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LOS ANGELES (AP) "Zero Dark Thirty" hunted down the top spot at the box office and easily won it.

Sony Pictures' controversial Osama bin Laden raid drama nabbed first place with $24 million in its first weekend in wide release, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The film, which opened in a limited run last month, earned five Oscar nominations last week, including best picture, original screenplay and actress for Jessica Chastain as a dogged CIA operative.

Open Road Films' horror parody "A Haunted House" starring Marlon Wayans debuted in second place with a solid $18.8 million. The Warner Bros. mobster drama "Gangster Squad," starring Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling as off-the-books police officers battling a mob boss played by Sean Penn, opened below expectations in third place with $16.7 million.

After earning Oscar nominations last week, several Academy Awards contenders benefited at the box office. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences moved up the unveiling of the Oscar nominations to Thursday, three days ahead of Sunday's Golden Globes, Hollywood's second-biggest awards ceremony organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

"The timing is great because there are a host of these awards contenders still out there," said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst at Hollywood.com. "'Django Unchained,' 'Les Miserables,' 'Lincoln,' 'Silver Linings Playbook' and a few others are still out there. Which movies win tonight at the Golden Globes will definitely receive a boost going forward."

At the Golden Globes, "Zero Dark Thirty" will be up against "Argo," ''Django Unchained," ''Life of Pi" and "Lincoln" in the best motion picture drama category. It's also competing against those films for the best picture prize at the Oscars ceremony on Feb. 24, as well as "Amour," ''Beasts of the Southern Wild," ''Les Miserables" and "Silver Linings Playbook."

Controversies surrounding "Zero Dark Thirty," which depicts waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, may have helped create buzz for the film. Several lawmakers accused the CIA of misleading "Zero Dark Thirty" filmmakers by allegedly telling them such interrogation methods helped track down terrorist mastermind bin Laden in 2011.

"There are so many facets of 'Zero Dark Thirty' that have created interest in it," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution at Sony. "Ultimately, it's a great film. That's the piece that you really need to have to get this great of a result. I think it's a film that's not only going to do well in the marketplace but also be talked about for years to come."

The weekend's third place finisher, "Gangster Squad," similarly attracted controversy last year after the mass shooting at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater left 12 dead. Warner Bros. pulled the movie's trailer and delayed the release out of sensitivity because the film originally featured a scene with mobsters ruthlessly shooting into a movie theater audience.

The entire sequence featuring Brolin's character being ambushed inside famed Hollywood movie palace Grauman's Chinese Theater was removed from "Gangster Squad" and replaced with a new scene, which cost millions of dollars to reshoot, set in Los Angeles' Chinatown neighborhood. The rest of the film's many bullet-ridden Tommy gun battles remained intact.

"There's nothing that indicates violence was an issue," said Jeff Goldstein, general sales manager at Warner Bros. "I don't think that's the case here. The exit polling tells us that people liked what they saw in 'Gangster Squad.' I think we'll have a nice hold going into the holiday weekend where people will be more available and have more leisure time."

Internationally, "Life of Pi" dominated in 68 territories with $35.8 million, bringing its worldwide total to $452.1 million. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" followed closely behind with $35.1 million in 62 territories. The worldwide total for the first "Hobbit" chapter is now $886.1 million. "Les Mis" earned $35.6 million in 23 territories, giving it a $234.3 million worldwide total.

Overall business in North America this weekend came in at $142 million, up more than 7 percent from the same period last year, when the Mark Wahlberg thriller "Contraband" led the box office with $24.3 million, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. It marks the third weekend in a row for Hollywood when business has been up over last year.

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Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. "Zero Dark Thirty," $24 million ($1.2 million international).

2. "A Haunted House," $18.8 million.

3. "Gangster Squad," $16.7 million ($9.1 million international).

4. "Django Unchained," $11 million.

5. "Les Miserables," $10.1 million ($25.5 million international).

6. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," $9 million ($26.1 million international).

7. "Lincoln," $6.3 million.

8. "Parental Guidance," $6.1 million ($4.6 million international).

9. "Texas Chainsaw 3-D," $5.1 million ($1.2 million international).

10. "Silver Linings Playbook," $5 million.

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Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:

1. "Life of Pi," $33.2 million.

2. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," $26.1 million.

