Reuters - "Lost" producers come full circle in final season

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"Lost" producers come full circle in final season

Wednesday, Jan 06, 2010 4:17AM UTC

By James Hibberd

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Get ready to return to the island one last time: The final season of ABC's "Lost" is going to be an emotionally intense journey that harks back to previous highlights of the series, with the ideological battle between Jack Shephard and John Locke taking center stage.

By the time most major network shows cross the finish line, they're limping in the ratings and creatively exhausted, wrung out by networks and producers trying to mine just a few more hours. With "Lost" producers having persuaded ABC to set 2010 as a series end date years ago, the hit drama is going into its final lap with level of fan anticipation rarely seen for the ending cycle of a broadcast show.

In their first full-length interview focusing on the sixth season, "Lost" executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof promised a satisfying cliffhanger-free conclusion. And even after the May finale, there's almost surely going to be more "Lost" to come.

YOU OBVIOUSLY CAN'T TALK ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THE ENDING. BUT HOW DO YOU THINK FANS WILL FEEL ABOUT IT?

Lindelof: That's a very cagey way of asking it. It's tough to prognosticate. But the one area we're in agreement is there will be a short-term reaction to the ending and then a legacy reaction that comes six months, a year down the road, looking at the show as a whole. Carlton and I were trying yesterday to remember what the final season of "The Sopranos" even was about -- we couldn't remember much about the finale itself except Anthony Jr. was going to go into the Army and crashed his car and changed his mind. But we remember every frame of the diner scene. What people take away from our finale is going to be based purely on that two-hour episode, but our hope is they'll be able to connect that experience to the six years that preceded it.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THIS SEASON IN TERMS OF ITS, SAY, TONE? WHAT IS IT LIKE COMPARED TO PAST SEASONS?

Cuse: We feel tonally it's most similar to the first season of the show. We're employing a different narrative device, which we feel is creating some emotional and heartfelt stories, and we want the audience to have a chance in the final season to remember the entire history of the show. So we have actors coming back like Dominic (Monaghan) and Ian (Sommerhalder). We're hoping to achieve a circularity of the entire journey so the ending is reminiscent of the beginning.

IS THERE ANY ONE CHARACTER'S STORY LINE THAT YOU THINK PARTICULARLY EMOTIONALLY RESONATES THIS SEASON?

Cuse: Jack and Locke have always been at the center of the show, that dilemma of faith vs. reason, and the conflict between those two characters has been there since the beginning. It's very exciting to bring that relationship to its conclusion, and we can't really be any less vague about that.

IN THE PAST FEW YEARS WE'VE HAD "SOPRANOS," "THE SHIELD," "THE WIRE" AND "BATTLESTAR GALACTICA" AIR FINAL EPISODES. ANY OF THEM THAT YOU FELT CONCLUDED REALLY WELL?

Cuse: I personally don't feel any of those were messed up, they were all kind of appropriate for those stories. Shawn Ryan did a great job ending "The Shield."

Lindelof: It really boils down to: Is it satisfying? Have you given the audience an emotional ride that makes them feel that they're satisfied, that it's a good meal? Every one of those shows had a different criteria. The ending for "The Shield" was, asking whether Vic Mackey would get some form of comeuppance for all the things he's done over the series. That's a similar question that went into the "Sopranos" ending, which is why people who didn't like the cut to black were unsatisfied, because they felt, "I feel the resolution of this show has to be what happens to Tony Soprano, and you didn't answer that question." The "Battlestar" ending had 10 different things on its agenda other than character resolution ... you have to admire it for the sheer audacity for what it was trying to accomplish. That being said, the "Shield" ending was phenomenal, and almost every fan of the show agrees with that. Whereas the other shows -- and probably with the ending of "Lost" -- there's some debate about the ending. "Did I like it? Did I love it?"

HAVE YOU BOILED "LOST" DOWN TO A CENTRAL QUESTION THAT THE FINALE NEEDS TO RESOLVE?

Lindelof: The only question that's ever mattered to us is what is going to happen to these people. What is the character resolution? That the audience feels like the characters had an arc -- a beginning, middle and end. And I'm satisfied with that. All the crazy island mythology stuff, we love it, but it's like terrorists attacking Jack Bauer -- it's stuff that happens in order to tell cool character stories.

