Hobbit takes third straight with at US Canad box office

NEW YORK: The last of Peter Jackson's three Hobbit films rode to a third straight weekend atop box office charts, selling an estimated $21.9 million in tickets at US and Canadian theatres.
Disney's film version of the dark Broadway musical Into The Woods claimed the No. 2 spot with $19.1 million, while the World War Two drama Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie, finished third with $18.4 million for the Friday through Sunday period.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies grabbed another $9.3 million from New Year's Day screenings for a four-day take through Sunday of $31.2 million, and has a domestic total of $220.8 million since its Dec 17 release, according to estimates from tracking firm Rentrak.
The new year's first weekend numbers spelled some welcome news for film studios, with total ticket sales up 8.4 per cent from 2014's initial weekend.
The weekend's sole new release, horror film The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, opened in fourth place with $15.1 million, while another sequel, Night At The Museum: Secret of the Tomb rounded out the top five with $14.5 million in ticket sales.
Unbroken, Jolie's second directorial effort, tells the real-life story of Olympic runner Louis Zamperini's two years as a prisoner of war in Japan.
Into The Woods, an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical that puts a spin on children's fairy tales, stars Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Johnny Depp and has grossed $91.2 million since opening on Christmas Day.
The Interview, the provocative comedy blamed for triggering a massive cyberattack on Sony's movie studio, which then canceled its wide Christmas Day release, took in $1.1 million at theaters after Sony nearly doubled the number of independent theaters showing it to 581.
The comedy about two journalists recruited by the CIA to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un starring Seth Rogen and James Franco grossed an estimated $2.8 million for its opening four-day holiday weekend a week ago, according to Sony.
Among other year-end limited releases, the Clint Eastwood drama American Sniper which stars Bradley Cooper as a Navy Seal sharpshooter, took in $640,000 playing in only four theaters and has earned a total of $2.2 million since its Dec 25 release. Cooper is considered a front-runner for a best actor Oscar nomination for the role.
Comcast Corp.'s Universal released Unbroken. Into the Woods was distributed by Walt Disney Co. Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. released The Hobbit. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb was distributed by Fox, a unit of Twenty-First Century Fox. Independent studio Relativity released The Woman in Black 2.

Bangladesh showdon as opposition leader locked off

 




 






 






DHAKA: Bangladesh faced a showdown Monday on the first anniversary of controversial elections, as the opposition leader called for mass anti-government protests despite being confined to her office.
Twelve months on from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's re-election in what was effectively a one-horse race, her arch rival Khaleda Zia has called for supporters to mobilise for “Democracy Killing Day”.
Zia, leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has urged activists to take to the streets in their thousands as part of a campaign to force Hasina to hold fresh multi-party polls.
Amid sporadic violence in several towns and cities, authorities banned all protests from Sunday evening while Zia has been locked in her office since Saturday night, according to senior lieutenants.
The two-time former premier refused to take part in the elections on January 5, 2014, fearing they would be rigged in the absence of a neutral caretaker administration which had organised previous polls.
The boycott by the BNP and its allies meant a majority of members in the 300-seat parliament were returned unopposed, ensuring Hasina's Awami League party another five years in power.
In seats where there were contests, the only challenge came from independents or small parties which were loyal to Hasina.
Voting was overshadowed by firebomb attacks on polling booths and clashes between police and opposition activists, which left around 25 people dead.
Many of the BNP's top leaders have since either been detained or charged in connection with the election violence, hampering efforts to press their case for new polls.
Although Zia has not been officially arrested, police cordoned off her office in the capital's upmarket Gulshan district Saturday and prevented her from leaving as she tried to visit a sick colleague.
BNP headquarters in central Dhaka was padlocked by police at midnight on Saturday, with police vans barricading nearby roads.
BNP officials said at least 400 party supporters were arrested, including two senior party figures, ahead of the poll anniversary.
Scuffles broke out near Zia's office Sunday when a former president, Badruddoza Chowdhury, was turned away from meeting her.
“She is confined. It's an insult to democracy,” he said.
Zia's aide and lawyer Khandakar Mahbub Hossain did manage to meet her on Sunday, telling reporters afterwards that she had asked people to “continue protests until the government is toppled”.
The violence on election day last year was the culmination of the bloodiest year of political unrest in Bangladesh's short history, with tensions also heightened by the death sentences handed down to leading Islamists over their role in the 1971 independence war.
More than 500 people were killed in political violence in 2013, making it the bloodiest year since Bangladesh split from Pakistan.
While not on the same scale as a year ago, there were several eruptions of violence in towns over the weekend as police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at hundreds of opposition activists.
At least 10 people were injured across the country, police said. In Dhaka more than a dozen vehicles were torched and damaged.
Some bus and ferry services heading to the capital were also suspended at the weekend in a move that is likely to reduce the number of protestors in Dhaka.

