Sunday, November 15, 2009 LEEUWARDEN: The eleventh edition of Domino Day, organized by Endemo Netherlands together with Robin Paul Weijers, known as "Mr Domino", has come to a successful conclusion. The world record for toppling dominoes has been broken, with 4,491,863 dominoes biting the dust. The standing world record was 4,345,027 dominoes, also set by Mr Domino in 2008. This year's event involved displays representing different continents. Mr Domino laboured for a year over the various patterns and techniques. A team of 90 builders from 14 European countries worked for two months to set the stage in a hall in the northern Netherlands town of Leeuwarden. They came from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Germany, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Croatia and Switzerland. The task called for total concentration and no little discomfort, as team members placed the dominoes in position. With each millimetre counting, they used rulers and tweezers to ensure each stone was in its exact spot. The first stone toppled just after 2000GMT (2100 local time) triggering a one-and-half-hour-long chain reaction, during which dominoes climbed stairs, unveiled paintings and set off a variety of surprise events.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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