YOU MENTIONED A NARRATIVE DEVICE, I'M ASSUMING IT'S NOT A FLASHBACK OR FLASHFORWARD?

Cuse: Musical numbers. If you love Bollywood movies, you will love this season.

Lindelof: The show never rests on its laurels. Not because we're trying to be artsy, but the show demands constant shifts to best tell the story. We've known what we were going to do for a couple years now, and there's been a tremendous amount of work setting up the premise so it would work. But we're still wondering, "Will it work? Will the audience understand? What's the reaction going to be like?"

SINCE THERE IS NO FOOTAGE BEING REVEALED IN ADVANCE OF THE FEB. 2 SEASON PREMIERE, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN SAY TO TEASE IT?

Cuse: We ended with Juliet pounding on this atomic warhead. There's Jack's prediction that the bomb will reset events and the plane will never crash. There's the possibility that it doesn't work. We want the audience to be pondering what is the consequence of Juliet hitting that bomb. Our cliffhangers are designed to frame the question that we want audience thinking about.

NOW THAT YOU'RE THIS FAR ALONG, DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE SEASON?

Lindelof: The first season is probably my favorite season, you forget in hindsight all the pain that goes into doing the show.

Cuse: I'll say Season 5. We did something radical (by introducing time travel) and embraced the sci-fi roots of the show. We were concerned about doing this. But the fact people liked last season was enormously gratifying.

DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS TO PITCH A NEW SHOW, ON ABC OR ELSEWHERE, FOR NEXT SEASON?

Lindelof: No. We don't. The world works in mysterious ways, but our full-time job for the last six years has been coming in here and working 70- to 80-hour weeks on "Lost." The idea of going back into the fray Brett Favre-style is not alluring to us. When we finish "Lost" we will disappear to our undisclosed locations then think about things for a while.

Cuse: I think the one thing that's pretty certain is neither of us have a great (urge) to do something that's this dense, sprawling and serialized. You need to exercise different creative muscles.

Lindelof: My hope is to rip off other successful shows.

LIKE YOU'VE BEEN RIPPED OFF?

Lindelof: Exactly. Maybe a show about vampires that work in an ad agency and one is a serial killer.

Cuse: Especially if the lead character is also cooking meth.

Lindelof: Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Almost guaranteed an Emmy. "Breaking Bad Men."

COULD SOMEBODY STILL DO THAT "LOST" PILOT TODAY?

Lindelof: When you look at development season last year and shows like "FlashForward" and "V" and go, "Those shows are very expensive to produce with the size of their cast and their (ambitious) premise." But what's sort of strange is that they're a lot more overtly sci-fi from the get-go. With the exception of a loud noise in the jungle and it's weird that there's polar bears on an island, there were no science fiction elements in the pilot of "Lost." In "Jaws" you don't show the shark until an hour and a half into the movie. We feel like you have a better chance making a "Lost" now because they want their sci-fi to be stealth. You go to an "Indiana Jones" movie and they'll say it's not sci-fi and you're like, "But their faces melted off!"

YOU GUYS HAVE SAID THAT YOU'LL TAKE THE DAVID CHASE ROUTE AND SKIP TOWN FOR THE FINALE. WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS?

Cuse: We'll be watching the last episode here in L.A. We traditionally have an intimate viewing party. We celebrate by renting out a restaurant and set up big TVs, and then afterward we will disappear to parts unknown.

WHO'S GOING TO WRITE AND DIRECT THE FINAL HOUR?

Cuse: Damon and I will write, Jack Bender will direct.

LOOKING BACK, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY?

Cuse: The journey had to be the way it was. We both feel no regrets. The meaning only becomes clear in hindsight, and we're still on that journey so the meaning is not yet complete.

Lindelof: Look, it would be nice to look back and say, "We love every episode of 'Lost,' and every episode turned out the way we wanted it to." There are sh--ty episodes of "Lost" that we wish we had never written. But had we not written them we would be in a different situation now, because we ran out of ideas, we stalled, then the network realized what we had been saying from early on -- that "Lost" needed an end date. And now here we are six years later on broadcast with a show that is -- not what it once was (in the ratings) -- but still performing, and we're ending it on our own terms because we had sh**ty episodes.

CAN YOU SAY DEFINITIVELY, AFTER THIS FINAL EPISODE, THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER PRODUCED HOUR OF "LOST" ON FILM, TV, WEB, ANY MEDIUM -- THIS IS IT?

