RIM sees BB10 devices in stores soon after launch

WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) – Research In Motion is confident its new BlackBerry 10 devices will be 100 percent ready for the January 30 launch and available in stores “not too long after” that, Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear said on Tuesday.

“We’re working hard right now to make sure all the bits and pieces and all the details are in place for the date, when the devices will be available for consumers and enterprises,” Tear told Reuters in an interview.

RIM, which virtually invented the concept of mobile email with its first line of BlackBerry devices more than a decade ago, was roundly criticized for the botched 2011 launch of its PlayBook tablet computer, which RIM had hoped would compete with Apple’s blockbuster iPad.

The PlayBook looked pretty and had top-of-the-line hardware. But its software was far from complete at the launch and needed multiple updates.

The device also lacked the library of apps available on the iPad and on devices that run on Google Inc’s competing Android operating system.

RIM says its the new devices will be faster and smoother than its existing phones and have a large catalog of applications that are crucial to the success of any smartphone.

The company hopes the new devices will allow it to claw back some of the market share it has lost to Android and Apple phones.

Tear said RIM has used input from current BlackBerry users to influence the design of the new devices, The new phones both build on the strengths of RIM’s existing operating system and improve on its weak points, he said.

RIM last month began carrier testing on the new devices, with an initial rollout to more than 50 carriers. Tear, who joined RIM a few months ago from Sony Mobile Communications, said RIM was expanding that to a wider group of carriers across the globe.

“We submitted to 50 carriers to begin with, and obviously that number is increasing as we move forward,” he said. “Our ambition is to make this a global launch, everything will not happen at the same time, but it will be a global launch.”

RIM has said it initially plans to roll out a high-end touchscreen version of the device. Phones with the mini QWERTY keyboards that many long-time BlackBerry users adore will come a few weeks later, while lower-end versions of both devices will be launched later in the year.

The company has yet to say exactly when the devices will be available in stores worldwide or how much they will cost.

“We have to agree with carriers as well on what they want to announce when, so it’s not absolutely to our own discretion,” Tear said.

COST CUTTING

RIM, whose share price has fallen more than 90 percent from a 2008 peak around $ 148, is part way through a major restructuring, as it seeks to trim costs in the run-up to the launch of the new devices.

The company, which has also said it is examining its strategic options, is lowering operating costs by about $ 1 billion and cutting about 5,000 jobs, or about 30 percent of its workforce, by the time its fiscal year ends in early March.

“We are on track to deliver on that,” said Tear. “It is an ongoing process, when it comes to efficiencies and costs.”

RIM’s Chief Legal Officer Steve Zipperstein said the company is pushing ahead with its strategic review.

“The process is ongoing and it continues to be a focus on RIM’s senior management, but we have nothing to report at this moment,” said Zipperstein.

RIM shares, which have risen slightly over the last couple of months in the run-up to the launch of BB10 devices, closed 4.7 percent lower at $ 8.40 on Nasdaq. RIM’s Toronto-listed shares fell by a similar margin to C$ 8.40.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Leslie Adler and Tim Dobbyn)

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Twilight cast bids farewell at final premiere

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Thousands of screaming fans lined the black carpet late on Monday for the final “Twilight” film premiere as the cast of “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ bid farewell to the franchise and its loyal followers.

Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and other cast members greeted fans known as “Twi-hards,” many of whom had camped out for days in downtown Los Angeles to catch a glimpse of their favorite actors and see the film before it is released in theaters on Friday.

Breaking Dawn – Part 2 will see the love story of human Bella Swan (Stewart), vampire Edward Cullen (Pattinson) and werewolf Jacob Black (Lautner) come to a tantalizing end, when Bella and Edward are forced to protect their child from an ancient vampire coven.

Stewart, who was finally able to embrace her wild side by playing Bella as a vampire, hoped people would enjoy the ultimate transformation of her character in the film.

“Bella has worked pretty hard to get to the point where they can have it all, and it’s fun to be there. She’s always been human, but now that she’s not, you’re just in full blown vampire land and it feels funny in a great way,” Stewart told Reuters.

