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LOS ANGELES – James Bond's quantum of the weekend box office: $70.4 million. "Quantum of Solace," with Daniel Craig returning as Bond for the first direct sequel in the spy franchise, pulled in nearly $30 million more over opening weekend than its predecessor, 2006's "Casino Royale," according to studio estimates Sunday. The debut also topped the previous opening-weekend record for a Bond flick, $47 million for 2002's "Die Another Day." Adjusting for inflation, Sony's "Quantum of Solace" easily drew a bigger audience than that installment, the last Bond adventure featuring Pierce Brosnan. Based on 2002 admission prices, about 8.1 million tickets were sold for "Die Another Day" in the first weekend, compared to 9.8 million for "Quantum of Solace." Two years ago, Craig was an unknown quantity as Bond, a stage-trained actor with little action experience and a resume that tended toward small, artsier films. Many fa

NEW DELHI – India rejoiced Saturday at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the country's space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission. A probe sent late Friday from the orbiting mother spacecraft took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moon's south pole, said Indian Space Research Organization spokesman B.R. Guruprasad. The box-shaped probe was painted with India's saffron, white and green flag, sparking celebrations in the country that is striving to become a world power. "The tricolor has landed," the Hindustan Times said in a banner headline, while The Asian Age proclaimed "India is big cheese." As India's economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth — built on the nation's high-tech sector — into political and military clout. The moon mission comes just m

SINGAPORE – Oil prices fell below $56 a barrel Monday in Asia as news that Japan fell into recession highlighted investor fears of a global economic slowdown that will hurt crude demand. Light, sweet crude for December delivery was down $1.11 to $55.93 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midafternoon in Singapore. The contract fell $1.20 Friday to settle at $57.04. Japan, the world's second-largest economy, said Monday it slid into a recession for the first time since 2001 after gross domestic product contracted at an annual pace of 0.4 percent in the third quarter after a shrinking 3.7 percent in the second quarter. Japan now joins the 15-nation euro-zone in a recession, defined as two straight quarters of GDP contraction. "Markets are very worried about the international economic outlook, about oil consumption," said David Moore, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. "As data is released in the U.S.,