities say the program will help solve and prevent crimes, but critics see the database as a potentially dangerous violation of civil liberties, especially because the program is expected to be initiated as a security directive, thus bypassing the legislative process entirely.

Dr. Ahmed Marzooqi, the program's director, said lab technicians will begin swabbing cheeks of the general public as soon as the infrastructure is in place, starting with priority groups like minors.

“Most criminals start when they are young," Marzooqi said. "If we can identify them at that age, then we can help in their rehabilitation before the level of their crimes increase."

But Sir Alec Jeffreys, the British geneticist who invented the technology, questioned the ethics of the UAE's planned database, calling for a “full transparent justification of why a universal database is needed compared with a criminal DNA database." 

The National points out that although the UAE is home to a large and transient expatriate population, the DNA profiles would be stored in the database indefinitely, and that some information could be shared with other governments or Interpol, depending on specific treaties or cooperation agreements.

Marzooqi maintained the government is taking privacy concerns very seriously, and will implement "strict usage rules and will take secondary tests in court cases to verify the identity matches.”

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Image: DNA detail. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

SAUDI ARABIA: Will new university bring freedoms?

Saudi Arabia’s first coeducational university, a graduate research institution known as the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, is a test of “whether the kingdom is prepared to expand academic freedoms and women’s rights,” said Human Rights Watch.

The university, which opened Wednesday, is located about 50 miles north of the Red Sea city of Jidda. The Saudi-based English-language daily Arab News featured a glowing -- some would say glorifying -- account of the inauguration ceremony:

“Breathtaking, spectacular and just amazing." That is how Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony of the multibillion-dollar King Abdullah University of Science and Technology was described by a large section of the nearly 3,000 guests that included prominent Saudis, foreign leaders, Nobel laureates, researchers, scientists and journalists.”

SYRIA, ISRAEL: Facebook sparks new conflict over Golan Heights

Facebook users in the Golan Heights, which was captured from Syria by Israel in a 1967 war, now find themselves at the center of a new, virtual skirmish over the disputed territory.

Until recently, Facebook users in Golan towns were listed as living in Syria, prompting more than 2,600 Israelis to form a group called "Facebook, Golan residents live in Israel, not Syria." Now, users are allowed to choose whether their hometown is listed as part of Israel or Syria.

Honest Reporting, the Jerusalem-based organization behind the campaign, wrote on the group's page that "it is not for Facebook to decide the national origin of Golan residents."

Alex Morgalin, the creator of the group, wrote in an e-mail to The Times that the petition was not motivated by political considerations.

"We do not take a position on the future of the Golan," he wrote. "What we are concerned with is the present -- that people who identify as Israelis, living under Israeli law, were not allowed to identify themselves that way."

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Yahoo to join forces with Arabic site

Web giant Yahoo has announced its acquisition of the Arab-based site Maktoob.com.  

According to reports from Bloomberg, the New York Times, Agence France-Presse, and PC World, the purchase was announced at a news conference in Dubai today, though its specific terms were withheld.

At the conference, Yahoo’s Senior Vice President and Head of Emerging Markets Keith Nilsson said, “Maktoob is a terrific local brand. Yahoo will be combining its global technology and Maktoob’s local Arabic content.”

WORLD: Follow Los Angeles Times global coverage on Facebook

Now you can follow the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the world on Facebook. 

Get regular updates from war zones and centers of power from Times reporters by becoming a fan of the Los Angeles Times World on Facebook.

It's also a chance to comment on stories, make suggestions and interact with Times correspondents around the world.

-- Los Angeles Times

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Government bugs BlackBerrys with spy program

When BlackBerry users in the United Arab Emirates were urged to download what they thought was a routine software upgrade, they had no idea that by doing so they were installing a surveillance program that gives the state-controlled service provider Etisalat unfettered access to their personal mobile devices.

After finding out, over half of Etisalat’s customers, many of whom conduct sensitive business on their BlackBerrys, say they intend to cancel their contracts immediately, according to a poll conducted by Arabian Business and published by local tech-news website itp.net, which has been following the story closely.

The spyware was traced to SS8, an American company specializing in what it calls "lawful interception."

On Tuesday, the Canadian company that makes BlackBerry issued a statement denying any connection to the bugged application.

“Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry, but rather to send received messages back to a central server,” the statement read.

ISRAEL: Loose lips on Facebook, security service warns

Two Israelis meet in New York. Or Nepal. Or Mars. So, you're from Israel? Wha'dja do in the army? 

Within minutes, they work out the connections with enough information for a detailed flow chart of all common landmarks, army buds and acquaintances.

These days, they don't even have to meet. Social networks help keep tabs on old friends. Also to befriend – or "befoe" new ones. 

This week, Israel's General Security Service took the unusual step of issuing a warning urging Israelis to be alert to terrorist activity on the Internet. Specifically, people were warned against unsolicited approaches on social networks by strangers offering meetings abroad or easy money and seeking information. Seemingly innocent contacts might be terrorist efforts to recruit or kidnap. (Presumably this works both ways: A few months ago a Syrian paper had warned of Mossad and CIA recruiting efforts on Facebook as well.)

IRAN: Crackdown on cyber-dissidents continues

Maybe it was just a coincidence.

But two concurrent incidents shed light on Iranian authorities’ crackdown against blogs and opinion websites.

On Wednesday, Iran’s official news agency announced that the Islamic Republic had crushed a network of allegedly anti-religious websites.

On the same day, international human rights groups said that a young blogger -- Omid-Reza Mirsayafi -- had died in jail, where he was serving a sentence for “insulting authorities” on his website.

In the statement, officials said that they had “succeeded in identifying and destroying an organized anti-religious and anti-cultural Internet network through a smart and accurate tracking operation.”

Describing the so-called intelligence operation as if it were an achievement worthy of James Bond, the statement said that authorities had put an end to these websites “through a set of complicated technical-intelligence operations.”