The highly anticipated film My Name is Khan, starring the Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, will make its world premiere in Abu Dhabi next week. Thousands of screaming fans are expected to descend on the capital on February 10 to catch a glimpse of the actor who is often called King Khan or the King of Bollywood. In the film, Khan plays the main protagonist a man with Asperger’s Syndrome who attempts to travel across continents to prove that his surname does not automatically make him a terrorist.

The director, Karan Johar, has had a string of successes with films such as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, starring Khan and the Bollywood actress Kajol. With this project he reunites the pair for the first time in eight years. Kajol was on hiatus to marry and start a family.

The film will be shown at the Berlin International Film Festival after its Abu Dhabi launch. It is set for world-wide release on February 12. My Name Is Khan is one of the first Bollywood films to be distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures in the US. It will be distributed to 65 countries.

Assistant coach Shawky Gharib revealed failure to qualify for the World Cup was Egypt's biggest motivation to succeed at the African Nations Cup after they clinched their third consecutive title in Luanda on Sunday night.

The Pharaohs had Mohamed Gedo to thank for their latest crown after the substitute scored the only goal five minutes from time to help clinch a narrow 1-0 win over a brave Ghana.

But it was just reward for Hassan Shehata's team following a disappointing past few months in which they failed to qualify for the World Cup after a play-off defeat to Algeria.

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The world prices for oil, following the results of the tenders on Thursday have gone down, the agency reports citing RIA RosBusinessConsulting (RBC). According to RBC, the prices of the world market for oil, following the results of the tenders at the leading oil stock exchanges, went down on January 28, 2010. The official prices of oil futures of the next month of delivery have amounted to: in London on InterContinental Exchange Futures Europe - IPE Brent Crude - $72.13 (-0.11) per barrel and in New York on New York Mercantile Exchange - Light, Sweet Crude Oil - $73.64 (-0.03) per barrel.

Media passes to the mega-hyped Apple iPad launch may have been the hottest ticket in the biz Wednesday. But I and hundreds of thousands of tech enthusiasts and Apple fan boys and fan girls were hungrily plugged in online, sharing instant analysis as each feature was announced.

Social networks -- namely the micro-blogging site Twitter -- allowed for the news to spread, be digested and pontificated upon instantly as Apple CEO Steve Jobs rolled through the tablet computer's list of features. While Apple doesn't provide live video for their media events, the tech community plugged into the event by tuning into the Twitter feeds of journalists in the audience.

This steady stream of information gave me a front-row seat for the long-awaited event, which I was able to share in real time with the readers of freep.com. As Jobs took the stage at 1 p.m., tech personality Leo LaPorte streamed live video using a webcam-enabled laptop from his seat in the crowd at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

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Temperamental Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar is aiming to play in the T20 World Cup, which is scheduled to be held in May in the Caribbean, to prove his critics wrong.Akhtar’s close friends and his domestic teammates told PakPassion.net that he is training hard, and is likely to take part in a 50-over tournament, starting next month, to prove his fitness for the T20 World Cup.

The 'Rawalpindi Express' believes that he still has some cricket left in him, and is eager to make a comeback in the national squad, they said.“Akhtar believes he has been written off too soon and by too many, and he wants to make a comeback to the national team. He wants to work hard on his fitness and play regularly for KRL (domestic team) in the coming weeks, and to take part in the training camp. He feels that he still has something to offer to the Pakistan team,” Akhtar’s teammates said.

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This week Nato foreign ministers and officials will meet assemble in the UK capital for the Afghanistan London Conference.

Just as it was in 2009, Afghanistan is the country on every diplomat's lips in 2010. Repeated discourses on the reason.

Why allied troops are in Afghanistan do not seem to be seeping through to the public consciousness, but the coalition mission remains to put home-grown policing and military bodies in a position to take care of their country's own security.

While Barack Obama's 30,000-strong troop surge and the continued presence of British troops in some of the most war-torn parts of.

The country (the UK death-toll in Afghanistan is all but certain to overtake the total number of deaths in the Falklands conflict this year) will dominate headlines, the priority for the west is improving Afghan governance.

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Sachin and Rahul Dravid have set a new world record  today at Mirpur  in against Bangladesh in 2nd Test – The record is for the most century partnerships by any pair in history.

They went past Australians Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting and the West Indian pair of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes who have 16 such stands.

Both Sachin and Dravid made centuries in this test match. Master blaster Sachin Tendulkar made 143 (182) and the Wall Rahul Dravid made 111 (188).

The openers Sehwag and Gautam gambhir made Half-centuries which set India way top on Bangladesh. At stumps, captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was unbeaten on 22 from 38 deliveries, having hit two boundaries.

Earlier, Virender Sehwag hit a brisk 56 from 63 deliveries, adding 103 runs for the opening wicket with Gautam Gambhir to give India a good start.

All five of Africa's World Cup-bound teams have made it through to the quarter-finals of the African Nations Cup but few with any aplomb. Cameroon were the last of the quintet to qualify for the last eight, sneaking through.

On Thursday by the margin of one goal only after a close-run finish in Group D. Four of the five - Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria -- lost their opening game at the tournament and were forced to come from behind to finish among the top two in their respective groups.

Ivory Coast are the only one of the teams heading to the World Cup finals in South Africa later this year who have so far not been beaten at the tournament. But they have played just two matches in Angola because of the withdrawal of Togo before the tournament started, being held to a goalless draw by Burkina Faso before beating Ghana.

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The euro fell to a 20-week low against the dollar in Asia on Wednesday as short-term players in the region reacted to more negative news on the euro-zone economy overnight, and to falls in Chinese share markets, by offloading the risk-sensitive common currency.

The selling pushed the euro initially below $1.4250, which in turn tripped a large accumulation of automated selling orders, sending it to a low at $1.4180. That was the lowest the unit has traded since hitting $1.4177 on Sept. 1 last year.

Lingering concerns over the fiscal health of Greece, a euro-member, could pressure the currency down to around $1.4000 later this week, traders said. Data released overnight showed that Germany's ZEW economic expectations index fell for the fourth month in a row. The result hurt the euro by adding to speculation the European Central Bank may lag the U.S. Federal Reserve in raising interest rates, dealers said.

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After a 7.3-magnitude earthquake battered Haiti on Tuesday, the international community has exerted unremitting efforts to help relieve the impoverished Caribbean country, but a number of difficulties have hindered relief work. INTERRUPTED COMMUNICATION  According to a UN estimation, the quake has not only caused huge property damage to Haiti, but also paralyzed the country's administration and public security sectors.

Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive estimated on Sunday that around 100,000 people have died from the quake and that more than 90 percent of the nation's buildings were damaged.  A large number of governmental buildings, including the presidential office, were damaged or destroyed, while numerous governmental officials have been killed, injured or missing in the quake.

Moreover, the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince collapsed in the quake, killing both Hedi Annabi, the UN's special representative in Haiti, and his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa alongside dozens of UN staff members.

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