Khan film faces copyright wrangle

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
21 October 2011 Last updated at 13:22 GMT Ra.One, starring Shah Rukh Khan, is the most expensive Bollywood film to date Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan has been ordered to pay a deposit of $200,000 (£125,686) to an Indian court in order to secure release of his latest film.

The actor and his production company have been accused of breaching copyright on superhero movie Ra.One.

TV scriptwriter Yash Patnaik says he came up with the concept, and should receive 10% of the film's profits.

Ra.One, an effects-laden blockbuster, is due out next week.

With a simultaneous international release timed to coincide with the Diwali festival, the film is expected to be a lucrative box office hit.

The Indian press reports that Khan, one of Bollywood's biggest stars, is likely to pay the deposit to ensure the film comes out on time.

The court will then hear arguments over the copyright issue at a later date.

Passing the order, Chief Justice Mohit Shah and judge Roshan Dalvi observed that it was "unfortunate that people in the film industry use others' concepts and then don't want to pay or give them credit".

A lawyer for Patnaik said the writer had developed the concept of an Indian superhero in 2006, and discussed the idea with Ra.One's scriptwriter, Mushtaq Sheikh.

He contends that there are several similarities between the characters he created and those that appear in the finished movie.

But lawyers for the film's production company say the two stories are completely different.

Director Anubhav Sinha has previously told interviewers that he came up with the idea for Ra.One in 2005 after watching a "commercial with two kids controlling a human being with a remote".

He described the finished product as being a "sci-fi, comedy, romance, father-son relationship, superhero, good over evil fight to save the world".

With the promotional campaign for the film beginning in January 2011, lawyers have questioned Patnaik's decision to approach the court over copyright at this late stage.

"The prints have been delivered world wide and it is not possible to hold back the release,'' they told the Times Of India.

Ra.One is due for release in India on 24 October, and the UK two days later.

The film, the most expensive Bollywood production to date, has already suffered delays due to the extensive special effects and 3D production work.

Technology

News

Read More

Strauss-Kahn faces French accuser

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
29 September 2011 Last updated at 09:45 GMT The BBC's Christian Fraser: "Tristane Banon said she wanted to look into the eyes of Dominique Strauss-Kahn"

Ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the French writer who accuses him of attempted rape have confronted each other as part of a police inquiry.

Police are investigating Tristane Banon's complaint before prosecutors decide whether to press charges.

Mr Strauss-Kahn is said to admit making "an advance" on Ms Banon, but denies any violence, and is suing for slander.

She made the allegations in June, when Mr Strauss-Kahn was accused of rape in New York; that case was later dropped.

The confrontation took place at a Paris police station without lawyers present, but with police officers in the room.

Police confrontations are held when two people in a case give different versions of events.

Mr Strauss-Kahn left the police station a couple of hours after arriving without making any comments.

Continue reading the main story Christian Fraser BBC News, Paris

After the confrontation, it will be up to the court to decide which way to take it. They can either decide there is no case to answer. They could decide that this was a case of less serious sexual abuse, but in that case, eight years on, under the statute of limitation, the case would be put to one side.

Or they could decide that on the evidence of the investigation that has been going on since July, there needs to be further investigation and an investigating judge would been appointed.

But you can imagine for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is trying to relaunch is political career, he is very keen for this to be put to one side and he will be hoping that the police believes his side of the story.

Both parties have been interviewed by police over the alleged incident.

Ms Banon, 32, has said she is keen to confront her alleged attacker.

"I want him in front of me so he can look into my eyes and say to my face that I imagined it."

Ms Banon alleges she had to fight off Mr Strauss-Kahn, 62, "with kicks and punches" when he tried to rip off her clothes during an interview at Paris flat in 2003.

Ms Banon first made the allegations in a TV chat show in 2007, when Mr Strauss-Kahn's name was bleeped out.

The former International Monetary Fund director, who was once tipped as a future French president, recently returned to France.

He also still faces a civil suit by his alleged victim in New York, Nafissatou Diallo.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read More

"Dr. Death" faces South Africa fees

26 September 2011 booth 17: 08 GMT Wouter Basson was in 2002 67 charges, including murder, the head of South Africa's germ warfare program during the apartheid era fights continue his licence continue to practice medicine, acquitted.

Wouter Basson pays with manufacturing illegal drugs in the 1980s and early 1990s, of which some allegedly on State prisoners have been used.

The man, or Dr. death escaped a criminal conviction in 2002, argue that he acted on behalf of the South African Defence Force (SADF).

He is now a cardiologist in Cape Town.

"I this chapter 20 years ago closed," he told reporters outside the hearing in the health professional Council South Africa (HPCSA) bureaus in Pretoria. "I want the country as a doctor continues to serve."

Potato blight

Mr Basson is accused Division of the SADF from 1981 to 1993, as head of chemical and biological warfare, the creation of viruses that would attack black people.