3. "Les Miserables," $25.5 million.

4. "Jack Reacher," $17.8 million.

5. "Wreck-It Ralph," $11.6 million.

6. "Gangster Squad," $9.1 million.

7. "Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola," $6.5 million.

8. (tie) "Anna Karenina," $6.3 million.

8. (tie) "The Impossible," $6.3 million.

9. "Man On The Edge," $6.2 million.

10. "Cloud Atlas," $5.6 million.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

http://www.rentrak.com

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration dashed the hopes of Star Wars geeks across the galaxy by rejecting an official petition calling for the U.S. government to build a Death Star, the fictional planet-destroying space station featured in the Star Wars movies.

"The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defence, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon," said Paul Shawcross, head of the White House budget office's science and space branch.

"The Administration does not support blowing up planets," Shawcross wrote in a response to the 34,435 people who signed the petition on the White House website.

The White House accepts petitions and responds to the most popular ones. Most of the petitions on the website address weighty policy issues. (Link to petition: http://r.reuters.com/wyv25t)

But in recent weeks, national attention has been drawn to quirky petitions, such as one that supports the minting of a trillion-dollar platinum coin to avoid a debt default if Congress fails to raise the U.S. debt limit next month.

The Death Star petitioners argued the project would create jobs and strengthen national defence. But it would be costly, particularly at a time when the government is fixated on finding ways to slash spending and reduce its debt.

"The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000 (526.8 quadrillion pounds). We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it," Shawcross said.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When video game developer Brenda Brathwaite Romero started her career in the 1980s, she could count the number of female developers in the industry on one hand.

Today, many "Women in Games" roundtables she attends are filled to capacity with new faces. The 46-year-old, sometimes referred to as the longest-serving woman in the video game arena, jokes that these days one can even encounter long lines for the ladies' room at the Game Developers Conference, one of the industry's largest gatherings.

"Over the years, greatly helped by the social and mobile boom, there have been many, many women coming into game development," Brathwaite Romero said.

With women comprising just over 1 in 10 in the video game workforce, the industry has a reputation for being among the most testosterone-fueled of the traditionally male-dominated technology sector. But thanks to the mobile revolution, industry executives say that's changing.

With smartphones going mainstream and delivering gaming to a new, broader population, publishers and developers are keen to tap an audience beyond young males. And, not surprisingly, as women have explored a growing range of mobile games on Facebook or other platforms, they have discovered the allure of working in the industry.

The number of women hired by game companies has tripled since 2009, according to recruiting firm VonChurch, based on over 350 placements it has made in digital gaming firms like CrowdStar and GREE.

In 1989, when veteran games designer Sheri Graner Ray started out, women made up less than 3 percent of the workforce. That's now up to 11 percent.

"In 20 years, it's not a lot of growth," said Graner Ray, who has worked at leading companies like Electronic Arts and Sony Online Entertainment. But she agrees that number will rise as more women assert themselves in the industry, educational programs take hold, and mobile games continue to flourish.

Some of the first engineers at mobile games maker Pocket Gems were women, and though that wasn't intentional when the company was founded in 2009, it proved instrumental to success, said Chief Executive Ben Liu.

Pocket Gems, best known as a maker of family-friendly mobile games like its popular "Tap" series, recently launched "Campus Life", where players can build and run a college sorority, to target a female audience.

"I've worked at other, different game companies and I've been on floors where it's only guys," Liu said. "Our aspiration is to create games that are mass market and accessible to all people, and having that representative base of employees helps us keep true to that."

DEBAUCHERY 'WAY, WAY DOWN'

Gaming still conjures up images of young men glued to flickering screens for hours on end, fueled by energy drinks and waging online battles unto death in such "shooters" as "Call of Duty" or tactical war games like "Starcraft."

But the advent of affordable smartphones and tablets and the burgeoning world of social media has drawn in a whole new world of gamers. Individuals who had never been tempted to plunk down hundreds of dollars to buy a gaming console found themselves enticed by a whole new genre of games.

These days, gaming might just as easily mean launching attacks on pigs in "Angry Birds" or slicing produce with swiping motions in "Fruit Ninja" -- games that have mass appeal.

"Mobile is still the Wild West and it's founded on this idea of inclusion, because everyone has these mobile devices and everyone wants to play," said game content designer Elizabeth Sampat, who works at social game company Storm8.

