divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/17248?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Moonie+peace+group+to+hold+biggest+UK+eventch=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Religion+%28News%29%2CKorea+%28News%29%2CUK+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Riazat+Buttc7=2008_11_21c8=1122001c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Religionc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FReligion" width="1" height="1" //divpA peace group involved with the controversial Unification Church, who are often given the name of Moonies, is tomorrow staging its biggest ever event in Britain. /ppAnti-cult activists fear it could mark a British renaissance for the group, which experienced a growth in numbers during the 1970s and 80s./ppThe Global Peace Festival, at the Excel Centre in the London docklands, is expected to attract thousands of activists from across Europe and features addresses from Preston Moon, the third son of the church's founder, and Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman./ppCarrying the slogan of "One family under god", the event has performances from diverse acts such as the Royal Philharmonic Ensemble and the Muslim singer Dawud Wharnsby. /ppThere are also workshops on family, marriage and the environment. The morning session is exclusively for members of Ambassadors for Peace, a global network with its roots in the Unification Church./ppThe Universal Peace Federation, formerly known as the Inter-religious and International Federation for World Peace, which has Moon as its founder, is organising tomorrow's festival./ppIts spokesman Tim Read told the Guardian that although the UPF was a direct result of the church, not all its members were unificationists. "Our association with the Unification Church can put some off but people are starting to get over that./pp"They're seeing that we're practising what we believe in. When people come to UPF events they're very interested that we can bring them together without an agenda. We're trying to be a catalyst for like-minded organisations who focus on community cohesion and inter-religious co-operation."/ppHe said the level of cooperation from groups and individuals had been "surprisingly good". /ppHe added: "People have biased views of new religious movements, all new religious groups have these problems and we're no different. We want to hold this every two years and get more sponsorship and partners. If we get more support we get more mainstream"./ppAttempts to enlist the support of public figures has had mixed results. Earlier this year, Shahid Malik, the minister for international development, pulled out of a Commons meeting organised by the UPF after learning of its links to the church. Julia Goldsworthy, the Lib Dem MP for Falmouth and Camborne also withdrew once she too became aware of the connection./ppHer party colleague, Brake, who is leading the session on community cohesion, has defended his decision to take part. "I don't see eye to eye with their views but I don't see any particular problem with speaking at their event, especially if it gives me an opportunity to challenge what Rev Moon advocates."/ppThe Unification Church owns, operates or subsidises many international bodies involved with political, commercial, cultural and social enterprises. br /Members, who prefer to be called Unificationists, believe Moon is the messiah and that he and his wife have laid the foundation for establishing the kingdom of heaven on Earth./ppAccording to Inform, an independent charity that focuses on new religious movements, the church has 10 meeting houses across Britain in Greater London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Bath and Bromley. It also owns houses in Kent and Wiltshire for larger gatherings. /ppIn 2007, the movement reported there were around 1,200 members in Britain, slightly more than half of whom were born in the movement and were still minors./ppOne campaigner, Audrey Chaytor of Family, Action, Information and Resource, said: "They might want you to believe they're talking about peace but their aim is to recruit."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/religion"Religion/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/korea"North and South Korea/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227288014953112117240433070"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227288014953112117240433070" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

A couple of weeks ago I headed over to Belgium as part of my ongoing TechCrunch Euro Tour, to get a taste of the local web/mobile entrepreneur community (BTW, come to the London and Helsinki events soon). I hooked-up with another TechCrunch writer, Robin Wauters, who had kindly arranged a TechCrunch Belgium meetup in Gent. Gent is quickly becoming one of the main places to startup in that country, as it’s a short drive from Brussels (which has the main airport and the excellent Eurostar), but Gent is cheaper, somewhat prettier and is a big university city with lots more potential talent to draw from. The startups each pitched their wares and here’s what I found. [Apologies for the delay in posting this, I've been visiting tech companies in China, of which, more later]. Thanks to Bart Claeys for the photos, below.

