Is Bollywood coming to Hollywood?

"Slumdog Millionaire" took home eight Oscars on Sunday night, a surprising achievement for a film once thought to be straight-to-DVD fodder. The colorful story, which mixes the gritty life of Mumbai’s poor with the shiny aspirations of the new India, features no stars recognizable to Western audiences, but it may have made one of its native country. So, is it time for Bollywood — as India’s huge Mumbai-based film industry is called — to come to America “International cinema comes in cycles in the United States,” said Frank Lovece, a film critic with Film Journal International.

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Torture claim Gitmo detainee back in UK

A British resident released after four years at Guantanamo Bay arrived back in the UK Monday, officials said, in a case that has helped deepen controversy over U.S. treatment of accused terrorists. Binyam Mohamed, seized in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of terrorism, returned after being freed in a deal between the British and U.S

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Poll: Most Americans fearful about state of country

A new national poll indicates that nearly three out of four Americans are scared about the way things are going in the country today. Seventy-three percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say they’re very or somewhat scared about the way things are going in the United States

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Amnesty seeks embargo against Israel, Palestinians

The human rights group Amnesty International is calling on the United Nations to impose an arms embargo on Israel and the Palestinians, saying both sides used weapons supplied from abroad to carry out attacks on civilians during their three-week conflict in Gaza. The London-based group issued a 38-page report Sunday night that detailed “evidence of war crimes and other serious violations of international law by all parties.” Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the United States, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying homes, the group said. The use of white phosphorus is restricted under international law

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Bangladesh: 39 drown after boats collide

Eight more bodies floated to the surface Sunday, bringing the death toll to 39 from a riverboat accident in southern Bangladesh. Speaking at the civil rights group’s annual meeting in New York, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said that if Sean Delonas is not fired, the group will call for protests of the paper and Fox television affiliates, which are owned by Post parent company News Corp.

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BBC: Iran held ‘backroom’ talks with Western diplomats

Iran offered to stop attacking coalition troops in Iraq nearly four years ago in an attempt to get the West to accept Tehran’s nuclear program, a British diplomat told the BBC in an interview aired Saturday. “The Iranians wanted to be able to strike a deal whereby they stopped killing our forces in Iraq in return for them being allowed to carry on with their nuclear program — ‘We stop killing you in Iraq, stop undermining the political process there, you allow us to carry on with our nuclear program without let or hindrance,” said John Sawers, now the British ambassador to the United Nations, in the documentary, “Iran and the West: Nuclear Confrontation.” The United States and other Western nations believe Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but Iran says it is developing nuclear capability to produce energy.

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