AP reports the Award Academy winners
Heath Ledger won the supporting-actor Academy Award for “The Dark Knight,” while best-picture favorite “Slumdog Millionaire” cruised to six wins in an Oscar evening that was following the script of earlier Hollywood honors where the underdog tale dominated.

Penelope Cruz claimed the evening’s first prize, supporting actress, for her role as a tempestuous artist in Woody Allen’s Spanish romance “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” while the robot romance “WALL-E” won for feature-length animation.

For his demented reinvention of Batman villain the Joker, Ledger became only the second actor ever to win posthumously, his triumph coming exactly 13 months after his death from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs on Oscar nominations day last year.
I haven’t watched it, but based on many reviews, it really deserves the Academy Award
Slumdog has ten Oscar nominations, not as many as Benjamin Button, which leads with thirteen. However, having captured top honors at every awards show to date, Slumdog Millionaire is easily the favorite to win the Academy Award for best picture.

Slumdog Millionaire, the little $14 million picture shot in the slums of India, is on it’s way to grossing $100 million. “I’d never been to India,” says Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle. “Because India is a democracy, the slums have become incredibly powerful places politically. They have a lot of people in them. There are a lot of votes in a small area.”
A.R. Rahman got the double awards for best music and song:
Indian music director AR Rahman’s score for Slumdog Millionaire has won an Oscar for best music, and a second for best song. The BBC’s Soutik Biswas discusses what makes Rahman tick.

… the jingle maker-turned-musician has finally got recognition as India’s first truly global film music composer with his score for Danny Boyle’s sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire.

The score is an untidy smorgasbord of hip hop, Bollywood remix and signature pop anthem. But it works because it follows the film’s giddy pace, the darkness of its characters, its portrayal of lives on the edge.
Slumdog Millionaire one sequence

Watch the Slumdog Millionaire Trailer

AP ISLAMABAD, Pakistan:
Pakistan’s prime minister has dismissed the significance of a dossier handed over by India about the Mumbai attacks, saying it was just information and “not evidence.

Pakistan moved thousands of troops away from its border with Afghanistan towards its Indian frontier yesterday, marking a big increase in tensions between the nuclear-armed neigh-bours after the Mumbai terror attacks. Times Online

The global police agency Interpol says India has not shared any information with it about last month’s deadly attacks in Mumbai (Bombay). more

NEW DELHI – India on Monday gave Pakistan what it called proof of Pakistani involvement in last month’s terror attacks in Mumbai, building public pressure on its neighbor as the top American military commander arrived in Islamabad. more

In the days after the deadly Mumbai attacks, India demanded that Pakistan crack down on militants, shutter charities linked to extremists and jail suspected plotters.

With a flurry of raids, Pakistan took many of those steps this week. Now it’s up to India to do what it likes least: share intelligence with its archrival about what it knows and how it knows it.

Keeping the alleged plotters in jail will require unprecedented investigative cooperation across a border mined with distrust and suspicion, and the onus has shifted to India.

Pakistani authorities say they will prosecute in their own courts anyone linked to the three-day siege in Mumbai that left 164 dead — they just need the proof.

“Our own investigations cannot proceed beyond a certain point without provision of credible information and evidence,” said Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. more.

India’s top law enforcement official Thursday said suspicion points “unmistakably” to a Pakistani link to the Mumbai terrorist attacks. via CNN