Adhese Control
Adhese has come up with a way of tracking the rich media ad campaigns increasingly littering the Web. It can tell you where your Flash creative is appearing and what people are doing with it, even if it goes through a network like Doubleclick. It will report impressions and clicks and interations like numbers of mouse rollovers etc. Interestingly, it will also track Flex / Air apps. You just add a small line of code to the banner or app. The cost is impression based. [Crunchbase]

Attentio
In May this year Attentio, which develops technology in the social media analytics (sentiment, topics, & brand profiles), won €1.5Million in backing. Their showcase blog trend search Trendpedia.com is very interesting - here’s TechCrunch’s trend graph. Their Attentio Brand Dashboard (SaaS) is sold through advertising and PR agencies which use it for issue detection, influencer identification, marketing ROI and basically to understand their word of mouth brand. Their main differentiation is being able to do this across European languages and sources. The average selling price is Euro 15-25,000 per year. They have deals now with the likes of Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson and Lexus. It’s an interesting market - similar trend tracker Umbria was acquired and TNS bought Cymfony. According to Gartner the “Social media analysis” industry will be worth $3bn by 2013. But of course, at the end of the day this is still anapp that has to be sold by humans, rather than scale virally across the web. [Crunchbase]

Casius.com
Casius is a service aimed at home owners who want to find trusted tradesmen, but they’ve been a long time coming. They raised EUR4m in 2000-2004 but burnt the lot, did an MBO in 2005 and since then are generating EUR6m per year in revenue from their service in Belgium. Tradespeople pay to go on the service and are matched to customers, not unline the UK-based MyBuilder.com. I rather wonder why it’s taken them so long to really get going and question the strategy of “getting big in Belgium first,” but the model seems predicated on local salesforces selling the service into the trade. That doesn’t scale too fast. And I hate their .com home page. Village People anyone? [Crunchbase]

Gloweme
They want to launch an MVNO in Belgium which is basically Blyk but with mobile web adverts instead of SMS. Blyk, if you recall, offers a very cheap mobile service aimed at the youth market in return for their opting into targetting advertising offers and campaigns. Gloweme think it can pull off a virtually free MVNO by allowing users to market the service to their friends in exhange for credit. Think Multi-Level-Marketing but in mobile. It must be said that ideas for MVNOs are not normally pitched at events like this, but I guess you’ve got to start somewhere. Odd place to start though. CEO Frank Bekkers “is an expert in MLM”. Ah…. [CrunchBase]

Contact Office
Self funded and profitable since 2003 they are a SAAS service for 450k users. It offers a full-blown suite of products like shared calendaring, contacts, shared bookmark, IMAP client, pretty much you name it. It has a sophisticated Ajax front end, drag and drop, Java backed end and was developed for modular integrations. You can manage your data (emails, contacts, meetings, documents, tasks) in this “virtual office” from anywhere. When I asked what the exit was for this business, the answer was “a trade sale”. Ultimately this is basically the opposite of Web 2.0 - lots of apps wrapped up instead of best of breed allowed to flourish as independent apps. But they clearly have a business with customers and revenues, so you can’t knock that.[Crunchbase]

IntroNiche
Their pitch: The Credit Crunch means you need to do great marketing. You need to attract customers and retain them. But it seems one company’s giveaway is another company’s gift. So this is a “B2B Craigslist for offers”. One business has a giveaway that is another business’s potential offer to get new business. So businesses trade these items. It sounds like it could work. Maybe. Just as well they are staying in consulting, while waiting for some kind of critical mass to develop.[Crunchbase]

Mollom
Mollom is a web site and protection moderation service which comprises some of the people who came up with the Drupal content management system, which is impressive. Right now they are concentrating on developing Spam filtering systems for companies, and they have already signed up a number of large players like MTV. It’s a hosted service with an open API. They don’t believe spam classification is binary ( in the same way Akismet does). Although they use Captcha’s only 4%of visitors have to fill out a captacha. So far they have blocked 30m spams on 3,000 sites. There is also a further model here which is bubbling up the best content - because if you can find the worst (spam) you might be able to find the best. It’s a Freemium model and they are self-funded. I think this has long legs. [Crunchbase]

iStockCV
Coming from the premise that most jobs sites suck and don’t appeal to the new online generation, IStockCV will publish your CV in many languages and allow you to upload a video CV as well. It’s a social network for CVs aimed at new generation used to doing things like a Seesmic video. They have also Integrated Tokbox so they can do live meetings. Promising. [Crunchbase]