That's partly why more than half of America's social and mobile gamers are women, according to research firm EEDAR, while they comprise just 30 percent of those who play hard-core violent games like Microsoft's "Halo 4" on game consoles.

Erin McCarty, 24, grew up playing such fare. She went to engineering school at Carnegie Mellon University, with a goal toward working in the video game industry.

Today she's the only female engineer in a seven-member team crafting multiplayer-shooter game "Realm of the Mad God" at social and mobile game company Kabam that targets male gamers.

But far from feeling different, McCarty considers herself just another coder at Kabam, where women make up just a fifth of the payroll.

"I'm around guys a lot and they are always people that I'm happy to work with," McCarty said.

Brathwaite Romero recalls how her male coworkers on the team that created the mature-rated "Playboy: The Mansion" game with nude characters that was published in 2005, were wholly professional.

"I've fortunately not experienced the level of misogyny that I've heard other people experience," Brathwaite Romero said.

"Some of the debauchery that was evident in the early days of the industry, like meetings at strip clubs, having strippers at your party, that sort of stuff has gone down way, way down from where it used to be."

DANCING GIRLS AND SEXISM

That's not to say the industry doesn't have a ways to go.

First, there's a 27 percent gap in average incomes, with women making $68,062 versus men at $86,418, according to Game Developer Magazine's 2011 annual salary survey.

Women in the game industry are underrepresented in software engineering and top-level management, reflecting a similar trend in the broader technology sector, industry executives say.

VonChurch found engineering positions were skewed more toward men in their placements since 2009. Female engineers made up 21 percent from the pool of women it placed, while over half of the men it placed were hired in engineering positions.

Then there are the occasional throwbacks to the male-dominated 1980s and 1990s. Gameloft created a stir a few weeks ago after a holiday party at its Montreal studio ran amok.

The studio, which makes games for devices like Apple Inc's iPhone, hired a burlesque dance troupe that featured scantily clad women in body paint. By the end of the evening, several dancers began to discard their bathing suits, according to a person with knowledge of the event, who asked not be named.

The dancers were expelled from the event "as soon as their misconduct was brought to light," Gameloft said in a statement.

Over a month ago, a tweet from a male gaming professional -- "Why are there so few women in gaming?" -- ignited a top-trending Twitter conversation under the #1reasonwhy hashtag, that quickly morphed into a now infamous discussion of discrimination and sexism in the workplace.

"I was told I'd be remembered not on my own merits, but by who I was or was assumed to be sleeping with," Seattle-based pen and paper game designer Lillian Cohen-Moore, who goes by @lilyorit, tweeted.

Gaming conventions can bring out the worst in attendees, said several women gaming professionals. While not a pure work environment, they are a forum for professionals from across the industry to convene to talk shop and do business.

Cohen-Moore, 28, said she was appalled to see men at the annual Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle groping women working as costumed characters when she worked there last year.

"I've been leery about transitioning into video games because the culture over there is a lot more blatant and active in how many sex trolls they have," she said.

Brathwaite Romero, who is married to industry legend and "Doom" creator John Romero, also recounts a jarring instance at last summer's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry's biggest gathering.

"I was discussing a potential contract with somebody and the guy right next to me is talking about -- to quote him -- 'the tits and ass' on this particular model. And he's going on and on and on about this," she said. "This is wrong."

Sampat said in some workplaces, though not at her current employer Storm8, women are often expected to tolerate off-color jokes - of which they're often the target.

Before stepping into an interview at an online game company a couple of years ago, Sampat said a female human resources employee told her: "It's my job to make sure that all potential candidates can, you know, take a joke."

"I couldn't help but wonder if she asked the white male programmer who came in before me whether he could take a joke too," Sampat said.

Women outside the United States find similar challenges. Alisa Chumachenko, CEO and founder of Game Insight, a fast-growing mobile and social company in Russia, thinks having more women in senior and more diverse roles will help. Her company of 450 employees has three other women in high-level positions, but she wishes she knew more women in gaming.

"We need to really look at the women who have become movers and shakers in this industry," the veteran games designer Graner Ray said, "and claim them and hold them up and say: 'Here's where we are, here's what we can do. Pay attention to us.'"