Cuse: The Walt Disney Co. owns "Lost." It's a franchise that's conservatively worth billions of dollars. It's hard to imagine "Lost" will rest on the shelves and nothing will ever be made with "Lost." Eventually somebody will make something under the moniker of "Lost" -- whether we do it or not. We just made a commitment to this group of characters whose stories are coming to a conclusion this May.

Lindelof: Somebody made a sequel to "Gone With the Wind." Sometimes the franchise transcends the storyteller. The definitive edition of "Lost" ends this May on ABC, and that is the story that we have to tell. It has a beginning, middle and end. That ending will not have cliffhangers, or be set up in such a way that people will be saying, "Clearly they're going to make more of these." We don't have any connection to another TV series or movie, but there's a new "A-Team" movie coming out, for god's sake. This is a business that thrives on known commodities. "Tron" is the most buzzed-about Disney movie for next year, and it has been gathering dust for 20 years. I cannot imagine there will not be something with "Lost" on it involving smoke monsters and polar bears and time travel.

Reuters - Baidu to launch online video site for premium content

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Baidu to launch online video site for premium content

Wednesday, Jan 06, 2010 5:46PM UTC

BANGALORE (Reuters) - China's top search engine Baidu Inc said it plans to start a new online video channel that will provide copyrighted content to Chinese Internet users.

The company said it will form a new independent company for the purpose, which will derive its revenue from advertising and work with content providers to offer licensed video content.

Investors cheered the move as Baidu's shares rose 3.5 percent to an intra-day high of $420 on Nasdaq, before losing some of those gains to trade up about 1 percent.

Baidu said the content would include movies, TV series, sporting events and animation.

On Tuesday, Reuters quoted a source familiar with the situation as saying that Baidu is teaming up with Providence Equity Partners, an investor in U.S. video-viewing site Hulu, to set up an online video channel.

Baidu did not provide details on any partnerships in its statement on Wednesday. Providence Equity was not immediately available for comment.

Hulu, a website jointly owned by NBC Universal, News Corp and Walt Disney Co, allows viewers to stream TV shows over the net for free in the United States.

Baidu's move marks the company's latest foray into China's fragmented but potentially highly lucrative online video market -- worth 162 million yuan ($23.73 million) in the third quarter, according to data from research firm Analysys International.

Baidu is also an investor in PPLive, a Chinese website that streams licensed movies and video for free.

It was not clear if the new video channel would include online user-generated content, which is fraught with higher regulatory and licensing risks.

J.P. Morgan analyst Dick Wei said most video sites in China were still making losses but Baidu had the added advantage of being able to offer more targeted advertisements given its search technology.

The brokerage is expecting minimal negative impact from the increased costs post launch and said there was a possibility for the newly formed company to be partly financed by venture capital funding.

S&P Equity Research, which is expecting Baidu to be a minority investor in the start-up, said it does not see the venture turning profitable anytime soon.

Yu Gong, a former chief operating officer of China Mobile's 12580 business, was named chief executive of the new company, Baidu said in its statement.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Shrutika Verma in Bangalore; Editing by Anthony Kurian and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Reuters - Freescale takes aim at tablet computer market

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Freescale takes aim at tablet computer market

Monday, Jan 04, 2010 12:25PM UTC

By Gabriel Madway

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Chipmaker Freescale Semiconductor Inc is staking its claim on the tablet computer market, an emerging product category that will generate plenty of interest in 2010.

Although next-generation tablet PCs are scarcely evident on the market, the technology world is abuzz about their potential, as Apple Inc is expected to unveil its offering in 2010.

Freescale's announcement comes ahead of this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where rival chipmakers are expected to show off new so-called smartbooks, which aim to bridge the gap between laptops and smartphones.

Privately held Freescale unveiled its reference design for a 7-inch, touchscreen tablet running on the company's low-power ARM-based processor and priced at less than $200.

The company said such a device will be able to run either Google Inc's Android mobile software or Linux, with Wi-Fi and 3G capability.

Although Freescale declined to name any potential vendors for its tablet design, it said devices could hit retail shelves as soon as this summer. The company expects to show prototypes at CES.

Freescale makes chips for a variety of products, including the automotive market. Its application processor is used in Amazon.com Inc's Kindle.