KnowledgePlaza
This is a Web-based secure knowledge sharing platform with some social tools. You can share and manage bookmarks, documents and files, e-mails, contacts, microblogging. Apparently not so much like Huddle or Basecamp (project management) as “knowledge sharing”. Competitors might be Connect Beam, which is social bookmarking in the enterprise. Started in January they have a team of 15 and are backed by EUR500,000. At the moment they have 1,000 users with one big client and can’t say who it is, although there seemed to be hints that it was a global consulting firm. My stumbling block with KnowledgePlaza is that they have to sell the service into clients, which would slow adoption. But each to their own.[Crunchbase]

MyOwnDB
They bill this as “Microsoft Access on the Web” or the missing Microsoft / Google app for databases. Still in demo mode, MyOwnDB is an open source database application you can download and run on your own server or have your data stored on one of their servers. Competitors would include Dabble, CouchDB or EditGrid, but the difference is that it’s open source and you can use it right now. They says CouchDB is too technical for the average user. And MySQL is a great database, but if you want to share data you still have to develop a product doing that. They are aiming at the installed base of Microsoft Access business users. The two guys behind it founded UploadforMe.com. [Crunchbase]

Happenr
With the quintessential Web 2.0 “r” in their domain, these guys are attempting to build the “largest database of events going on in Europe”. Their point is simple: Eventbrite have ticketing but no content. Eventful has content but not ticketing. Happenr combines both and is focused on European events. It will therefore compete with Amiando in Europe. An iPhone app is on the way and they have seeded the engine with lots of events organisers. It ended up getting some traction on TechCrunch. But clearly work is needed on the database if this is to be truly Pan-European. A search for events in Birmingham, considered to be the UK’s second city after London, turned up results listed as being in Edinburgh and some that didn’t mention Birmingham at all. However, I can see a need for an engine like this - especially one that can track the myriad number tech events across Europe. (Disclosure: One of our writers, Robin Wauters, is an investor and acting as head of marketing in his limited spare time). [Crunchbase].

Radionomy
Radionomy allows users to set up an online radio station. It features pre-programmed music shows, libraries, the ability to upload your own music library (apparently they will be paying licenses for all this music, even the stuff users upload). Aiming for 200,000 stations and EUR63m in revenues - quite a tall order as right now they have about 1,000 stations and are aiming for 4,000 by the end of this year. This sounds like an attempt to create reach across a long tail of user generated radio stations and monetise accordingly. Radionomy shares revenues with their DJs based on audience. It sells 4 mins of advertising per hour compared to 18mins for commercial raido. They wan to create the Long Tail of radio. They have about a million euros in funding. However they have “20,000 on the waiting list” which rather puzzled me. If this is Web 2.0, why should there be a “waiting list” at all? [Crunchbase].

Tagger.fm
“Tag your favorite music by sending us an sms while you’re listening to the radio, at a concert or wherever you may be. By collecting these songs they become instantly available to share with you’re friends, and also give you the opportunity to purchase or to see upcoming concerts.” On first inspection this appears to be a clone of Shazam, but this is more like a service aimed at event organisers and radio stations so they can monetize live events, improve reach and ticket sales and get feedback. Sounds like a good business, but may not scale that fast in its present incarnation. [Crunchbase]

Tikitag
Profiled on GigaOm earlier this year, this Alcatel-Lucent internal startup is an RFID tag reading system designed to plug into the growing movement of the “internet of things”. This makes sense - we interact with 3-4,000 objects a day. With around $10 million in corporate funding, tikitag is a set of RFID- and Near Field Communication-enabled tags and a standards-based reader which uses both the ID of the tag and the location of the tag reader. Anyone can use it and they are selling the $50 hardware starter kit on Amazon in the US. It will be 24 euros in Europe. A tag could activate an iTunes song or a poster - you name it. There have been other proprietary attempts like this but a standards-based approach may win out. With the world seeded with Titkitag’s, Alcatel-Lucent will sell subscriptions for business users to link their applications with consumers, thus helping their own equipment business. This is also a “Long tail loyatiy systems for tiny companies”. All they need now is for consumer to “get it”… [Crunchbase]