More than 2,200 fans from all over the world came to camp out on a concrete plaza in downtown Los Angeles last week, where Twilight movie studio Summit laid out activities and marathon screenings of the previous movies.

All of the film’s main actors spent time signing autographs and posing for photographs with the loyal fans who had camped out in chilly November weather over five days.

Pattinson, who plays vampire Edward Cullen, said he hoped the fans would like the franchise’s swan song.

“I hope they feel it kind of respects them, because I think in a lot of ways that’s what we were thinking when we were making it,” the actor said.

Lautner, who plays werewolf Jacob, said he’d be sad to say goodbye to the films and his character and hoped fans would be happy with the conclusion of the final film.

“I’m feeling fantastic, sad, emotional, there’s a lot of things going on inside of me right now but I’m just trying to soak up every moment because this means the world to me,” Lautner said.

The three lead stars were joined by fellow cast members including Nikki Reed, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning, as well as director Bill Condon and author Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight novels kicked off the franchise and phenomenon.

Meyer said she would miss watching the three lead cast members evolve as actors and characters in the films.

“It’s really been great to watch them grow up, particularly Kristen because her character gets to evolve so much in this film, and to watch her be all powerful and really get to where the character was always meant to go, to be the fiercest of the fierce, was really rewarding for me,” the author said.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Study suggests timing may be key in fish-asthma link

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Among thousands of Dutch children included in a new study, those who first ate fish between the ages of six months and one year had a lower risk of developing asthma-like symptoms later on than babies introduced to fish before six months of age or after their first birthdays.

According to lead author Jessica Kiefte-de Jong, of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, and her colleagues, one theory supported by the findings is that that early exposure to certain fatty acids in fish protects against the development of asthma.

The new results, based on more than 7,000 kids in The Netherlands, cannot prove that eating fish during a particular period in infancy prevented wheezing later on, but they add to other research that suggests a connection.

“The bottom line was that there is mixed evidence of whether the introduction of a seafood diet reduced the risk of asthma,” said Dr. T. Bernard Kinane, chief of the pediatric pulmonary unit for MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston, who was not involved in the new study.

Concern over seafood allergies prompts some parents and doctors to delay introducing fish into babies’ diets. However, some research has found that a mother’s fish consumption during pregnancy, or the baby’s consumption of it early on, may lower asthma risk.

To see whether the timing of a baby’s first encounter with fish was linked to differences in asthma rates later in childhood, Kiefte-de Jong’s team built on previous studies.

Using health and diet information from a group of 7,210 children born between 2002 and 2006 in Rotterdam, they found that 1,281 children ate fish in their first six months of life, 5,498 first ate fish in the next six months and 431 did not eat fish until after age one.

The researchers then looked at health records for when the children were about four years old, and how many parents reported that their kids were wheezing or short of breath.

Between 40 percent and 45 percent of parents of children who did not eat fish until after their first birthday said their kids wheezed, compared to 30 percent of kids who first ate fish when they were between six and 12 months old.

That, according to the researchers, works out to be about a 36 percent decreased risk of wheezing for the kids who first had fish between ages six months and one year.

Kids who first had fish before six months of age were at similar risk to those who were introduced to it after their first birthdays.

There was no significant association between the timing of fish introduction and shortness of breath.

“They found it was only protective between six and 12 months. That would make reasonable sense because that’s when the immune system is getting educated,” Kinane said.

He added that he was relieved the researchers also found no association between the amount of fish kids ate and their risk for asthma symptoms, which means that even a small amount of fish seems to be helpful.

“The reason I like that is that it reduces the risk of kids getting too much mercury,” said Kinane.

Although Kinane said introducing children to fish between six and 12 months of age may be worth doing, he noted the possibility that there could be other explanations for the finding.

For instance, families who feed their children fish earlier and more often may be different in a variety of ways from those who do not.

“I thought it was an OK study, but I think it needs to be validated again,” Kinane said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/X4kl8E Pediatrics, online November 12, 2012.

