The reaction to the comics across the region has been positive, says Mr Nashar. Jalila is a Levantine scientist and Aya is a "vixen who roams the region on her supercharged motorbike confronting crime wherever it rears its ugly head".No religious faiths are attributed to the four, but there is no disguising where the stories are drawn from. In total, the Allied supply routes brought the Russians 375,000 trucks, one million miles of telephone wire and 15 million pairs of boots.Others argue that the "nuts and bolts" nature of the material sent in the Arctic convoys, rather than being dominated by tanks and aircraft, meant that its military significance has been overplayed. But the speed with which he was appointed took observers in London and Dublin by surprise.The BA chairman, Martin Broughton, who led the search for a successor to Mr Eddington, said: "Following the tragedies of 9/11 many commentators expected Aer Lingus to follow airlines such as Swissair and Sabena into oblivion but Willie salvaged the Irish carrier and saved thousands of jobs."Aer Lingus is expected to report profits of about €100m (£69m) for 2004 after Mr Walsh turned the airline around by cutting its route network and introducing lower fares and fewer frills on its short-haul European services - a process that resulted in 2,000 job cuts.He quit the airline in January after falling out with the Irish government over its refusal to privatise Aer Lingus. The airline executive credited with rescuing the state-owned Irish carrier Aer Lingus from collapse was yesterday named as the new chief executive of British Airways, one of the toughest and most high-profile jobs in the industry. Willie Walsh, 43, will take the helm at BA when Rod Eddington retires in September, but he will join as chief executive-designate in May on a salary of £600,000 to allow a handover period between the two men.Mr Walsh, who began his career with Aer Lingus as a cadet pilot at the age of 17, had been one of the executives tipped as a possible candidate for the BA job. It hopes the new scheme will create an "ownership culture" for the new senior management, akin to that enjoyed by directors of private equity groups.Sainsbury's is following in the footsteps of the retailers WH Smith and Next, which recently introduced similar plans allowing their top bosses to co-invest a slug of their gross salaries in the hope of multimillion-pound payouts..

The bosses of its convenience stores, including the Bells and Jacksons groups that it recently purchased, are excluded from the scheme.Mr Hampton told shareholders that to grow Sainsbury's sales by £2.5bn to about £20bn, the group must grow annual underlying sales by around 3 to 4 per cent in line with the UK food retail market - a feat the company has managed only once during the past 10 years.The company, which hopes to introduce the scheme as soon as possible, scrapped its current incentive arrangements after concluding that recent option grants are "unlikely to vest". The company's plc and operating board directors must invest up to half of their gross salary in shares by July 2006 to be eligible for the full payout.Based on yesterday's share price of 288.25p, a store manager could receive £57,650 if the company achieves its goals. Philip Hampton, the chairman, has spent the past six weeks consulting the group's institutional investors about the new scheme, spelling out the final details in a letter to a handful of shareholders this week.One of the company's biggest shareholders said yesterday it was "broadly supportive" of the plan, which follows last summer's dispute over the £2.6m bonus Sainsbury's paid out to its former boss, Sir Peter Davis.The latest scheme will pay out a maximum of five times annual salary for the group's top board directors, giving Justin King, the chief executive, the change to pocket a bonus of more than £5m on top of his basic salary.The four-year plan will vest 12 months early if the group's executives hit their targets early. J Sainsbury is pinning its recovery hopes on a new incentive scheme that could pay out more than £90m to its top 1,100 managers if they transform the group's fortunes over the next four years. The supermarket group is offering its 900 store managers the chance to scoop a £50,000-plus windfall if it succeeds in doubling its earnings per share and growing its annual sales by £2.5bn, excluding petrol and financial services. They are third in the Premiership and struggled through to the quarter finals of the FA Cup after beating Sheffield United only on penalties.Their progress in the Champions League is far from assured after losing 3-1 to Bayern Munich in the first leg of the first knockout round.. Keith Edelman, Arsenal's managing director, said: "The proceeds will assist Arsenal in the achievement of our corporate objectives, including investment in the development of our playing squad."The £30m injection will come as a welcome boost to an injury and suspension-hit Arsenal team at a time when their progress in domestic competitions has faltered.

Steve Morrison, Granada's former managing director, was the other management figure linked to the deal.The Arsenal deal secured Granada broadband internet broadcast rights but these have failed to prove to have any commercial value. Charles Allen was chairman of Granada at the time when media companies were desperate to own stakes in clubs to secure what appeared to be valuable media rights. This stipulated that Granada, now part of ITV plc, would purchase another tranche of shares 12 months from the securing of planning permission and funding for the club's new stadium.Granada took a 4.9 per cent stake in Arsenal under the original deal at the height of the media and telecoms boom. Arsenal received a £30m bonus yesterday to invest in its playing squad after the broadcaster ITV was forced to double its stake in the north London football club under the terms of a media rights deal signed in 2000. ITV is now looking to sell its near-10 per cent stake, although the transaction will represent a substantial loss for the commercial broadcaster which was forced to pay £9,177.12 a share yesterday compared with the prevailing offer price for Arsenal shares of £3,950 a share.The share purchase, which represents an injection of new equity into Arsenal in return for the issue of new shares to ITV, was triggered after the satisfaction of a clause in the agreement in 2000. BP's main UK pension scheme had a $2bn surplus at the end of the year but there was an overall pension deficit of $5.8bn across the company as a whole..