Tunz
The Tunz boss decided not to show up for the pitch, but at least his employee did his best. This is a mobile wallet/payment system. You can pay anyone with a mobile phone number and receive payments via SMS. Think paypal for mobile. Started in Jan 2007, Tunz will also integratae loyalty points, has viral distribtuion, and the clients money is always redeemable through bank wire. Use your iPhone Safari navigator to visit https://m.tunz.com/ to access a version of Tunz.com optimized for your iPhone to access your account history, manage your alias, and recharge your wallet using your credit card. They only operate in Belgum but in January next year they want to expand. So far they have 3,500 users using it at places like the Carrefour supermarkets.[CrunchBase]

Yuntaa
They bill themselves as “more than just online file backup”. You can also synchornise with your PC, share files or edit and save your documents. So far they have 40,000 users with little marketing and just won a Series A funding round. The focus is security and piracy as against other file storage networks. It’s based on Sun and Oracle platfroms and also offers a business version for small busineses. Their argument against Silicon Valley startup Dropbox is that with Yuntaa you can do that and other things.[Crunchbase]

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/7c/cd/0009cd7c.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/7c/cd/0009cd7c_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_642428" alt="Islam: An Historical Introduction"//a/divbr/ div class="center"bGerhard Endress, "Islam: An Historical Introduction" (The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys)/bbr/ Edinburgh University Press | 2nd Edition (2002) | English | ISBN: 0748616209 | 314 pages | PDF | 4 MB/divbr/ This highly acclaimed survey provides a thoughtful and concise account of all aspects of Islam in history. The new edition has been corrected and revised, and includes a fully updated bibliography.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/88242?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+RBS+bosses+apologise+to+shareholdersch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Royal+Bank+of+Scotland+%28Business%29%2CBanking+sector+%28Business%29%2CBusinessc5=Investments%2CBusiness+Marketsc6=Jill+Treanorc7=2008_11_21c8=1121573c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Royal+Bank+of+Scotlandc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FRoyal+Bank+of+Scotland" width="1" height="1" //divpThe bosses of Royal Bank of Scotland yesterday told shareholders for the first time that they were "sorry" for the plight of the Edinburgh-based bank which is likely to be 60%-owned by the government after a pound;20bn bail-out was endorsed by investors./ppAddressing shareholders at a hastily convened meeting in Edinburgh, out-going chairman Sir Tom McKillop took personal responsibility as he said he was "profoundly sorry" for the situation that had forced the bank to accept the government rescue package./ppIn a candid address, McKillop, who will leave at next year's annual meeting, made it clear that the "buck stops with me as chairman". /ppUntil yesterday Sir Fred Goodwin, the chief executive, had refused to utter the word sorry. On his last day in the job which will be taken over today by Stephen Hester, Goodwin responded to a question from a former employee who is also a shareholder by saying that he was "extremely sorry"./pp"Accountability has been allocated and fully accepted," said McKillop./ppShareholders overwhelmingly backed the fund-raising package under which the government will underwrite a pound;15bn share issue at 65p a share and buy pound;5bn of preference shares. The shares closed yesterday at 46p, up 3.7p indicating that the government could end up with a 58% stake in the bank unless the share price rises through 65p which might encourage existing investors to participate in the cash call./ppIn his address to investors, McKillop refused to admit that the acquisition of parts of Dutch bank ABN Amro at the height the credit crunch last year had caused the bank's problems. But he admitted that the deal - the biggest financial services takeover of all time - had "added to our difficulties"./pp"In retrospect that higher exposure to assets, which later became very difficult to trade ... increased the short-term vulnerability of the group to the financial crisis as it intensified this year," McKillop said./ppHe also admitted that the bank had been run on too low a capital base - what he called an "efficient balance sheet" - for too long. "Had we known the severe market dislocation and economic deterioration we would face, we would, of course, have built up larger capital reserves earlier," said McKillop./ppThis was a point picked up by shareholder Alan Jack who said a prudent bank should have build up a "buffer of capital". He accused the bank of adopting a "gung-ho attitude"./ppThe bank had been forced into a record-breaking pound;12bn rights issue in April to shore up its balance sheet, but the deterioration in markets after