(Editing by Edwin Chan and Leslie Adler)

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LAS VEGAS (AP) The world's largest gadget show wrapped up on Friday, and the organizers said it was the biggest ever, beating last year's record in terms of the floor space companies purchased to display their wares.

What was it that drew more than 3,500 companies and 150,000 people to Las Vegas for this mega-event? Here are four gadgets that exemplified the top trends at this year's International CES.

Sony's 55-inch ultra-high-definition TV

The introduction of high-definition and flat-panel TVs sent U.S. shoppers on a half-decade buying spree as they tossed out old tube sets. Now that the old sets are mostly gone, sales of new TVs are falling. To lure buyers back, Asian TV makers are trying to pull the same trick again. They're making the sets sharper. This fall, Sony and LG introduced 84-inch sets with four times the resolution of regular high-definition sets. They provide stunning sharpness, but they're too big for most homes, and at more than $20,000, too expensive. At the show, the companies unveiled smaller "ultra-high-definition" sets, measuring 55 inches and 65 inches on the diagonal. They will go on sale this spring. Prices were not announced, but will presumably be a lot lower than for the 84-inch sets, perhaps under $10,000.

Both the size and price of these smaller ultra-HD TVs should make them easier buys, but the higher resolution will be a lot less noticeable on a smaller screen, unless viewers sit very close. Analysts expect ultra-HD to remain an exclusive niche product for some years. There's no easy way to get ultra-HD video content to the sets, so they will mostly be showing regular HD movies. However, the sets can "upscale" the video to make it look better than it does on a regular HD set.

Analyst James McQuivey of Forrester Research believes the TV makers are focusing on the wrong thing. He doesn't think consumers really care that much about picture quality.

"What matters most is not the number of pixels or the quality of the pixels themselves ... but the increasing convenience of the content's discovery and delivery. This is why TV makers should be investing in a better experience rather than a bigger one," McQuivey wrote in a blog post.

LG's 55-inch OLED TV

Organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, make for thin, extremely colorful screens. They're already established in smartphone screens, and they have a lot of promise for other applications as well. For years, a promise is all they've represented. OLED screens are very hard to make in larger sizes. Now, LG is shipping a 55-inch OLED TV set in Korea, and is expected to bring it to the U.S. this spring for about $12,000.

Beyond being thin, power-thrifty and capable of extremely high color saturation, OLEDs are interesting for another reason: they can bend. LCDs have to be laid down on flat glass substrates, but OLEDs can be laid down on flexible glass or plastic. The major obstacle here is that flexible substrates tend to let through air, which destroys OLEDs, but manufacturers seem to have tackled the problem. Samsung showed off a phone that can bend into a tube. It consisted of a rigid plastic box with electronics and an attached display that is as thin as a piece of paper. The company suggested that in the future, it could make displays that fold up like maps big screens that fit in a pocket.

We're likely to see the benefits of bendy OLEDs sooner in a less eyebrow-raising but more practical implementation. It may never have occurred to you, but all electronic screens, except for cathode-ray tubes, are flat. With OLEDs, they don't have to be. LG and Sony showed TV sets with concave screens at the show not very useful, but an interesting demonstration. In the future, you could have a phone with a screen that laps over onto the edges, providing you with "smart" buttons with labels that change depending on whether you're in camera mode or music mode. You could have a coffee mug with a wrap-around news and weather ticker. A revolution in design awaits.

By the way, you won't have to choose between ultra-HD and OLED screens Sony, Panasonic and LG showed prototype TVs that combine the technologies.

The Pebble Watch

The Pebble is a "smart" timepiece that can be programmed to do various things, including showing text messages sent to your phone. The high-resolution display is all digital, so it can be programmed with various cool "watch faces." But what's really interesting about the Pebble is how it came to be and that it exists at all.

Young Canadian inventor Eric Migicovsky couldn't find conventional funding to make the watch, so he asked for money on Kickstarter, the biggest "crowdfunding" website. In essence, he asked people to buy watches before he actually had any to sell. The fundraising was a blowout success. Migicovsky raised $10.3 million by pre-selling 85,000 Pebbles. At CES, he announced that the watches were ready to ship.

