London, Dec 18 : It see

London, Dec 18 : Despite its cast of relative unknowns, Danny Boyle''s `Slumdog Millionaire' has become this season''s buzz film and is now being tipped as a frontrunner for an Oscar.

`Slumdog Millionaire' is a fictitious story about an 18-year-old Indian, who wins India''s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Shot on location in Mumbai before the terror attacks, the film has already charmed critics and Golden Globe voters, earning four nominations, including best director and picture.

London, Dec 18 (ANI): A passenger has filed a lawsuit against an airline for serving him so much alcohol that led him to beat up his wife.

Yoichi Shimamoto has sued United Airlines for negligence and allowing him to drink to the point of inebriation during a flight from Osaka, Japan to San Francisco, reports the Telegraph.

The Japanese businessman claims that it was the multiple glasses of Burgundy, served at 20-minute intervals, which led him to beat his wife Ayisha, while the couple were walking through customs in December 2006.

London, Dec 18 : A group of performing monkeys in China turned violent against their trainer when he beat one of them with a stick.

The angry monkeys attacked their trainer when he beat one of them with a stick while they rode mini bicycles in a market in Sizhou, eastern China.

One of three monkeys twisted his ears and another pulled out his hair in handfuls and bit his neck.

The third one picked up the trainer's cane and started hitting him around the head with it until the stick broke.

"They were once wild and these performances don't always come naturally to them. They may have built up some feelings of hatred towards me," Times Online quoted the trainer as saying.

Warsaw - Polish airline LOT could boost its ties with German carrier Lufthansa after ending the year up to 200 million zlotys (70 million dollars) in the red, Puls Biznesu reported on Thursday.

"The sector is plunging into a recession. Small carriers are feeling it the most. Acquisitions are slowly marginalizing the role of alliances," the head of PLL LOT, Dariusz Nowak, told the daily.

Nowak said Lufthansa is now the most active, and cited its interest in privatizing SAS Scandinavian Airlines.

Washington, Dec 18 : Embryonic stem cells could be a viable and effective alternative for testing drugs for dangerous side effects, according to a leading British researcher.

Christine Mummery, Professor of Developmental Biology at Leiden University Medical Centre in The Netherlands, has predicted that what is currently a small and sparsely funded research area will boom in coming years under US President-elect Barack Obama, who is an ardent supporter of stem cell research.