that forced the government to devise its bank bail-out plan which will now involve a further pound;20bn being raised. The bank's shares have collapsed. Worth pound;60bn at its peak, RBS is now valued at a tenth of that./ppMcKillop was at pains to apologise to employees and customers. "I am sorry about the very real financial and therefore human cost that those who have invested in us now feel and recognise how seriously this has impacted shareholder confidence in RBS," he said. /ppA former chief executive of AstraZeneca, McKillop said: "In over 40 years of my working life I have had many difficult working experiences but none like this./pp"The challenges we must now address as an institution, as a country and indeed as part of the world's financial system, are unprecedented," said McKillop./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/royalbankofscotlandgroup"Royal Bank of Scotland/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking"UK banking sector/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227227727899112100421654622"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227227727899112100421654622" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/16518?ns=guardianpageName=Film%3A+%27This+is+as+good+as+it+gets%27ch=Filmc3=The+Guardianc4=Drama+%28Film+genre%29%2CFilm%2CCulture+section%2CKen+Loach+%28Film%29c5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Kirsty+Scottc7=2008_11_21c8=1120939c9=articlec10=GUc11=Filmc12=Dramac13=c14=h2=GU%2FFilm%2FDrama" width="1" height="1" //divpOn screen, we expect Robert Carlyle to be a particular type of man: damaged and disenfranchised; the loser; the loner; the archetypal tortured soul. "These are the kind of characters that crop up time and time again throughout my whole career," says the 47-year-old Scot. "The question is whether they are pulled towards me or whether I am pulled towards them?"/ppAn answer of sorts came when Carlyle was sent a script for the 2006 BBC homelessness drama Born Equal. He says he felt his heart sink when he looked at the role picked out for him, a troubled ex-con trying to get his life back on track. "I thought, I've played this guy before, it's too similar. Then I thought about it. I thought, is there anything wrong with that? What's wrong with re-examining that? Going back to that person again, shooting it slightly differently./pp"My first love is art and I see a lot of things in an artistic way. And this is like a series of self-portraits in a sense. This is painting an image of me on a different path, a different road. That's interesting. If that has to be my fate, I'm happy with that, to play these kinds of guys. A lot of the characters I play have problems, they are marginalised, they have serious psychological problems, problems with relationships, with childhood. These are big subjects, big subjects. You can't balk at work like that. As an actor, that's as good as it gets."/ppAnd so it is with Summer, Carlyle's next project. Directed by Kenny Glenaan, it tells the story of two schoolfriends facing up to loss and disillusionment in middle-age. Carlyle plays Shaun, labelled a violent bully by the education system that cast him adrift, a man whose response to dyslexia was to crush his own hand in a vice. The role won Carlyle a Bafta Scotland best actor nomination, and the PPG award for best performance in a British film at this year's Edinburgh film festival. The jury called it a "flawless performance in a great, uncompromising film"./pp"I'm 47. I understand Shaun," says Carlyle. "I understand that man. I don't have any regrets in my own life, but I can sympathise and empathise with this guy who wakes up and realises his life is past and gone and what has it been for?"/ppWe meet in Glasgow, Carlyle's hometown, where he lives with his wife, makeup artist Anastasia Shirley, and their three young children. We're not so very far from his birthplace in Maryhill. The hotel is just round the corner from his house, and so thickly carpeted you move without sound. He is in the lobby before you notice him, a slight figure in jeans and old leather, a scarf wound tight around his neck. /ppCarlyle hopes people will see past the deprivation and frustration of Shaun's existence to a man sustained by a deep, abiding friendship and harbouring a hidden sense of self. He's always looking for what lies beneath, he says, even in the most unhinged of personas. "He has had a bad hand in his life, has Shaun; he has been dealt a bad fucking hand. He tries his best, he knows, shit, he shouldn't have crushed his hand. But in these films, even in Ken Loach's films, there's always a heart; there's always a human heartbeat behind it. Kenny is a bit like the spawn of Ken Loach, you can see that in his work. It is the people. They tell the stories."