Turkish govt gives go ahead for first church in century

ANKARA: Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government has authorised the building of the first church in the country in nearly a century, officials said on Saturday.
The church is for the tiny Syriac community in Turkey and will be built in the Istanbul suburb of Yesilkoy on the shores of the Sea of Marmara, which already has Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic churches.
The announcement came after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met Turkey’s religious leaders in Istanbul on Friday and said no faith that has lived in the country could be regarded as foreign.
“It is the first (new church) since the creation of the republic (in 1923),” a government source said. “Churches have been restored and reopened to the public, but no new church has been built until now,” he added. Turkey, which once had large Christian minorities, is now 99 per cent Muslim and critics of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have accused it of trying to Islamicise its officially secular society.

Boko Haram seizes 40 boys men in Nigeria

KANO: Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have kidnapped 40 boys and young men in a remote village in northeast Nigerian Borno state on New Year's Eve, residents who fled the isolated settlement said on Saturday.
Scores of Boko Haram militants stormed the Malari village and whisked away the males, aged between 10 and 23, into the nearby Sambisa forest, believed to be one of the Islamists' major bases.
The news of the abductions came out only days later, when residents who fled the village arrived in the state capital Maiduguri late on Friday.
“They came in pick-up trucks armed with guns and gathered all the men in the village outside the home of the village chief where they preached to us before singling out 40 of our boys and taking them away,” Bulama Muhammad told that
Malari village lies 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) from the Sambisa forest and close to the town of Gwoza, which the militants captured last June declaring it part of their caliphate.
“My two sons and three nephews were among those taken away by the Boko Haram gunmen and we believe they are going to use them as conscripts,” Muhammad said.
“When we heard of the kidnap of 40 boys in Malari by Boko Haram we decided to leave because we could be the next target,” said Alaramma Babagoni, who fled from the nearby village of Mulgwi.
There was no immediate comment on the incident from the military in Maiduguri.
Boko Haram is still holding in captivity more than 200 schoolgirls it abducted from their school in Chibok in Borno state last April.
The Islamists are believed to control large swathes of territory in Borno as well as several towns and villages in two other northeastern states, Adamawa and Yobe.
Boko Haram's five-year uprising in Nigeria has claimed more than 13,000 lives and has seen dozens of people, including women and children, kidnapped by the Islamists.

Chinese businessman jailed for 13 years over tiger fease

BEIJING: A Chinese businessman who bought and ate three tigers has been sentenced to 13 years in prison, state media reported on Tuesday.
The wealthy real estate developer, identified only by his surname Xu, has “a special hobby of grilling tiger bones, boning tiger paws, eating tiger meat and drinking tiger blood alcohol,” the official Xinhua news agency said in June when he went on trial.
Xu organised three separate trips last year for a total of 15 people, including himself, to Leizhou in the southern province of Guangdong, where they bought tigers for a “huge amount of money” that were killed and dismembered as they watched, the government-run news portal gxnews.com.cn reported on Tuesday.
One of them filmed the entire process of a tiger slaughter with his mobile phone. The footage was later obtained by police.
Police seized eight pieces of animal meat and bones from a refrigerator in Xu’s home, some of which were later identified as tiger parts, including a penis, the report said, adding that 16 geckos and a cobra were also found.
A court in Guangxi earlier this year convicted the 15 of “illegally transporting precious and endangered wild animal products” but the conviction was not reported at the time.
Xu was sentenced to 13 years in prison and a fine of 1.55 million yuan ($25,000), with the others jailed for terms between five and six and a half years, and given smaller fines.
They appealed and a higher court upheld the ruling on Monday, the report said.
Tiger bones have long been an ingredient of traditional Chinese medicine, supposedly for a capacity to strengthen the human body, and while they have been removed from its official ingredient list the belief persists among some.