He is allegedly provided have, that security forces with cyanide capsules help them commit suicide, "clear" thousands of 120 mm mortar bombs with tear gas, and the drugs that would disorient SADF prisoners.

The charges were brought in 2007, but Mr Basson tried the hearing declared illegal, unreasonable, and an application have unfair - that last year was dismissed by the High Court in Pretoria.

Some of the fees have fallen down again but if guilty unethical as a doctor of HPCSA, Mr Basson faces his licence as a cardiologist practicing behavior to lose.

In 2002 Mr Basson was 67 charges, including murder, by a court in Pretoria acquitted conspiracy, fraud and drug possession.

He said, during the test, he was only following orders, and stood as a scientist, rot and a hepatitis epidemic had sought ways to fight the potato.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read More

Libya NTC faces credibility test at Gaddafi strongholds

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya's new government said it had tightened its grip on oasis towns which sided with Muammar Gaddafi, but faced a tough fight to take two remaining strongholds loyal to the ousted leader and bolster its credibility.
Forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC) said they controlled a string of desert towns in Libya's deep south, although they said Gaddafi loyalists were still holding out in pockets of at least one oasis.
So far they have failed to take the two much larger loyalist strongholds far to the north, Bani Walid and Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, in a series of chaotic offensives which have raised questions about the NTC's ability to control the country.
Until Thursday, some parts of Sabha, the traditional base for Gaddafi's own tribe about 800 km (500 miles) south of Tripoli, had been occupied by fighters loyal to the leader who lost control of the capital and most of the country last month.
"Our revolutionaries are controlling 100 percent of Sabha city, although there are some pockets of resistance by snipers," NTC military spokesman Ahmed Bani said in Tripoli.
"This resistance is hopeless ... They know very well that at the end of the day they will show the white flag or they will die. They are fighting for themselves, not for the tyrant," he told reporters, referring to Gaddafi.
The U.N. atomic agency said on Thursday that Gaddafi's government had stored raw uranium near Sabha, after CNN reported that NTC forces had found a military site containing what appeared to be radioactive material.
In Vienna, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokeswoman Gill Tudor said: "We can confirm that there is yellow cake stored in drums at a site near Sabha ... which Libya previously declared to the IAEA."
The NTC says it also controls Jufra, to the northeast of Sabha, and the nearby oasis towns of Sokna, Waddan, and Houn.
A manhunt for Gaddafi, who has been in hiding for weeks although he occasionally issues defiant audio messages, was drawing closer to its target, said Bani.
"We are doing our best looking for the tyrant. There is some news here and there that he ran away from Sabha to another place but it cannot be confirmed," he said.
The NTC, Libya's de facto government since Gaddafi's fall, has been anxious to show that it can establish firm control over a country riven by tribal and regional rivalries.
But, despite support from NATO warplanes, government forces have struggled to capture Sirte, the biggest city outside its control.
This is a complex job because many residents sympathize with Gaddafi. The city typifies the problem the NTC faces in reconciling the significant parts of the country that have tribal loyalties to Gaddafi or did not support the revolution.
A spokesman for Gaddafi, Moussa Ibrahim, said on Thursday that NATO air strikes and interim government forces' shelling of Sirte were killing civilians.
"Between yesterday and this morning, 151 civilians were killed inside their homes as the Grad rockets and other explosives fell upon their heads," he told Reuters by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.
His claims could not be verified as journalists are unable to reach the city. NATO comment was not immediately available.
Rebel fighters near Sirte and residents fleeing the city said pro-Gaddafi forces had been executing people suspected of sympathizing with the NTC.
North of Bani Walid, NTC military forces brought forward tanks and Grad rocket launchers for a renewed attempt to take the town although it was not clear when the attack might begin.
The offensive there has been frustrated by stiff resistance from well-drilled loyalist fighters, and also by a lack of organization among the NTC forces. They operate in disparate units based on their home towns, with little overall command.
Many fighters go into battle wearing flip-flop sandals, T-shirts and jeans and have no military training. "We don't take orders from the NTC. We listen only to our own commander," said Ziyad Al Khemri, a fighter from Zawiyah, just west of Tripoli.
If the NTC cannot swiftly take control of the country and its own forces, this may embarrass Western leaders, especially France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's David Cameron, who took a gamble by backing the anti-Gaddafi leadership.
"We have set up a unified operations room to unite all brigades," said brigade commander Omar Kabout. "The purpose is to increase coordination and end all this chaos because many rebels have arrived without commanders. We need to put them into brigades and stop all this random shooting."
(Reporting by Tarek Amara in Tunis, Emma Farge in Tripoli, Maria Golovnian north of Bani Walid, Sherine El Madany east of Sirte, Alexander Dziadosz west of Sirte and Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers and Dina Zayed in Cairo; Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Read More