/ppLoach gave Carlyle his first break, casting him in Riff Raff in 1991. Roles in Cracker, Trainspotting and The Full Monty followed quickly and made him a star. Summer, was filmed in Bolsover, not too far from Sheffield, where The Full Monty was set. As Gaz, unemployed steelworker turned stripper, he had been the heart of one of the biggest British films of all time. /pp"I had forgotten Bolsover is very close to Sheffield and Sheffield is the eye of the storm for me. I was like the fucking prodigal son. It was extraordinary; I felt I am actually theirs. That film, The Full Monty, was their film, therefore I'm their actor and I'm back home again." Carlyle was mobbed. Every day on set he was surrounded by kids, slapped on the back, asked for autographs. "It was a fucking great experience," he says./ppAs with The Full Monty, Summer's backdrop is bleak (even if the story, ultimately, is not), that of a land and people hollowed out by industrial decline. "We were in the back of this one house filming," says Carlyle. "If you had said it was derelict and no one had lived there for a year I would have believed you. There was a family there. You could not see the fucking floor for rubbish. It was horrific. As a person, it reminds you of the shit that some people have to go through on a daily basis. It's all too common somewhere like Bolsover and well beyond that. There is nothing there for these people any more. You can't escape the politics. It's in the landscape. That's what the film shows, why these guys are here doing fucking nothing because all this was taken away. /pp"I think it is one of the few locations that would have really, really worked for this film because of that backdrop, that background. Do you know, I used to think they were all fucking hills, these things - didn't realise they were slag heaps. It looks like a lunar fucking landscape. There are very few places like that that show the desolation, the emptiness."/ppCarlyle grows animated, hands sketching what he witnessed. But that's as overtly political as he gets these days. Last year, it emerged that Carlyle had voted for the Scottish National Party in the 2007 Holyrood elections and he was dismayed to discover himself painted as something of a poster boy for the nationalists. "I voted SNP because of the war," says Carlyle. "I'm not someone who believes in wasting my vote. I looked at all the parties and thought, 'Fuck it.' At the time, even the Liberal Democrats were not saying enough for me in terms of the antiwar stuff. I was not hearing it. That was why I went that way. I don't know if I would go that way again. I don't like to get pulled into it. It's too easy for people to talk about this; he's this or he's that. I'm apolitical in that sense. I don't take a great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more." /ppWhere he is prepared to speak out is about Scotland's film industry, or lack thereof. He'd love to work more north of the border - it would mean he could go home to his kids every night - but the recent Stone of Destiny was Carlyle's first film in Scotland for 12 years, and it took a Hollywood director and Canadian money to make it happen./pp'We don't have a film industry here. I would argue that vehemently. An industry is something that feeds itself and grows. We make one film every 10 years that gets any kind of notice. You can't call that an industry. Over the past 12 to 15 years I have probably had about five or six scripts that have been Scots films shooting here. Not one of them has fucking happened. I don't know the answer to that. It's got to the stage now with my agent, if something Scottish comes in it has to be financed, otherwise I'm not going to read it because it depresses me."/ppPart of the frustration comes from Carlyle's involvement in The Meat Trade, a darkly comic retelling of the exploits of Edinburgh's notorious grave robbers Burke and Hare. The screenplay is by Irvine Welsh; Carlyle, Samantha Morton and Colin Firth are all on board, and Antonia Bird is directing, but it has still been a struggle, he says, to try to get the film made in Scotland - production has now been postponed until next year. /ppHe's been luckier with another of his projects. A chance remark in a previous interview that he has always wanted to play Leonard Rossiter has led to an approach by a film company considering a biopic of the late comedian. "I love comedy, and he's a fucking genius. I would love to play him. And, would you believe, I get an email from a guy in London saying they were starting to make a biopic of Leonard Rossiter, so I'm going to see the treatment." /ppAfter Summer, Carlyle will next be seen in a feature-length version of the cult US TV series 24. He spent part of the summer filming in South Africa with Kiefer Sutherland. The two have been friends since appearing together in the 2001 POW movie To End All Wars, and Sutherland had been trying for some time to get Carlyle involved in his hit franchise. 24 was everything that Summer isn't: big, showy, fast-paced. Carlyle, who plays agent Jack Bauer's best friend, had a ball, even though he is on record as saying the bigger the budget, the less a film is about./pp"Something like 24 is enjoyable for an actor for entirely different reasons," he says. "What are you supposed to say? That it's not right to enjoy it? Why is that not right? Something like 24 is incredibly popular. Thirty to 40 million people watched it in the States. You have to take that. I don't have any snobbery about that./pp"You know, I have never really approached them in different ways; big or small budget. The same honesty is required whether a film is big budget. I enjoy that. I'm fortunate in my career I'm getting the chance to do that, that I can play across the genres. I have got to be grateful for that."