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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 LOS ANGELES: Science-fiction epic "Avatar" surged past the 500-million-dollar mark at the North American box office this weekend, maintaining its push towards an all-time record, final figures showed Tuesday. Director James Cameron's groundbreaking 3-D spectacular added to its haul over the four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend with another 54.4 million dollars, box office tracker Exhibitor Relations said. The movie has raked in more than 1.6 billion dollars worldwide since its release and is on course to overtake Cameron's 1997 Oscar-winner "Titanic," which remains the highest-grossing film of all time with 1.8 billion dollars. In North America "Avatar" has earned 504.9 million dollars in only 32 days, and now stands third behind 2008 Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" (533.3 million dollars) and "Titanic" (600.8 million). "The records are starting to look inevitable now -- Cameron ...

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 PARIS: A celebrated kosher restaurant in the heart of Paris' Jewish quarter has reopened as a jeans shop, the latest loss for a historic district that now caters mostly to trendy Parisians and tourists. For decades, the Goldenberg Pletzl restaurant -- better known as "Jo Goldenberg's" -- served up potato latkes, matzo ball soup or corned beef sandwiches to Parisian Jews and tourists in Le Marais district, until it shut down four years ago. The establishment, targeted in a grenade and machine-gun attack in 1982 that left six people dead, reopened this month as the "Temps des Cerises" (Cherry Time) jeans shop, offering designer labels. All that is left to remind passers-by of the famed restaurant is a red "Goldenberg Pletzl" sign with white lettering on Rosiers street, which has been a centre of Paris Jewish life for centuries. "The reactions have been mixed," said a saleswoman at the new shop. "So...

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 PORT AU PRINCE: A miracle occurred in Haiti's rubble, when a woman was pulled out from under the ruins of Port-au-Prince's cathedral, alive -- after an agonizing week. Mexican rescuer Javier Vazquez said his team had been searching for survivors for six days -- the combined Mexican and South African team found the woman after hearing noises under the rubble. Mexican Rescue Worker, Javier Vazquez said, "We continued excavating and excavating, we heard the woman's voice and finally we saw some movement. Our brothers from South Africa helped us. We kept working but we couldn't reach the woman and when I felt that she grabbed my hand and squeezed it, it felt like God was squeezing it. I kissed her hand and she said, 'son'." Dusty, weak and dehydrated, the liberated woman called out to the rescuers -- a determined voice in the midst of so much misery. Some 52 rescue teams from around the world have saved about 90 people...

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 PORT AU PRINCE: The number of people killed in last week's devastating Haitian earthquake has risen to 75,000, while 250,000 were injured and a million left homeless, the Haitian government said Tuesday.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 MELBOURNE: Second-seeded Rafael Nadal cruised in straight sets in his second-round match Wednesday to advance at the 2010 Australian Open, the opening Grand Slam event of the year. The former world No. 1 Nadal topped Slovakian Lukas Lacko 6-2, 6-2, 6-2, in a match that lasted a little under two hours. Nadal won 34 more points than Lacko, who committed 58 unforced errors. Also advancing to the third round Wednesday was seventh-seeded Wimbledon runner-up Andy Roddick, who took a 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Brazil's Thomaz Bellucci. Roddick, who reached the semifinals here last year, will face either Spaniard Feliciano Lopez or German Rainer Schuettler in round three. Joining Nadal and Roddick in advancing was 11th-seeded Chilean Fernando Gonzalez, who got past Turkey's Marsel Ilhan 6-3, 6-4, 7-5. Gonzalez's third- round opponent is already set, as Kazakhstan's Evgeny Korolev scored an upset of 21st-seeded Czech Tomas Berdych. Korolev...