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Parents who view the latest state-of-the-art 3D sonogram of their unborn infant are often amazed and even unnerved by the detail, beauty and the stark reality of what is to come. For a film critic, viewing Avatar is also an overwhelming look into the future-the future of filmmaking and film watching. The film has already been compared to groundbreaking features such as The Jazz Singer, the film that brought sound into the mainstream, and Star Wars, which changed the scope and scale of science fiction. After 14 years of development, three years of production and a rumored budget of half a billion dollars, director James Cameron and his team have created a film that truly places us inside the world they imagined for us. Avatar is a film you don't just see. It's an experience. Avatar takes place in the year 2154, and Earth is dying or dead. The human race is now forced to excavate fossil fuels from alien worlds. An unnamed company has discovered a powerful source of energy in ...

KARBALA: Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims descended on Iraq's holy shrine city of Karbala on Saturday for the climax of Ashura commemorations, despite fears of violent attacks by Sunni extremists.Security forces have beefed up their presence in the central city and authorities are also checking on the 60,000-odd foreign worshippers expected to attend the ceremonies to ensure they do not have swine flu.Black flags, representing the sadness of Shiites during Ashura, were seen all over the city, 110 kilometres (70 miles) south of Baghdad, along with pictures of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas, who are both buried here."I came to show my belief in Imam Hussein -- this event has nothing to do with personal motivations or politics," said 40-year-old Mohammed Abdul Hussein, who travelled from neighbouring Babil province.Karbala police chief General Ali Jassim Mohammed said that around 25,000 policemen and soldiers had been deployed to secure the commemoration ceremonies, wh...

Saturday, December 26, 2009 KABUL: An American soldier has been killed by a roadside bomb while serving with NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said Saturday.NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the soldier died on Friday, but gave no details of where the incident took place.The death of the American, who was not named, was the only known Christmas Day fatality among the 113,000 international troops deployed to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan."An ISAF service member from the United States died following an IED strike in southern Afghanistan Friday," the ISAF statement said.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 JAKARTA: A strong quake with a magnitude of 6.7 hit the Indonesian island of Maluku on Saturday, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of a tsunami or casualties.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 NEW DELHI: The Indian Government issued a terror alert in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), and Chennai. This comes after several militants claiming to be the Taliban allegedly sneaked into India to conduct suicide bombings.According to one source, the terrorists are planning an attack on the Bombay Stock Exchange.The Nuclear Plants across India received a similar alert, due to fears that terrorists would be targeting them. In addition, government offices and transportation facilities have received beefed up security.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 KOTA: The number of people presumed killed when a bridge collapsed in western India rose to at least 45 on Saturday, an official said, as rescue divers struggled to recover bodies pinned under water. "At least 45 people are presumed to have died in the bridge collapse," senior police official Rajeev Dasot told foreign news agency, raising the estimated death toll from 17. Dozens of labourers plunged into the water late Thursday when the bridge on which they were working gave way over the Chambal River on the outskirts of the city of Kota in Rajasthan state. The bridge was being jointly built by South Korea's Hyundai Engineering and Gammon India. Two senior project managers, including a South Korean national, have been arrested on accusations of culpable homicide, Dasot said.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 TEHRAN: Osama bin Laden’s daughter who has taken refuge at the Saudi mission in Tehran is free to leave Iran once her identity is confirmed; Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying. “A while ago the Saudi embassy here said that one of Osama bin Laden’s daughters is in the compound, so the foreign ministry told the embassy that based on international conventions if her identity is confirmed she can leave Iran with passage documents,” local news agency quoted Mr Mottaki as telling state television. “We were not able to confirm her identity but the embassy says she is” the daughter of Osama, he added.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 DUBAI: World's largest 20-meter long ambulance car capable of carrying up to 100 patients has started to operate in Dubai.The car worth more than $1.6 million was ordered by the emirate's health authorities in Germany. The ambulance is planned to be used in emergency cases, when a large number of people would need to be provided with urgent medical assistance simultaneously. It is capable of carrying up to 100 patients in a light condition and more than 40 in a heavy condition.The ambulance is included in the Guinness Book as the world's largest mobile medical center. It has an intensive care, a surgery, a delivery and an X-ray units inside, with the most modern medical equipment. The car is also equipped with television and satellite connection systems.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 GAZA: Palestinians have held a mass demonstration against Egypt's construction of an underground wall along the border with the Gaza Strip.According to Palestinian security sources, a Palestinian man was killed after a tunnel collapsed over him due to the Egyptian excavation. During the demonstration, Hamas spokesperson Hammad Ar-Ruqab urged Cairo to open the Rafah border crossing and facilitate the entry of food and construction materials needed to rebuild Gaza which is in ruins due to Israel's war which left thousands of homes destroyed last year. "We in the Hamas movement announce our deep shock at the construction of the wall which bypasses every diplomatic rule. Egypt is building the wall between Gaza and Egypt in a sensitive period of time," local agency quoted Ar-Ruqab as saying.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 BEIJING: China on Saturday unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world -- a train connecting the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometers (217 miles) an hour. The super-high-speed train reduces the 1,069 kilometer journey to a three hour ride and cuts the previous journey time by more than seven and a half hours, the official news agency said. Work on the project began in 2005 as part of plans to expand a high-speed network aimed at eventually linking Guangzhou, a business hub in southern China near Hong Kong, with the capital Beijing, agency added. "The train can go 394.2 kilometers per hour, it's the fastest train in operation in the world," Zhang Shuguang, head of the transport bureau at the railways ministry, told agency.