/pp· Summer is released on December 5./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/drama"Drama/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/kenloach"Ken Loach/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Filmcountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227227727831112100421654622"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Filmcountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227227727831112100421654622" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/82122?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+McKillop+takes+responsibility+for+RBS+plightch=Businessc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Royal+Bank+of+Scotland+%28Business%29%2CBanking+sector+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CUK+news%2CScotland+%28News%29c5=Investments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Marketsc6=Jill+Treanorc7=2008_11_20c8=1121358c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Royal+Bank+of+Scotlandc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FRoyal+Bank+of+Scotland" width="1" height="1" //divpSir Tom McKillop, the outgoing chairman of a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/royalbankofscotlandgroup"Royal Bank of Scotland/a, today took personal responsibility for the plight of the Edinburgh-based bank which is now set to be majority owned by the taxpayer./ppHe told shareholders assembled at an extraordinary meeting convened to sanction the record-breaking £20bn fundraising that the "buck stops with me as chairman". He said he was "profoundly sorry" for the situation that forced RBS to seek a government bail-out./ppHe acknowledged the timing of the takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro at the height of the credit crisis last year had "added to our difficulties"./ppIn his most candid assessment of the problems facing RBS, which was valued at £60bn at it peak and is now worth just a tenth of that, McKillop admitted the bank had been run on too low a capital base for too long. /ppThe bank had already raised a record-breaking £12bn in April to shore up its balance sheet but, in October, had to admit that it needed government support to raise a further £20bn, more than it is valued on the stock market./ppShareholders today approved the taxpayer bail-out through which the government is underwriting a share issue at 65p a share. The taxpayer is likely to be left holding 58% of the bank if its shares remain below this level as they were today when they closed at 46p, up 3.7p./ppMcKillop told shareholders in Edinburgh: "I expressed the considerable regret of the board at the time of both our rights issue in the spring and in October when this further capital raising was announced. This regret I hope is clear but I want to make it unequivocally to all of our shareholders and the many people who depend in some way on the success of our company./pp"I, as the chairman of RBS, both personally and in the office I hold, am profoundly sorry about the position we have reached. I feel this sincerely, on a number of levels and for a variety of reasons."/ppMcKillop highlighted some of the main reasons for his regret./pp"I am sorry about the very real financial and therefore human cost that those who have invested in us now feel and recognise how seriously this has impacted shareholder confidence in RBS," he said. "And I am also sorry if any of our customers have suffered anxiety as a result of the situation./pp"But I am also acutely aware - every day - of the fact that thousands of our employees, past and present, have believed so much in their company that they gave more than their labour to it. They bought shares, share-save options and Buy as You Earn, often from very modest incomes. They were proud of what RBS had achieved and were delighted to be associated with it."/ppHe went on to say: "The buck stops with me as chairman and with the leadership of the group. Accountability has been allocated and fully accepted."/pp"For my part, I will retire as chairman at the 2009 AGM when the new board structure is in place."/ppSir Fred Goodwin, the chief executive, will leave the board today, with replacement Stephen Hester taking up the role later this month./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/royalbankofscotlandgroup"Royal Bank of Scotland/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking"UK banking sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/scotland"Scotland/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227201977829112017282542753"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227201977829112017282542753" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