Kickstarter's goal is to bring things and events into fruition that otherwise wouldn't happen, by creating a shortcut between the people who want to create something and the people willing to pay for it. The effect is starting to become apparent at CES. At least two other "smart" watches funded through Kickstarter were on display. Some startups were at the show to drum up interest in ongoing Kickstarter campaigns, including a Swedish company that wants to make a speaker with a transparent body, and a California outfit that wants to produce a swiveling, remote-controlled platform for cameras.

Creative Technology Ltd.'s Interactive Gesture Camera

This $150 camera, promoted by Intel, attaches to a computer much like a Webcam. From a single lens, it shoots the world in 3-D, using technology similar to radar. The idea is that you can perform hand gestures in the air in front of the camera, and it lets the computer interpret them. Why would you want this? That's not really clear yet, but a lot of effort is going into finding an answer. CES was boiling with gadgets attempting to break new ground when it comes to how we interact with computers and appliances like TV sets. The Nintendo Wii game console, with its innovative motion-sensing controllers, and the Microsoft Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 console, which has its own 3-D-sensing camera, have inspired engineers to pursue ways to ditch or at least complement the keyboard, mouse, remote control and even the touchscreen.

Samsung's high-end TVs already let viewers use hand gestures to control volume, and it expanded the range of recognized gestures with this year's models. Startup Leap Motion was at the show with another depth-sensing camera kit, this one designed to mount next to a laptop's touch pad, looking upward.

So far, though, the "new interaction" field hasn't had a real hit since the Kinect. Consumers may be eager to lose the TV remote, but there's a holdup caused by the nature of the setup: to effectively control the TV, you need to take command not just of the TV, but of the cable or satellite set-top box. TV makers and the cable companies don't really talk to each other, and there's no sign of them uniting on a common approach. Only when both devices can be controlled by hand-waving can we permanently let the remote get lost between the couch cushions.

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BIG CYPRESS NATIONAL PRESERVE, Fla. (AP) An armed mob set out into the Florida Everglades on Saturday to flush out a scaly invader.

It sounds like the second act of a sci-fi horror flick but, really, it's pretty much Florida's plan for dealing with an infestation of Burmese pythons that are eating their way through a fragile ecosystem.

Nearly 800 people signed up for the month-long "Python Challenge" that started Saturday afternoon. The vast majority 749 are members of the general public who lack the permits usually required to harvest pythons on public lands.

"We feel like anybody can get out in the Everglades and figure out how to try and find these things," said Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "It's very safe, getting out in the Everglades. People do it all the time."

Twenty-eight python permit holders also joined the hunt at various locations in the Everglades. The state is offering cash prizes to whoever brings in the longest python and whoever bags the most pythons by the time the competition ends at midnight Feb. 10.

Dozens of would-be python hunters showed up for some last-minute training in snake handling Saturday morning at the University of Florida Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center in Davie.

The training came down to common sense: Drink water, wear sunscreen, don't get bitten by anything and don't shoot anyone.

Many of the onlookers dressed in camouflage, though they probably didn't have to worry about spooking the snakes. They would have a much harder time spotting the splotchy, tan pythons in the long green grasses and woody brush of the Everglades.

"It's advantage-snake," mechanical engineer Dan Keenan concluded after slashing his way through a quarter-mile of scratchy sawgrass, dried leaves and woody overgrowth near a campsite in the Big Cypress National Preserve, which is about 50 miles southeast of Naples and is supervised by the National Park Service.

Keenan, of Merritt Island, and friend Steffani Burd of Melbourne, a statistician in computer security, holstered large knives and pistols on their hips, so they'd be ready for any python that crossed their path. The snakes can grow to more than 20 feet in length.

The most useful tool they had, though, was the key fob to their car. Burd wanted to know that they hadn't wandered too far into the wilderness, so Keenan clicked the fob until a reassuring beep from their car chirped softly through the brush.

The recommended method for killing pythons is the same for killing zombies: a gunshot to the brain, or decapitation to reduce the threat. (The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals doesn't approve of the latter method, though.)

Pythons are kind of the zombies of the Everglades, though their infestation is less deadly to humans. The snakes have no natural predators, they can eat anything in their way, they can reproduce in large numbers and they don't belong here.

Florida currently prohibits possession or sale of the pythons for use as pets, and federal law bans the importation and interstate sale of the species.