Updated at: 0906 PST, Saturday, December 26, 2009 CARACAS: Nine sailors were killed and five were burned in a Christmas Day blaze aboard a Greek freighter in waters off a Venezuelan Caribbean island, the official Venezuelan news agency reported on Friday. It quoted Admiral Carlos Maximo Aniasi, commander of Venezuela's navy, as saying the blaze broke out in an engine room of the "Aegean Wind" before dawn and spread upward on the vessel, which was carrying iron ore from Brazil to Houston and had a 24-strong crew. "Nine bodies were found in different compartments of the Greek ship," the admiral said. The bodies belonged to nine sailors reported missing earlier in the day on the ship 33 nautical miles (61 km)northeast of the island of La Blanquilla, Aniasi said.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 BANDA ACEH: People across Asia will pause Saturday to remember the day five years ago when an undersea earthquake unleashed a devastating wave that killed more than 220,000 people.A solemn day of prayers and remembrance to mark one of the world's worst natural disasters is to be held in Indonesia's Aceh province, which lost almost 170,000 people in the Asian Tsunami of December 26, 2004.Prayers will be said in mosques throughout the staunchly Islamic province, and beside mass graves in the local capital of Banda Aceh.Similar scenes are expected to play out in countries such as India, Sri Lanka and Thailand where more than 50,000 people were killed as the wall of water smashed into coastal communities from Kalutara to Phuket.But as the survivors remember the dead, experts warn that many countries in the region remain ill-prepared to face another killer wave.The 2004 tsunami was triggered by a 9.3-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, and seis...

Saturday, December 26, 2009 WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama on Friday ordered increased security for air travel following a possible attempted airline bombing on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the White House said. After Obama was informed of the incident he held a secure conference call with his Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism Advisor John Brennan, and National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough. "He asked to arrange a subsequent secure call and... instructed that all appropriate measures be taken to increase security for air travel," the White House said. "The president is actively monitoring the situation and receiving regular updates," the statement read.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 WASHINGTON: A senior U.S. counter terror official says a passenger aboard a Delta Air Lines flight in Detroit was planning to blow up the plane but the explosive device failed. The official said the passenger was being questioned Friday evening. It was not immediately clear why the passenger wanted to attack the flight that was arriving from Amsterdam. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. Authorities initially believed the passenger had set off firecrackers that caused some minor injuries. A Delta spokeswoman said the passenger was immediately subdued. She had no details on the injuries.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 SYDNEY: A moderate earthquake struck off the south Pacific island state of Samoa on Saturday, seismologists said, but there was no tsunami alert and no immediate reports of damage. The US Geological Survey said the 5.5-magnitude quake struck at 2204 GMT around 281 kilometres (174 miles) south south-west of the capital Apia. It struck at a depth of 35 km. Nine people died in September when a tsunami hit the northern Tongan island of Niuatoputapu following an 8.0-magnitude earthquake. The tsunami also killed 143 people in Samoa and another 34 in neighbouring American Samoa. Earthquakes are common on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where continental plates in the Earth's crust meet.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 GENEVA: More than 11,500 people have died from swine flu worldwide since the pandemic strain was uncovered in April, World Health Organisation data showed Wednesday.The WHO said overall A(H1N1) influenza "activity has recently peaked in much of the (northern) hemisphere," including North America and western Europe, where the disease had surged in recent months with the onset of the colder season."As of 20 December 2009, worldwide more than 208 countries and overseas territories or communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including at least 11,516 deaths," the WHO said in its weekly update."There continues to be increases in influenza activity in later affected areas of central and eastern Europe, and in parts of west, central, and south Asia," it added.