p Certaines choses sont immuables, c'est le cas de notre zapping qui revient régulièrement vous informer des dernières nouveautés du coté de la fantasy. /p ul li a href=http://www.elbakin.net/plume/xmedia/fantasy/news/zapping/BSC-front-733673.jpgimg style=float:right; alt=Best Served Cold 1 src=http://www.elbakin.net/plume/xmedia/fantasy/news/zapping/thumb/BSC-front-733673.jpg //aEt nous commençons aujourd'hui avec la nomination des a href=http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/11/18/narnia-screenwriters-in-talks-to-write-captain-america/ lang=enscénaristes de citeThe First Avenger: Captain America/cite/a, film de super héros prévu pour le 6 mai 2011. Et là où cela nous concerne, c'est qu'il s'agit du duo Christopher Markus et Stephen McFeely, qui étaient tous les deux en charge des différents scripts des citeChroniques de Narnia/cite. C'est donc une première pour les deux scénaristes qui n'avaient encore jamais abordé ce genre de film. /lili Nous vous parlions il y a quelque temps de l'a href=http://elbakin.net/fantasy/news/8515-Ninja-Scroll-Adapte-En-Film-Live-Par-La-Warner lang=fradaptation de citeNinja Scroll/cite/a en film live. Leonardo DiCaprio, qui produira le film via sa société emAppian Way/em, nous a gratifié de quelques a href=http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/929/929319p1.html?RSSwhen2008-11-12_030000RSSid=929319 lang=frrévélations/a à ce sujet. Choc ! Il ne jouera pas dans citeNinja Scroll/cite, ni d'ailleurs dans l'adaptation d'citeAkira/cite qu'il a lancé au même moment, disant qu'il « n'était pas vraiment intéressé ». Il a ajouté également qu'il savait qu'un public de fans convaincu l'attendait au tournant et qu'ils « feraient de leur mieux et qu'ils ne commenceraient pas le tournage tant que le script ne serait pas au point. » /lili Une brève au ton un peu plus joyeux même si il n'y a pas matière à plaisanterie, mais la série citeHarry Potter/cite fait partie des a href=http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/edinburgh/Thieves-have-wizard-flying-off.4689788.jp lang=enlivres qui disparaissent/a le plus des bibliothèques écossaises. Alors tours de magie ou malveillance manifeste ? Il semblerait qu'il s'agisse bien de la seconde possibilité puisque le nombre d'ouvrages dérobés est en augmentation par rapport à l'année dernière. D'ailleurs certaines bibliothèques ont du faire appel à des huissiers et à porter ce genre d'affaires devant les tribunaux. /lili Après avoir mentionné dernièrement que de plus en plus d'a href=http://elbakin.net/fantasy/news/8560-Les-Editions-Night-Shade-Se-Lancent-Dans-Lebook lang=fréditeurs se lançaient dans l'eBook/a, cet a href=http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/web_tech/cell_phone_book_company_counts_a_half_million_users_100548.asp?c=rss lang=enarticle/a fait état d'un demi million de clients pour la seule compagnie emLexcycle/em. Cette dernière est celle qui commercialise le lecteur emStanza/em pour téléphones portables, et en particulier l'iPhone. A l'heure actuelle, 40000 titres sont téléchargés quotidiennement uniquement parmi le catalogue de emLexcycle/em. Le livre numérique semble donc bien parti pour couler des jours paisibles. /lili Et juste pour le plaisir, voici quelques images illustrant le nouveau livre de a href=http://www.elbakin.net/fantasy/auteurs/joe-abercrombie.htm lang=frJoe Abercrombie/a, citeBest Served Cold/cite. Pour arriver à ce résultat, il a fallu pas moins de 6 personnes, dont rien de moins que notre Didier Graffet pour le dessin de l'épée ! A consommer sans modération, mais froid bien sûr !br /a href=http://www.elbakin.net/plume/xmedia/fantasy/news/zapping/BSC-full-spread-737569.jpgimg style=display:block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; alt=Best Served Cold 2 src=http://www.elbakin.net/plume/xmedia/fantasy/news/zapping/thumb/BSC-full-spread-737569.jpg //abr /a href=http://www.elbakin.net/plume/xmedia/fantasy/news/zapping/IMG_8117-742532.JPGimg style=display:block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; alt=Best Served Cold 3 src=http://www.elbakin.net/plume/xmedia/fantasy/news/zapping/thumb/IMG_8117-742532.jpg //a /lili Et pour terminer, nous vous proposons une petite vidéo de Neil Gaiman qui revient sur citeCoraline/cite et son adaptation en film animé (quelques images inédites à attraper au vol). Il évoque également la comédie musicale et l'adaptation sous forme de bande-dessinée. /li/ul pobject width=425 height=344param name=movie value=http://www.youtube.com/v/ZfrSLKJ4DlUcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfs=1/paramparam name=allowFullScreen value=true/paramembed src=http://www.youtube.com/v/ZfrSLKJ4DlUcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfs=1 type=application/x-shockwave-flash allowfullscreen=true width=425 height=344/embed/object/p pa href=http://www.elbakin.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4868En discuter en forum/a/p