Henri Richard, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Freescale, called a smartbook tablet the "missing link" between PCs and smartphones.

"The PC has been stale in terms of its ability to innovate. Smartphones have been making progress ... but they have limitations," he said.

Qualcomm Inc and Nvidia Corp are also expected to unveil smartbooks based on their chips at CES.

The devices will seek to break Intel Corp's stranglehold on stripped-down, low-cost PCs. Intel's Atom processor dominates the fast-growing netbook market.

Austin, Texas-based Freescale was spun off from Motorola Inc in 2004. The company was taken private in a $17.6 billion leveraged buyout in 2006. Sales in 2008 totaled $5.2 billion.

(Reporting by Gabriel Madway; Editing by Andre Grenon and Jan Paschal)

Reuters - Tweets, sexting "unfriended" in U.S. banned word list

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Tweets, sexting "unfriended" in U.S. banned word list

Thursday, Dec 31, 2009 5:30PM UTC

By Carey Gillam

KANSAS CITY (Reuters) - If you recently tweeted about how you were chillaxin for the holiday, take note: Fifteen particularly over- or mis-used words and phrases have been declared "shovel-ready" to be "unfriended" by a U.S. university's annual list of terms that deserve to be banned.

After thousands of nominations of words and phrases commonly used in marketing, media, technology and elsewhere, wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University on Thursday issued their 35th annual list of words that they believe should be banned.

Tops on the Michigan university's list of useless phrases was "shovel-ready." The term refers to infrastructure projects that are ready to break ground and was popularly used to describe road, bridge and other construction projects fueled by stimulus funds from the Obama administration.

And speaking of stimulus, that word -- which was applied to government spending aimed at boosting the economy -- made the over-used category as well, along with an odd assortment of Obama-related constructions such as Obamacare and Obamanomics.

"We say Obamanough already," the LSSU committee said.

Also ripe for exile is "sexting," shorthand for sexy text messaging, a habit that has caused trouble this year for public figures from politicians to star athletes.

Similarly, list makers showed distaste for tweeting, retweeting and tweetaholics, lingo made popular by users of the popular Twitter networking website. And don't even get them started on the use of friend as a verb, as in: "He made me mad so I unfriended him on Facebook," an Internet social site.

Male acquaintances need to find another word than "bromance" for their friendships, and the combination of "chillin" and "relaxin'" into "chillaxin" was an easy pick for banishment.

VOTED OUT

Also making the list was "teachable moment."

"This phrase is used to describe everything from potty-training to politics. It's time to vote it out!" said one list contributor.

"Toxic assets," referring to financial instruments that have plunged in value, sickened list makers so much the phrase was added to the list, along with the tiresome and poorly defined "too big to fail" which has often been invoked to describe wobbly U.S. banks.

Similarly, "in these economic times" was deemed overdue for banishment due.

Also making the list -- "transparent/transparency," typically used, contributors said, when the situation is anything but transparent.

One list contributor wanted to know if there was an "app," short-hand for "application" popularized by the mobile iPhone's growing array of software tools, for making that annoying word go away.

And rounding out the list -- "czar" as in car czar, drug czar, housing czar or banished word czar.

"Purging our language of 'toxic assets' is a 'stimulus' effort that's 'too big to fail,'" said a university spokesman.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

CNN - 8 U.S. deaths at military base in Afghanistan

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8 U.S. deaths at military base in Afghanistan

Eight Americans were killed in a suicide bombing Wednesday at a military base in eastern Afghanistan, according to a U.S. military official and a U.S. Embassy official.

A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest attacked Forward Operating Base Chapman near the district of Khost in Khost province, said a third official, who asked not to be named.

The military official said the eight people were not from the military.

There were conflicting reports as to whether the bomber walked into the dining facility or the gym at the base.

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Reuters - Advocacy groups urge FTC to bar Google-AdMob deal

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Advocacy groups urge FTC to bar Google-AdMob deal

Monday, Dec 28, 2009 8:17PM UTC

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two advocacy groups asked U.S. antitrust regulators on Monday to block Google's purchase of AdMob, a provider of advertising services for mobile phones, on antitrust grounds and to address privacy issues raised by the deal.

Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy organization, and the Center for Digital Democracy, an advocate of open access to the Internet, said in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission that the proposed deal would "substantially lessen competition in the increasingly important mobile advertising market."

