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Hollywood gave audiences what they wanted, and moviegoers returned the favor by giving the film industry its favorite present: a record-breaking frame at the box office. According to early studio estimates, North Americans spent some $263 million at theaters this Christmas weekend, obliterating the $254 million mark set in July 2008, when The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! both opened. And what did the multiplex crowds want on the first days of Christmas? Sing along: foreplay from Meryl, three sassy rodents, two blue Pandorans and a sleuth with a killer right hook. (See TIME's 2009 holiday movie preview...
...knocked the reigning champ, Avatar, out of the No. 1 slot. The Cameron picture came back to the top the next day. Then on Friday Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie's reworking of the Conan Doyle detective as a brainiac with a brawler's fists, hit the theaters and set a $24.8 million Christmas Day record, beating last year's Marley and Me by more than $10 million - and Avatar by about $1 million. On Saturday, Cameron again bounced back to No. 1; his movie will win the weekend comfortably. (See the top 10 movies...
...detonator like a blasting cap, but that device would have almost surely shown up on any airport X-ray machine or metal detector. Instead, Abdulmutallab allegedly brought along a syringe, which could have been filled with a liquid explosive like nitroglycerin. If done correctly, the primer explosion could have set off the PETN, which might have blown a hole in the side of the plane. "It looked like he was trying to use a chemical initiation, and that takes a lot of pre-experimentation to find out what would work," says Oxley. "He succeeded in getting a fire, but that...
...technique: Officials say Abdulmutallab tried to set off the incendiary mixture as the plane was in its descent to Detroit. This suggests that he was not merely trying to kill the passengers and crew but was probably hoping to make the plane crash in a populated area. The technique also has parallels with "shoe bomber" Richard Reid's failed attempt to bring down American Airlines Flight 63 just three days before Christmas 2001. The FBI affidavit charging Abdulmutallab also indicated that the Nigerian used PETN, the same explosive substance Reid tried to detonate...
...self-policing owners and managers are often hesitant to tell them to stop out of fear they'll anger paying clients. Worse still, NSR says, are the enclosed terraces proliferating outside cafes and restaurants across France. The temporary glass or plastic structures were initially set up to keep customers warm so they can enjoy an "outside" café experience in chilly weather. But when smokers were forced outside, these terraces became de facto smoking zones that other patrons now have to cross to get indoors. NSR contends that the smoke also drifts inside - it says it has conducted tests showing...