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Canada seen needing to spell out rules for natural gas projects

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – The fate of a handful of liquefied natural gas projects planned for Canada’s Pacific coast may depend on the Canadian government‘s willingness to spell out rules for foreign investment in the country’s energy sector, according to a study released on Thursday.

Apache Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Petronas, BG Group Plc and others are in the planning stages for LNG projects that would take gas from the rich shale fields of northeastern British Columbia and ship it to Asian buyers.

But the federal government’s decision last month to stall the C$ 5.2 billion ($ 5.2 billion) bid by Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas C$ 5.2 billion for Canada‘s Progress Energy Resources Corp could lessen the appetite of Asian buyers for Canadian LNG, energy consultants Wood Mackenzie said.

“Some potential off-takers of Canadian LNG like the idea … because it’s perceived as having low political risk, and another reason is because they see the potential for investment opportunities,” said Noel Tomnay, head of global gas at the consultancy.

“If there are going to be restrictions on how they access those opportunities, if acquisitions are closed to them, then clearly that would restrict the attractiveness of those opportunities. If would-be Asian investors thought that corporate acquisitions were an avenue that was not open to them then Canadian LNG would become less attractive.”

The Canadian government is looking to come up with rules governing corporate acquisitions by state-owned companies and has pushed off a decision on the Petronas bid as it considers whether to approve the $ 15.1 billion offer for Nexen Inc from China’s CNOOC Ltd.

Exporting LNG to Asia is seen as a way to boost returns for natural-gas producers tapping the Montney, Horn River and Liard Basin shale regions of northeastern British Columbia.

Though Wood Mackenzie estimates the fields contain as much as 280 trillion cubic feet of gas, they are far from Canada’s traditional U.S. export market, while growing supplies from American shale regions have cut into Canadian shipments.

Because the region lacks infrastructure, developing the resource will be expensive, requiring new pipelines and multibillion-dollar liquefaction.

Still Wood Mackenzie estimates that the cost of delivery into Asian markets for Canadian LNG would be in the range of $ 10 million to $ 12 per million British thermal units, similar to competing projects in the United States and East Africa.

($ 1 = $ 1.00 Canadian)

(Reporting by Scott Haggett; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Political Polling After the End of the Phone

With over a third of U.S. households forgoing the land-line and people using their phones less and less for talking, the phone call is no longer the best way for pollsters to reach the people they need to speak with. With that changing trend, this election season polling places like Gallup worked cell-phone calls into its repertoire to get a better reflection of society, Gallup spokesperson Frank Newport told Wired‘s Mat Honan. And, logically, as more people replace landlines for cell phones, polling would increasingly throw cell-phones into the mix. But, it doesn’t look like that’s really the next frontier in polling. For one, it’s expensive. A 1996 Federal regulation requires that calls to cell phones be hand-dialed, rather than computer generated, which costs more money because employing people (rather than machines) takes dollars, notes Bits Blog’s Quentin Hardy. Plus, because of caller-ID, guilting cell phone users into taking a poll proves harder than haranguing an unsuspecting land-line answerer. (Of course, many land-line owners have caller-ID, too.) So, if the annoying, always disruptive at the worst time, pollster phone call is on the outs, then what does the future of political polling hold?

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Survey Monkey

RELATED: Poll: Rick Perry Bests Mitt Romney Among Tea Partiers

For real. The amateur-looking website conducted a series of polls throughout this election period, at times with better accuracy than the over-the-phone guys. In an explanatory post on the site, the company explains it had 96 percent accuracy with its methods. Over 60,000 people took one of the site’s surveys the day before election day alone, SurveyMonkey’s vice president, Philip Garland, told Hardy. 

RELATED: Poll: GOP Race Now Between Newt, Sarah, Mitt and Everyone Else

Though some have questioned the accuracy of the online poll because of its newness to the field. Nate Silver, whose words on all things polling we should now consider law, confirmed that many of the most accurate polling came from online surveys. “When people are asked questions by a person, they feel like they should make a choice,” Garland added. People are more candid on the Internet, which is not at all surprising. 