The groups also said the deal created privacy concerns, which are not normally considered in antitrust analyses.

"Google amasses a gold mine of data by tracking consumers' behavior as they use its search engine and other online services. Combining this information with information collected by AdMob would give Google a massive amount of consumer data to exploit for its benefit," said the emailed letter, which was addressed to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.

Google, the No. 1 online search engine, has said that the FTC requested additional information about the $750 million deal last week. In the absence of a second request, U.S. antitrust regulators normally approve deals within 30 days.

If approved, Google's purchase of privately held AdMob would be its third most expensive purchase behind the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube.

Google said in an e-mail statement that it was certain that mobile advertising would remain competitive despite the deal.

"Google has a track record of providing strong privacy protections and tools, like the new Dashboard, for users to take control or opt out of data collection, and it will apply the same approach to privacy following this acquisition," it said in the statement.

Google generates the majority of its revenue, which totaled roughly $22 billion in 2008, by selling ads that appear alongside its Internet search results.

The FTC could not immediately confirm receipt of the letter.

Google has experienced increasing regulatory scrutiny as it has grown. The U.S. Department of Justice in September asked a New York court to reject Google's settlement with book publishers and authors groups that would allow the company to sell digital copies of some books.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Reuters - Nigeria bomber's home town blames foreign schooling

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Nigeria bomber's home town blames foreign schooling

Sunday, Dec 27, 2009 9:26PM UTC

By Sahabi Yahaya

FUNTUA, Nigeria (Reuters) - For residents in his home town, it was Umar Abdulmutallab's foreign education, not his roots in Muslim northern Nigeria, that radicalized him and led him to try to blow up a U.S. passenger plane.

The 23-year-old London-educated Nigerian was charged on Saturday in the United States with trying to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day with almost 300 people on board.

The son of a highly respected banker, Abdulmutallab's actions shocked Nigeria's wealthy elite and residents in his family's predominantly Muslim northern hometown of Funtua.

"Everyone knew the Mutallabs and the father is honest, generous, helpful and above all a prominent banker. I cannot see why his son should be involved in this act," Funtua resident Ibrahim Bello, 65, said, close to the Mutallab family home.

Like other elders from the community, Bello said Abdulmutallab's schooling abroad meant he had been brought up outside the customs of northern Nigeria, a region with a history of moderate Sufi Islam.

"My only advice to the elite is to allow their children to mingle with the children of the masses so that he will have some of the traditional morals and values that (the elder) Mutallab himself enjoyed," Bello told Reuters.

Behind him, a group of elderly men were listening to the local Hausa language services of the BBC and Voice of America radio stations, eager to hear the latest developments.

FOREIGN SCHOOLING

Abdulmutallab is from a privileged background in Africa's most populous nation, where most of an estimated 140 million people live on under $2 a day.

His father, Umaru Mutallab, retired earlier this month as chairman of First Bank, the country's oldest, after a distinguished career in finance.

Like many children from rich Nigerian homes, Abdulmutallab spent his formative years abroad. Information Minister Dora Akunyili said he had been living outside Nigeria "for a while" and only returned on the eve of the attack.

"We were shocked when we heard a report from one of the international radio stations that the son of Mutallab is involved in an act of terrorism in the United States," said Ahmed Ibrahim, one of Abdulmutallab's contemporaries.

"But many of us did not know the children of the Mutallabs because they did not grow up here in Funtua," he said, sipping Coca-Cola under the shade of a tree.

The Mutallab home in Funtua, more than 250 km (155 miles) north of the capital Abuja, is a single-story brown and white building behind big gates, larger than surrounding houses but not ostentatious.

Abdulmutallab was educated at the British School in Lome, Togo -- a boarding school mostly serving expatriates and students from around West Africa -- before studying engineering at University College London (UCL), where he is believed to have lived in a multi-million dollar city-center apartment.

One friend who knew him in London said he kept himself to himself and always wore a skullcap, rare among young Nigerian Muslims who usually wear such caps only on religious occasions.

Nigeria's This Day newspaper said he had been given the nickname "Alfa" -- a local term for an Islamic scholar -- while at school in Togo, for his preaching to other students.

He also made two trips to Yemen during his student days for short Arabic and Islamic courses, according to a family friend.