Wildlife experts say pythons are just the tip of the invasive species iceberg. Florida is home to more exotic species of amphibians and reptiles than anywhere else in the world, said John Hayes, dean of research for the University of Florida's Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Roughly 2,050 pythons have been harvested in Florida since 2000, according to the conservation commission. It's unknown exactly how many are slithering through the wetlands.

Officials hope the competition will help rid the Everglades of the invaders while raising awareness about the risks that exotic species pose to Florida's native wildlife.

Keenan and Burd emerged from the Everglades empty-handed Saturday, but they planned to return Sunday, hoping for cooler temperatures that would drive heat-seeking snakes into sunny patches along roads and levees.

Burd still deemed the hunt a success. "For me, I take back to my friends and community that there is a beautiful environment out here. It's opening the picture from just the python issue to the issue of how do we protect our environment," she said.

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Online: Python Challenge http://www.pythonchallenge.org/

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Follow Jennifer Kay on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jnkay

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LOS ANGELES (AP) The makers of three Golden Globe- and Oscar-nominated foreign films shared the secrets of their craft and admiration for one another at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's 10th annual Foreign Film Symposium.

Oscar-nominated Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallstrom moderated the panel featuring "Kon-Tiki" directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning of Norway, "A Royal Affair" director Nikolaj Arcel of Denmark and Austrian director Michael Haneke, whose film "Amour" also earned Oscar nods for picture, director, actress and original screenplay this week.

"It's been a very good week," Haneke said through an interpreter before Saturday's symposium on the Los Angeles campus of Loyola Marymount University.

Hallstrom, whose film "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" is up for best picture at the Golden Globes, asked his filmmaking colleagues detailed questions about their approach to the craft during the 75-minute symposium. Do you rehearse scenes? Do you use editing to alter performances? Do you keep the camera rolling between takes? Do you act out the scenes in your head before directing your actors?

Haneke said he rarely rehearses his actors and doesn't allow them to improvise. Through storyboarding, he knows exactly where the performers need to be in each scene.

"Because I wrote it myself, I have to, in a way, act it out," he said. "Otherwise there would be nothing."

The other filmmakers said they also keep rehearsals to a minimum to preserve the spontaneity of the scenes.

Asked which contemporary filmmakers they admire, the 40-year-old Arcel pointed to Haneke and said, "This guy."

Sandberg, 41, and Roenning, 40, also said they've been inspired by their colleagues on stage.

"I'm sitting between Haneke and Hallstrom," Roenning said incredulously.

Haneke refused to answer, because he said whomever he neglects to mention would be upset.

The 70th annual Golden Globe Awards will be presented Sunday at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and broadcast live on NBC.

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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy .

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Online:

www.goldenglobes.org

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NEW DELHI (AP) Police said Sunday they have arrested six suspects in another gang rape of a bus passenger in India, four weeks after a brutal attack on a student on a moving bus in the capital outraged Indians and led to calls for tougher rape laws.

Police officer Raj Jeet Singh said a 29-year-old woman was the only passenger on a bus as she was traveling to her village in northern Punjab state on Friday night. The driver refused to stop at her village despite her repeated pleas and drove her to a desolate location, he said.

There, the driver and the conductor took her to a building where they were joined by five friends and took turns raping her throughout the night, Singh said.

The driver dropped the woman off at her village early Saturday, he said.

Singh said police arrested six suspects on Saturday and were searching for another.

Gurmej Singh, deputy superintendent of police, said all six admitted involvement in the rape. He said the victim was recovering at home.

Also on Saturday, police arrested a 32-year-old man for allegedly raping and killing a 9-year-old girl two weeks ago in Ahmednagar district in western India, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Her decomposed body was found Friday.

Police officer Sunita Thakare said the suspect committed the crime seven months after his release from prison after serving nine years for raping and murdering a girl in 2003, PTI reported Sunday.

The deadly rape of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus in December led to the woman's death and set off an impassioned debate about what India needs to do to prevent such tragedies. Protesters and politicians have called for tougher rape laws, police reforms and a transformation in the way the country treats women.

"It's a very deep malaise. This aspect of gender justice hasn't been dealt with in our nation-building task," Seema Mustafa, a writer on social issues who heads the Center for Policy Analysis think tank, said Sunday.

"Police haven't dealt with the issue severely in the past. The message that goes out is that the punishment doesn't match the crime. Criminals think they can get away it," she said.