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Text Messages

RELATED: Less Than Half of America Knows What GOP Stands For

Though a new survey says that text messaging is on the decline, Gallup is already experimenting with it as a polling technique in Central and South America, notes Honan. Though it doesn’t sound that different than screening a phone call, text messages are a lot less invasive and they don’t require an answer right away. Also, increasingly, it is how people do much of their communicating. 

Emails, Unfortunately

Though that sounds logical since so many Americans are accessible by email, it turns out it is too hard to get a good sample using email, since many people have multiple email addresses, and it’s hard to account for that difference. Also, isn’t it just so easy to click delete without opening? However, that hasn’t stopped certain organizations from using it, as Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Peter Coy explains. Some firms use email lists that aren’t representative of the general population, he notes. 

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U2′s Bono to urge U.S. politicians not to cut aid programs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner Bono will appeal to Democrats and Republicans during a visit to Washington this week to spare U.S. development assistance programs from cuts as Congress tries to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending reductions early next year.

The U2 lead singer’s visit comes as the Obama administration and congressional leaders try to forge a deal in coming weeks to avoid the economy hitting the “fiscal cliff” – tax increases and spending cuts worth $ 600 billion starting in January if Congress does not act.

Analysts say the absence of a deal could shock the United States, the world’s biggest economy, back into recession.

Kathy McKiernan, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign, said Bono will hold talks with congressional lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials during the November 12-14 visit.

During meetings he will stress the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and the need to preserve them to avoid putting at risk progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, she said.

Bono, a long-time advocate for the poor, will argue that U.S. government-funded schemes that support life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS sufferers, nutrition programs for malnourished children, and emergency food aid make up just 1 percent of the U.S. government budget but are helping to save tens of millions of lives in impoverished nations.

The One Campaign would not elaborate which lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials Bono will meet.

On Monday, Bono will discuss the power of social movements with students at Georgetown University. He will also meet new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a web cast discussion on Wednesday on the challenges of eradicating poverty.

(Editing by W Simon)

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FDA finds contamination issues at Ameridose

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health inspectors found numerous potential sources of contamination, including leaky ceilings and insects, at a drug-making facility that has the same founders as the specialty pharmacy linked to a deadly meningitis outbreak.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday released the results of a monthlong inspection of Ameridose, a Westborough, Mass.-based company that makes injectable drugs. The agency’s report, posted online, lists a host of problems at the plant, ranging from manufacturing to sterility to quality control.

Inspectors said they found insects within 10 feet of a supposedly sterile area where drugs were manufactured. In another case, inspectors reported a bird flying into a room where drugs are stored.

Elsewhere, the report cites leaks and cracks in the ceiling and walls of a clean room used to manufacture sterile drugs. The same room contained “thick residues that were orange, brown, and green” on equipment used for sterilization.

FDA inspectors also said the company did not investigate at least 53 incidents of bacterial contamination that arose during testing of stock drug solution.

“There is no documented evidence that your firm implemented permanent corrective actions to prevent these sterility events from recurring,” investigators wrote.

Ameridose agreed to shut down for inspection in October after tainted steroids from its sister company, the New England Compounding Center, were linked to a fungal meningitis outbreak that has spread to 19 states and caused 32 deaths. Ameridose operates two facilities in Westborough and provides medication in prefilled oral syringes to hospitals nationwide. Its drugs range from painkillers to blood thinners to pregnancy drugs.

Late last month, the company agreed to recall all of its products under pressure from FDA regulators. FDA officials previously said they have not connected any Ameridose drugs to infection or illness, but they have concerns about the products’ sterility.

Inspectors visiting the company’s plant also questioned whether some of Ameridose’s drugs work properly. Inspectors said that the company received 33 complaints from patients and doctors claiming “lack of effect” with various drugs.

Regulators report that Ameridose also failed to investigate potentially serious side effects reported with drugs. One complaint involving the company’s painkiller fentanyl states the “patient was over-sedated, unresponsive.” A complaint for oxytocin, which is used to induce labor in pregnant women, states that the “patient had shortness of breath, the throat was closing, and coughing.”

Ameridose said in a statement Monday that it will work to address the issues cited by FDA. But it stressed that “Ameridose’s history shows clearly that we have not had any instance of contaminated products over the course of the past six years, which covers the manufacture and shipment of 70 million units of product.”