Jennifer Lawrence joins Mokingjay co stars in Ebola awarness campaign

Actor Jennifer Lawrence appears in a public service announcement (PSA) about the Ebola virus with her The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 co-stars to raise awareness on the virus’ devastating impact in West Africa.
Mockingjay stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Jeffrey Wright, Julianne Moore, and Mahershala Ali to discuss hard facts about the outbreak.

Mahershala points out in the video that in some parts of West Africa, only two out of every 10 patients infected with Ebola have survived.
Without access to the same resources as Americans — such as I.V. fluids, electrolytes, food, fully-equipped modern hospitals, well-trained medical professionals — chances of survival are immensely reduced.
All eight Americans who had contracted Ebola and received treatment in US hospitals survived.
That makes the survival rate in America 100 per cent, as compared to the 20 per cent in West Africa.
Moore says: “Ebola is not a death sentence.”
“What would happen if you got Ebola?” Josh Hutcherson asks Jennifer Lawrence in the video.
After a brief pause, she responds: “I’d be fine.”
“You have a lot of doctors,” Hutcherson then points out in the clip.
The video also shows statistics pointing out that there were 19,648 confirmed Ebola cases worldwide from December 6, 2013, to December 22, 2014, with 19,643 of them in West Africa.
While there is no proven treatment available for Ebola, supportive care such as rehydration and treatment of specific symptoms improves survival, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The virus foung which works in conjunction with the United Nations supporting community-based groups fighting the disease in Liberia and Sierra Leone, has utilised the power of Hollywood before. Whoopi Goldberg, Alicia Keys and Idris Elba, among other celebrities, teamed up with the organisation in October to produce a PSA with a similar message.

Canada police say mass murder claims nine lives

  EDMONTON: Nine people, including seven adults and two young children, were found dead at three separate crime scenes in what Edmonton's police chief, on Tuesday, called the city's worst mass murder.
Police Chief Rod Knecht told a news conference the killings were the result of domestic violence.
The victims included a woman found, Monday night, by officers who were responding to a weapons complaint at a south Edmonton home.
The bodies of three more women, two men, a boy and a girl were discovered a few hours later at a home in the northeast part of the city where officers had checked on reports of a depressed, suicidal male earlier in the evening.
None of the victims was identified, but Knecht said the public was not in danger. “It is a tragic day for Edmonton,” he said.
“This series of events are not believed to be random acts. These events do not appear to be gang-related, but rather tragic incidents of domestic violence.”
A man matching the description of the suicidal male was found dead in a restaurant in the Edmonton bedroom community of Fort Saskatchewan on Tuesday morning, Knecht said.
“Our homicide investigators have established associations and linkages between these homicides,” he said.
Police would not elaborate on the connection between the deaths. “It's a really complex case involving multiple locations and police have yet to identity the suicide victim so police cannot yet say with 100 percent accuracy what the connection is,” said police spokesman Scott Patterson.
In Edmonton, a city of 878,000 people, mass murders are extremely rare.
Knecht said the case was the worst mass killing in the city since at least 1956, when six people were murdered.
John Etter Clark, a provincial politician who served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for four years, killed his wife, son, three daughters and an employee of their family farm before taking his own life in 1956.
Clark had been suffering from frequent nervous breakdowns in the years before the killings.