In her first published comments, the mother of the deceased student in the New Delhi attack said Sunday that all six suspects in that case, including one believed to be a juvenile, deserve to die.

She was quoted by The Times of India newspaper as saying that her daughter, who died from massive internal injuries two weeks after the attack, told her that the youngest suspect had participated in the most brutal aspects of the rape.

Five men have been charged with the physiotherapy student's rape and murder and face a possible death penalty if convicted. The sixth suspect, who says he is 17 years old, is likely to be tried in a juvenile court if medical tests confirm he is a minor. His maximum sentence would be three years in a reform facility.

"Now the only thing that will satisfy us is to see them punished. For what they did to her, they deserve to die," the newspaper quoted the mother as saying.

Some activists have demanded a change in Indian laws so that juveniles committing heinous crimes can face the death penalty.

The names of the victim of the Dec. 16 attack and her family have not been released.

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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday dismissed allegations by predecessor Ehud Olmert that he wasted billions of dollars preparing for a strike on Iran that did not take place.

Olmert, who once led the centrist Kadima party, told Israel's Channel 2 television on Friday that 11 billion shekels (about $3 billion) were wasted on "illusionary security escapades that have not been implemented and will not be implemented".

Olmert, prime minister from 2006 to 2009, did not mention Iran by name but Israeli media said his meaning was clear in the attack on Netanyahu in the run-up to a January 22 parliamentary election.

Israel and the West suspect Iran's nuclear program is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Tehran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes only.

"Last year they (Israel's leadership) frightened the whole world and in the end nothing was done," Olmert added, appearing to allude to warnings by Israel that it might strike Iran if Western sanctions failed to curb its nuclear activities.

Netanyahu, who leads the right-wing Likud party and is widely forecast to win the election, has set out a mid-2013 "red line" for tackling Iran's uranium enrichment project.

Asked by Army Radio about Olmert's comments, Netanyahu said: "This is a strange and irresponsible statement. I will not specify the sums of our defense expenditure.

"I will say that we have developed offensive and defensive capabilities for close and distant theatres and I think that this is a very important investment for the state of Israel."

He reiterated that Israel "must do everything in its power to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons", a goal he said would be his "number one task" after his re-election.

Olmert, who is not running in the ballot, resigned as prime minister in a corruption scandal and was convicted in July on a relatively minor charge of breach of public trust, receiving a one-year suspended sentence.

He is still a defendant in a bribery trial related to a Jerusalem real estate project.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Alison Williams)

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BAMAKO, Mali (AP) The battle to retake Mali's north from the al-Qaida-linked groups controlling it began in earnest Saturday, after hundreds of French forces deployed to the country and began aerial bombardments to drive back the Islamic extremists.

At the same time, nations in West Africa authorized the immediate deployment of troops to Mali, fast-forwarding a military intervention that was not due to start until September.

The decision to begin the military operation was taken after the fighters, who seized the northern half of Mali nine months ago, decided earlier this week to push even further south to the town of Konna, coming within 50 kilometers (30 miles) of Mopti, the first town held by the government and a major base for the Malian military.

Many believe that if Mopti were to fall, the Islamists could potentially seize the rest of the country, dramatically raising the stakes. The potential outcome was "a terrorist state at the doorstep of France and Europe," French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Saturday.

France scrambled Mirage fighter jets from a base in neighboring Chad, as well as combat helicopters beginning the aerial assault on Friday. They have also sent in hundreds of troops to the front line, as well as to secure the capital. In just 24 hours, French forces succeeded in dispersing the Islamists from Konna, the town the fighters had seized in a bold advance earlier in the week, Le Drian said.

Malian military officials said they were now conducting sweeps, looking for snipers.

"A halting blow has been delivered, and heavy losses have been inflicted on our adversaries, but our mission is not complete," French President Francois Hollande said after a three-hour meeting with his defense chiefs in Paris. "I reiterate that it consists of preparing the deployment of an African intervention force to allow Mali to recover its territorial integrity."

However, in a sign of how hard the battle ahead may be, the extremists succeeded in shooting down a French helicopter, the defense minister confirmed. The pilot died of his wounds while he was being evacuated. The Islamists are using arms stolen from ex-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's arsenal, as well as the weapons abandoned by Mali's military when they fled their posts in the face of the rebel advance.