Ameridose and NECC were founded by brothers-in-law Barry Cadden and Greg Conigliaro. Ameridose says it is a separate entity with distinct management. Since the outbreak, Cadden, the lead pharmacist at NECC, resigned his post as director at Ameridose. He is scheduled to testify before Congress at a hearing Wednesday examining the outbreak.

Last week Ameridose laid off nearly all of its 650 employees and 140 employees at its marketing and support arm, Medical Sales Management, due to the company’s extended shutdown.

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Did Petraeus' mistress leak classified info?

Former CIA Director David Petraeus and author Paula Broadwell pose for a photo. (AP)A recent University of Denver address by Paula Broadwell has set off a torrent of speculation as to whether her affair with Gen. David Petraeus resulted in a leak of classified national security information.

New York magazine got things started by posting a video of Broadwell, author of Petraeus' biography, "All In," discussing details of the Sept. 11 attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, at the Oct. 26 talk.

In the video, since posted by several sources to YouTube, Broadwell states: "Now, I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner, and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted."

That clip has led some to speculate whether Broadwell was exposing previously unreported details about the attack.

Other major media outlets, including CBS News and The Daily Beast, have picked up on the video clip. Wired goes a step further, stating as fact that Broadwell did reveal new information, writing: "It was a surprising disclosure, given the deep classification of the CIA's detention policies—and the enormous political stakes surrounding the Benghazi assault. But in many ways, it was only natural for Broadwell, given her evolution from Petraeus protegee to biographer to paramour and unofficial spokesperson."

And Politico points to a July panel discussion at the Aspen Security Forum during which Broadwell claims to have had access to classified information and to have attended high-level security meetings with Petraeus.

However, Broadwell's sound bite could be entirely innocuous, New York magazine notes: "It's also possible that she just misunderstood something she heard on Fox News."

The Fox News Channel reference concerns a report FNC reporter Jennifer Griffin made earlier the same day as Broadwell's university address, in which Griffin cited sources claiming that the CIA was holding high-value detainees in the Benghazi facility at the time of the attack.

You can watch an excerpt from Broadwell's University of Denver address below:

Griffin has since updated her reporting, noting that a well-placed Washington source confirms that Libyan militiamen were being held at the CIA annex and may have been a possible reason for the attack. Multiple intelligence sources, she also reported, said "there were more than just Libyan militia members who were held and interrogated by CIA contractors at the CIA annex in the days prior to the attack. Other prisoners from additional countries in Africa and the Middle East were brought to this location."

The CIA has denied keeping militants at the facility. CIA spokesman Preston Golson said, "Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless."

Basically, so far we have a lot of speculation, with individuals commenting on a potential national security leak concerning details of a situation the government says never took place. Stay tuned.

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BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman

LONDON (Reuters) – The BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said on Sunday, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.

“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”

George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.

The witness in the report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.

Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.

The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.

But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.

THOMPSON’S LEGACY

Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.

In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organisational changes.

One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.

“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.

Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.

“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.

“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC then there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.

Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.

McAlpine, a close ally of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.

Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognisable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.

INQUIRIES

Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.

Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.

Funded by an annual licence fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.

Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.

He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.

Murdoch himself was watching from afar.

“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.

It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.

Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.

Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)

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Malaysian charged with Facebook insult of sultan; sister says he’ll file police complaint

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – The sister of a Malaysian man who has been charged with insulting a state sultan on Facebook says he is innocent and plans to lodge a complaint over his detention.

Anisa Abdul Jalil, sister of Ahmad Abdul Jalil, says her brother was charged Thursday with making offensive postings on Facebook last month.

She says the charges are ridiculous because there is no evidence linking Ahmad to the posts in question, which were made by someone using the name “Zul Yahaya.”

Ahmad was freed on bail Thursday after six days of detention. Anisa says he will file a complaint with police for unlawful detention and intimidation.

Nine Malaysian states have sultans and other royal figures. Though their roles are largely ceremonial, acts provoking hatred against them are considered seditious.

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