PRECEDENTS

If Abdulmutallab was radicalized outside Nigeria as many of his compatriots believe, his case would have precedents.

Ahmed Saeed Omar Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar, who was sentenced to death in Pakistan in 2002 for the killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl and suspected of links to the September 11, 2001 attacks, came from a similarly privileged background.

Born in Britain in the early 1970s, Omar was the son of a wholesale clothes merchant from Wanstead in northeast London who went to an expensive school but dropped out of one of Britain's top universities, the London School of Economics.

Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north has seen bouts of religious unrest. But while some Western diplomats have expressed concern that its huge population and widespread poverty could attract foreign Islamic extremists, there has been no conclusive evidence of such a presence in the country.

Clashes between security forces and a radical Islamic sect called Boko Haram -- which wanted a wider adoption of sharia (Islamic law) -- killed hundreds of people in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri in July.

But Islamic jurisprudence in Nigeria is based on the moderate Maliki school of Sunni Islam and Boko Haram's ideology is dismissed by the country's Muslim leaders and most believers.

Young Muslims who grew up in Funtua insist it was Abdulmutallab's life overseas, which they view as alien, not Nigerian Islam that gave rise to his extremist views.

"We the children of the masses in this country, we don't know anything about terrorism because our parents are poor. They don't have the money to take us abroad," said 25-year old student and Funtua resident Usman Mati.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Robin Pomeroy)

CNN - Al Qaeda claims responsibility for failed terror attack

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Al Qaeda claims responsibility for failed terror attack

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a plane about to land in the United States, saying it was in retaliation for alleged U.S. strikes on Yemeni soil.

In the statement, published on radical Islamist Web sites, the group hailed the "brother" who carried out the "heroic attack." The group said it tested a "new kind of explosives" in the attack, and hailed the fact that the explosives "passed through security."

The group threatened further attacks, saying, "since Americans support their leaders they should expect more from us."

"We have prepared men who love to die," the statement dated Saturday said.

In his first public comment since the Christmas Day incident, President Obama said he directed his national security team to "keep up the pressure on those who would attack our country."

"We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland."

A suspect, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, is being held for allegedly trying to blow up the flight carrying 300 passengers.

Part of the explosive device was sewn into AbdulMutallab's underwear, a law enforcement official told CNN Monday.

A preliminary FBI analysis found that the device AbdulMutallab allegedly carried aboard the flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan, contained the explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate, known as PETN. The source could provide no details on the device.

The amount of explosive involved was sufficient to blow a hole in the aircraft, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN Sunday.

Authorities have focused their investigation on how AbdulMutallab, 23, allegedly smuggled the explosives aboard the flight and who might have helped him.

"We're ascertaining why it was that he was not flagged in a more specific way when he purchased his ticket, given the information that we think was available, allegedly was available," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CNN's "American Morning" Monday.

AbdulMutallab, a Nigerian who had a multiple-entry visa to the United States, had been added to a watch list of 550,000 potential terrorist threats after the information provided by his father was forwarded to the National Counter-Terrorism Center, a senior administration official said. But "the info on him was not deemed specific enough to pull his visa or put him on a no-fly list," the official said.

"Now, we are going to be looking at that process and how those lists are created, maintained, updated, exchanged and the like, because clearly this individual should not have been able to board this plane carrying that material," Napolitano said.

Napolitano told CNN on Sunday there was no indication that the failed attack was part of any larger international terrorist plot.

Tighter security measures in the wake of the incident triggered long lines at security checkpoints at airports in the United States and abroad. Obama has ordered a review of security procedures. Both the House and Senate plan to hold hearings on the incident.

Do you feel safe in the skies?

AbdulMutallab's family said Monday it had told authorities about his "out of character" behavior and hoped that authorities would intervene.

The 23-year-old suspect was studying abroad when he "disappeared" and stopped communicating with his family members, they said Monday in a statement. His father, Umaru AbdulMutallab, contacted Nigerian security agencies two months ago and foreign security agencies six weeks ago, the statement said.

"We were hopeful that they would find and return him home," the family said. "It was while we were waiting for the outcome of their investigation that we arose to the shocking news of that day."

The suspect's family said his behavior prompted it to seek help.