They have outfitted SUVs with high-caliber machine guns, and have released videos displaying their collection of anti-aircraft weapons.

The Islamists have vowed to retaliate against French interests, and they claim to have sleeper cells in all of the capitals of the West African nations who are sending troops. Hollande announced that he had raised France's domestic terror threat level.

Online in jihadist forums, participants called for fighters to attack French interests in retaliation for the air raids. They discussed possible targets, including the French Embassy in neighboring Niger, one of the countries donating troops, according to a transcript provided by Washington-based SITE Intelligence.

The sudden military operation is a reversal of months of debate over whether or not Western powers should get involved in a military bid to oust the militants, who took advantage of a coup in Mali's capital in March to capture the north. As recently as December, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cautioned against a quick military operation. Diplomats said that September would be the earliest the operation could take place.

All of that went out the window this week when the fighters pushed south from the town of Douentza, which demarcated their line of control, located 900 kilometers (540 miles) from the capital. By Thursday, they had succeeded in advancing another 120 kilometers (72 miles) south, bringing them nearly face-to-face with the ill-equipped and ill-trained Malian military in a showdown that couldn't be ignored by the international community.

In a statement released Saturday, the bloc representing nations in West Africa, ECOWAS, said they had authorized the immediate deployment of troops to Mali. ECOWAS Commission President Kadre Desire Ouedraogo said they made the decision "in light of the urgency of the situation."

In Washington, a U.S. official confirmed that the country has offered to send drones to Mali. He could not be named because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. After a telephone conversation with Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to send aircrafts to help transport troops, according to a statement.

who offered troop transport aircraft. Neither official could be named because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly

Lt. Col. Diarran Kone, a spokesman for Mali's defense minister, said on Saturday that he was at the Bamako airport to receive a contingent of French special forces from one of their tactical units. Residents in the town of Sevare, near the line of control, said they had seen planes of white people arriving, whom they assume were French soldiers.

Hundreds of French troops were involved in the operation, code-named "Serval" after a sub-Saharan wildcat, officials in Paris said.

"The situation in Mali is serious," Le Drian said in Paris. "It has rapidly worsened in the last few days ... We had to react before it was too late," he added.

French intelligence services had detected preparations for what they described as a "major offensive" organized and coordinated by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. After a large convoy of vehicles were spotted heading toward the strategic town of Mopti on Thursday, France sent in its first unit to the Central Malian town to support the Malian combat forces, Le Drian said.

Then on Friday, Hollande authorized the use of French air power following an appeal from Mali's president. French pilots targeted a column of jihadist fighters travelling in pickup trucks, who were heading down toward Mopti from Konna. He said that the helicopter raid led to the destruction of several units of fighters and stopped their advance toward the city.

Overnight Saturday, air strikes began in the areas where the fighters operate, Le Drian said, led by French forces in Chad, where France has Mirage 2000 and Mirage F1 fighter jets stationed. Residents in the town of Lere, near the Mauritanian border, confirmed that it had been bombed.

Al-Qaida's affiliate in Africa has been a shadowy presence for nearly a decade, operating out of Mali's lawless northern desert. They did not come out into the open until this April, when a coup by disgruntled soldiers in Bamako caused the country to tip into chaos. The extremists took advantage of the power vacuum, pushing into the main towns in the north, and seizing more than half of Mali's territory, an area larger than Afghanistan.

Turbaned fighters now control all the major northern cities, carrying out beatings, floggings and amputations in public squares just as the Taliban did.

___

Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten and Lori Hinnant in Paris, Brahima Ouedraogo in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis are getting married.

A spokeswoman for Wilde confirmed Saturday that the couple is engaged. Joy Fehily released no other details.

The engagement was first reported by People.com.

This will be the second wedding for both actors. Wilde finalized her divorce from documentarian Tao Ruspoli in 2011 after eight years of marriage. Sudeikis was previously married to "Pitch Perfect" screenwriter Kay Cannon. They divorced in 2010.

Wilde, 28, rose to fame on TV's "House M.D." Her film credits include "Tron: Legacy" and "Cowboys & Aliens." Sudeikis, 37, is a star of "Saturday Night Live." He hosted the MTV Movie Awards in 2011 and appeared in the film "Horrible Bosses" that same year.

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