Barrie Osborne, part of the Oscar-winning team behind the Lord of the Rings films, says the new production 'will educate people about the true meaning of Islam'

Producer Barrie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the messiah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now the Oscar-winning American film-maker is set to embark on his most perilous quest to date: making a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad (saw).

Budgeted at around $150m (£91.5m), the film will chart Muhammad (saw)'s life and examine his teachings. Osborne told Reuters that he envisages it as "an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam".

A year old news, but I was not aware of it...

Controversial biopic of Muhammad set for remake

The Message, Moustapha Akkad's Gadafy-backed 1976 film of the life of the prophet that sparked the Hanafi Muslim Siege, is to get a Hollywood remake

It was one of the most controversial films of the 70s: an English-language biopic of the prophet Muhammad that was bankrolled by Gadafy and went on to trigger a fatal siege ahead of its US premiere. Now The Message could be set for a grand return to the fray courtesy of a 21st-century Hollywood remake.

A Major hunt has been launched by police after a Herefordshire teenage girl, Sarah Dunn, disappeared shortly after becoming obsessed with Islam.

Fears are held for the safety of the 14 year-old who was last seen in Bridgnorth, Herts, on September 28 after an argument with her parents over her decision to study the Koran.

Sarah purchased a Muslim prayer mat and was coverting to Islam shortly before she disappeared, police said.

Friends and family fear Sarah, who had recently been involved with a large group of Asian friends, may have been brainwashed by hardline Muslims.

Two hapless robbers in America, Matthew McNelly and Joey Miller, have been arrested with the “worst disguises ever” after trying to hide their faces with permanent marker pen

McNelly, 23, and Miller, 20 were arrested by armed police in Carroll, Iowa, last Friday after witnesses reported seeing two men trying to break into an apartment with fake beards and "masks" scrawled on their faces.

Police responding to a call about the attempted burglary later pulled over a car matching the alleged suspects' vehicle.

And it seems to be a "love marriage":

Hundreds of people have attended a wedding in central Somalia between a man who says he is 112 years old, and his teenage wife.

Ahmed Muhamed Dore - who already has 13 children by five wives - said he would like to have more with his new wife, Safia Abdulleh, who is 17 years old.

"Today God helped me realise my dream," Mr Dore said, after the wedding in the region of Galguduud.

The bride's family said she was "happy with her new husband".

Mr Dore said he and his bride - who is young enough to be his great-great-grand-daughter - were from the same village in Somalia and that he had waited for her to grow up to propose.

I think someone forgot to tell them that killing innocents, women and children is haraam.

Blasts rock Pakistan university

Two suicide bombers have killed at least four people at a university in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

At least 18 people were wounded in the twin blasts at the International Islamic University.

The attack is the first since the Pakistani army began its offensive against militants in South Waziristan, in the country's north-west.

In a telephone call to the BBC, a senior Taliban commander has claimed his movement was behind the bombings.

Qari Hussain, the man reportedly responsible for training Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers, said his organisation now considered all of Pakistan to now be a war zone.

The death of language?

An estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the world. But that number is expected to shrink rapidly in the coming decades. What is lost when a language dies?

In 1992 a prominent US linguist stunned the academic world by predicting that by the year 2100, 90% of the world's languages would have ceased to exist.

"Most people are not at all interested in the death of languages," he says. "If we are not cautious about the way English is progressing it may eventually kill most other languages."

What is lost?

Whether it happens at a wedding, funeral, a soppy movie or even the death of a pet dog, modern men cry at least six times a year, according to a new study.

The German Society of Ophthalmology has proven wrong the old adage that real men do not cry, with the more sensitive new age bloke letting the waterworks rip up to 17 times a year.

On average women cry between 30 and 64 times a year.

They do so for longer periods and in a more dramatic fashion than men, with full-blown weeping happening in 65 percent of all cases among women, according to the study, which collated different scientific studies on the phenomenon.

Men on average will get teary for about two minutes, while women can weep for up to six minutes at a time.

A six-year-old boy thought to have been carried away by a helium balloon in Colorado was in fact hiding in a box in an attic at home, an official has said.

Larimer county sheriff Jim Alderden told reporters that apparently Falcon Heene had "been there the whole time".

Police had been searching for the boy after his brother said he had taken off with the balloon.

The drama was played out on TV, with US networks devoting their airtime to live footage of the balloon over Colorado.

The balloon landed in fields and was surrounded by rescue vehicles after a two-hour flight.