Saturday, December 26, 2009 CHICAGO: A common type of bacteria could help curtail the spread of mosquito-borne diseases by making the pests more resistant to infection, according to a study published Thursday in the US journal Cell.The research built on an earlier study that found the lives of one type of disease-carrying mosquitoes could be cut in half by infecting them with a bacterium extracted from fruit flies."Together with the previously described life-shortening effects, the results suggest we might be able to have a major impact on disease," said study author Scott O'Neill of The University of Queensland.Mosquitoes infected with the bacteria proved resistant to dengue fever and Chikungunya, an insect-borne virus. They also became poor hosts for a form of malaria parasites that infect birds.There is no vaccine or cure for dengue fever, a painful and debilitating disease that kills more than 40,000 people and afflicts 50 million more every year. Chikungunya usually...

Saturday, December 26, 2009 RIO DE JANEIRO: A two-year-old Brazilian boy pierced with 31 sewing needles by his black-magic believing stepfather underwent a second operation to remove 14 from his body, a hospital spokeswoman said."Surgery lasted almost three hours and was successful. They removed 14 needles that were piercing his liver, bladder and intestines," said the spokeswoman for the Ana Nery Hospital on Wednesday, where the boy is being treated in northeastern Salvador de Bahia."Now only one more operation remains to be done next week," she added.The final surgery is most delicate and risky since it involves removing two needles lodged near the boy's spinal column, the spokeswoman said.Other needles will not be removed since they pose no harm to the boy, she added.The boy's identity is being withheld because of his young age.The stepfather, Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, a 30-year-old bricklayer, has confessed to driving the needles into the boy one by one...

Saturday, December 26, 2009 WASHINGTON: People who die of swine flu contract a "rapidly fatal" form of the disease and tend to die of lung injury, although it strikes different people in different ways, an autopsy study showed Thursday.In the first study of its kind, researchers in Brazil examined 21 patients aged one to 68 who died in Sao Paulo with confirmed (A)H1N1 infections in July and August.All 21 patients "presented a progressive and rapidly fatal form of the disease," the study, which will be published in the January 1 issue of the American Thoracic Society's "American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine", found.All were found to have died of severe acute lung injury, but with three distinct patterns of damage to the lungs, the study said, indicating to the researchers that swine flu "killed in distinct ways"."All patients have a picture of acute lung injury," said the study's lead author, Thais Mauad, an...

Saturday, December 26, 2009 WASHINGTON: Twitter not only wants to know what you're doing it wants to know where you are.The micro-blogging service announced Wednesday that it has purchased Mixer Labs, a California-based startup that builds location-tracking tools."We want to know What's happening?, and more precisely, Where is it happening?" Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said in a blog post."As a dramatic example, twittering "Earthquake!" alone is not as informative as "Earthquake!" coupled with your current location," Williams said."When current location is added to tweets, new and valuable services emerge -- everything from breaking news to finding friends or local businesses can be dramatically enhanced," he added.Twitter did not disclose financial details of the acquisition.Mixer Labs is the creator of GeoAPI, which helps software developers build geolocation-aware applications.San Francisco-based Twitter has won tens of...

Saturday, December 26, 2009 KARACHI/Pakistan: At least 19 people have been wounded in a car blast at Khilafat Chowk in Paposh Nagar Karachi.SSP Javed Baloch confirmed that it was a car blast, which went off when a Muharram procession was passing through Paposh Nagar.The injured have been shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for emergency care.Police and rangers reached the blast site where rescue services have kick started.MS Abbasi Shaheed Hospital said that 19 injured, including rangers personnel, women and children, have been brought to the facility.