"The disappearance and cessation of communication which got his mother and father concerned to report to the security agencies are completely out of character and a very recent development, as before then, from very early childhood, Farouk, to the best of parental monitoring, had never shown any attitude, conduct or association that would give concern," his family said.

The father of the suspect contacted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria with concerns his son had "become radicalized" and was planning something, a senior U.S. administration official said.

"After his father contacted the embassy recently, we coded his visa file so that, had he attempted to renew his visa months from now, it would have triggered an in-depth review of his application," a U.S. official said.

The embassy -- which has law enforcement, security and intelligence representatives on staff -- reported the father's concern to other agencies, the official said.

Passengers on the Christmas Day flight described a chaotic scene that began with a popping sound as the plane was making its final approach, followed by flames erupting at AbdulMutallab's seat.

The suspect was moved Sunday from a hospital where he was treated for his burns to an undisclosed location in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.

He is charged with attempting to destroy the plane and placing a destructive device on the aircraft.

AbdulMutallab's trip originated in Lagos, Nigeria. There, he did not check in a bag as he flew on a KLM flight to Amsterdam, said Harold Demuren, director-general of Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority.

Demuren said the suspect underwent regular screening -- walking through a metal detector and having his shoulder bag scanned through an X-ray machine.

He then underwent "secondary screening" at the boarding gate for the KLM flight, according to officials of the Dutch airline.

In Amsterdam, AbdulMutallab boarded the Northwest Airlines flight to the United States.

The Netherlands' national coordinator for counterterrorism told CNN that AbdulMutallab had gone through "normal security procedures" in Amsterdam before boarding the flight to Detroit.

Over the weekend in Britain, where the suspect studied engineering at a London university, police searched AbdulMutallab's last known address.

Scotland Yard detectives on Sunday interviewed Michael Rimmer, a former high-school teacher who described AbdulMutallab as a "very devout" Muslim who had once expressed sympathy for Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency during a classroom discussion.

But Rimmer, who taught AbdulMutallab at a school in the west African nation of Togo, said it was not clear whether the then-teenager was simply playing devil's advocate during the class.

A federal security bulletin obtained by CNN said AbdulMutallab claimed the explosive device used Friday "was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used."

Yemeni authorities said they will take immediate action once the attempted bombing suspect's alleged link to the country is officially identified.

Reuters - The secret comic-book origin of "Sherlock Holmes"

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The secret comic-book origin of "Sherlock Holmes"

Thursday, Dec 24, 2009 7:23AM UTC

By Borys Kit

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Before "Sherlock Holmes" was a movie opening on Christmas Day, it was a comic.

Sort of.

Lionel Wigram, one of the film's producers, wanted to do a modern retelling of the classic detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. "I wanted to present Sherlock Holmes not as fuddy duddy, 'Masterpiece Theatre' guy," said the British native.

Wigram came up with a story treatment but "realized that wasn't going to be enough." He decided to give his story some comic book pizazz to convey the atmosphere and the attitude. It's one thing to write that the new Holmes has a Bohemian or rock-and-roll attitude, as Wigram was going for, but it's another to show a piece of art that embodies it.

Wigram called DC Comics executive Gregory Noveck and asked him for assistance in finding an artist, and Noveck pointed him to John Watkiss, another Brit. Watkiss is a comic artist who's drawn for "Sandman," "Deadman" and "Savage Sword of Conan." He also worked on Disney's "Tarzan" and "Treasure Planet" movies.

Wigram used his own money, $5,000 of it, to have Watkiss draw up scenes. Wigram then bound them in a comic-book form and published a small number to pitch his take.

The final product is not exactly a comic book. There are no sequential panels or word balloons but rather beautiful, moody splash pages with occasional story notes along the borders.

Wigram showed the book to Warners exec Dan Lin (who later became a producer on the movie) and then to Warners' president Jeff Robinov, who ultimately gave the movie the go-ahead.

"What he drew was what I imagined, but better," said Wigram, who is surprised that more Hollywood types don't prepare these style of pamphlets when pitching ideas. "And if you compare Guy Ritchie's screen version to the images, there's a direct connection. Watkiss deserves a lot of credit and recognition for this."

There was talk of DC making a "Holmes" comic, maybe using the images, maybe not, but the movie project found itself fast-tracked and swept away once Ritchie and then Robert Downey Jr. came on board, and Wigram never had a chance to revisit the idea.