Angry Birds, the next Mickey Mouse? (Reuters)

PARIS (Reuters) – Mikael Hed is unrepentant about the 200 million minutes per day that people around the world fritter away playing Angry Birds, the iPhone game created by the company he heads.

"It's great. Think of all the other stuff they could be doing that's so much more boring," said the chief executive of Rovio Mobile, a Finnish start-up almost unheard of before it unleashed the addictive game on an unsuspecting world in 2009.

Angry Birds, the most popular paid-for game in the Apple App Store's four-year history, has just passed 200 million downloads.

The deceptively simple puzzle game in which players use a slingshot to fire birds at green pigs hiding in buildings has hooked a whole new audience, many of whom were never interested in video games before.

"These new touchscreen portable devices have changed the way that people behave. Nowadays, people have to be entertained all the time, whenever you have just a few moments spare," Hed told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris this week.

"Much of those 200 million minutes comes from this type of micro spare time, filling the little gaps."

Rovio plans to use its hold over of those millions of spare moments as a wedge to expand into Hollywood and possibly even Disney-style theme parks.

"Believe it or not, we have had such suggestions, and I believe Angry Birds Land was actually the name they used."

"Whether there will be a theme park dedicated to Angry Birds or not, I don't know, but I would be surprised if within 10 years there wouldn't be at least a theme park with something related to Angry Birds in it," said Hed.

MICKEY MOUSE

For now, the next step is to build the birds' characters and flesh out the rather thin Angry Birds story, which is that the birds are attacking the pigs because the pigs stole their eggs.

Hed says there would be news in the next days relating to Rovio's media ambitions, but declined to elaborate.

Already, Rovio has teamed up with News Corp's 20th Century Fox to hitch a new game to the animated 3-D movie Rio, which has taken hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office around the world.

A clue to Angry Birds Rio even featured in 20th Century Fox's ad at this year's SuperBowl -- the year's highest-profile advertising spot in the United States.

Hed has held talks with Hollywood studios about an Angry Birds feature film but so far has not found the right partner or deal. He said he wants to proceed with caution to protect the brand, and sees Mickey Mouse as a brand to aspire to.

These may seem grand ambitions for a company with just one megahit to its name, and Rovio is under pressure to show it is not a one-hit wonder. Angry Birds was its 52nd game.

Rovio plans to cement the popularity of Angry Birds with a version for Facebook this summer -- which will add social aspects to the essentially solitary game by building in features for players to help one another.

Hed also says a new Angry Birds game and another, different type of game are in the works. But he seems relaxed about their likely success.

"At some point you get to a point where you no longer associate a brand with just one product," he says.

"While games will always be our strong area, I also believe that Angry Birds is already beyond that point. It has the critical mass where it doesn't really need the game in order to be very known."

Rovio has just raised $42 million in venture capital funding but is already thinking about going public in two to three years' time.

Hed says the company has had takeover approaches but has so far resisted. "We're having too much fun to be a part of something bigger. That said, people do crazy things when presented with obscene amounts of money."

Asked whether he has been offered such sums, he answers: "Well, we're still independent, so not obscene enough."

(Additional reporting by Joachim Dagenborg, Roberta Cowan and Matt Cowan. Editing by Jane Merriman)

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Senator Kerry has tough questions for angry Pakistan (Reuters)

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – U.S. Senator John Kerry will push Pakistani leaders on Monday to explain how Osama bin Laden was able to hide in their country for years, without further inflaming Pakistani anger over the U.S. raid that killed the al Qaeda chief.

Compounding Pakistan's reputation as an unstable Muslim country infested with militants, gunmen on motorcycles shot dead a Saudi diplomat in the city of Karachi as he was driving to work.

Al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban militants, who have vowed to strike back for the killing of Saudi-born bin Laden, claimed responsibility.

U.S. special forces flew in from Afghanistan on a secret operation to find and kill bin Laden on May 2, nearly 10 years after he orchestrated the September 11 attacks on the United States.

His discovery holed up in the comfortable garrison town of Abbottabad, only 50 km (30 miles) from the Pakistani capital, has revived suspicion that U.S. ally Pakistan knew where he was and has been playing a double game.

Pakistan has rejected that as absurd. It welcomed bin Laden's killing as a big step in the fight against militancy but objected about being left in the dark over the raid to get him.

Parliament condemned the raid on Saturday as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and called for a review of ties.

It also said the government should consider cutting U.S. supply lines through Pakistan for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in the event of another "unilateral" assault.

Kerry arrived in Pakistan on Sunday from Afghanistan where he told reporters the United States wanted Pakistan to be a real ally in the fight against militancy.

Kerry, a Democrat close to the Obama administration and who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met powerful army chief General Ashfaq Kayani at army headquarters late on Sunday and was due to meet other leaders on Monday.

While Kerry has tough questions for Pakistan, its military can be expected to convey its anger over the U.S. assault on bin Laden, which military officials say has caused a breakdown in trust and cast a shadow over security cooperation.

"Kayani ... apprised the visiting dignitary about intense feelings of rank and file of the Pakistan army on the Abbottabad incident," the military said in a statement on Monday, referring to the operation to get bin Laden.

It did not elaborate but said Kerry would hold detailed discussions on relations with government leaders on Monday.

"DISENCHANTED AND DISMAYED"

The Nation newspaper, which generally reflects the thinking of the military establishment, said Kerry's mission was to pressure Pakistan into accepting all U.S. demands, even at the cost of Pakistan's national interests.

"The U.S. may have serious questions post-Osama episode, but Pakistan stands totally disenchanted and dismayed," the paper said in an editorial.

The government should stick to the positions spelled out by parliament on the weekend, it said.

"There should be no compromise on sovereignty and national interests at any costs."

The U.S. administration has not accused Pakistan of complicity in hiding bin Laden but has said he must have had some sort of support network, which it wants to uncover.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke on Sunday to President Asif Ali Zardari by telephone about the situation since bin Laden's death, Zardari's office said, adding Zardari told Clinton about parliament's concerns.

"Both agreed to resolve the issues amicably and move forward," the president's office said.

Police in the southern commercial hub of Karachi said gunmen on motorcycles killed the Saudi diplomat. The attack came days after assailants threw two hand grenades at the Saudi consulate in Pakistan's commercial hub. No one was hurt in that attack.

Al Qaeda is violently opposed to the Saudi government, which is a close ally of Pakistan, and has vowed revenge for the killing of its leader. Their allies, the Pakistani Taliban, said they killed the diplomat.

"We take responsibility," a Taliban spokesman said by telephone from an undisclosed location, referring to the killing of the diplomat earlier in the day.

"Until America stops chasing al Qaeda and stops drone strikes we will keep carrying out such attacks," he said, referring to U.S. attacks with pilotless aircraft on militants in northwest Pakistan.

(Additional reporting by Faisal Aziz, Kamran Haider; editing by Miral Fahmy)

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Moms angry after kids were served booze at chains 1,000 miles apart

Jill Vanheest's 2-year-old son was given sangria on March 31 at an Olive Garden in Florida. STORY HIGHLIGHTSA Florida mother says of Olive Garden: "They poisoned my child right in front of me"Her toddler was taken to the hospital after being served sangria at a Florida restaurant8 days later, a Michigan boy was served alcohol at an Applebee's franchiseBoth chains apologized and vowed to change their drink-serving policiesRELATED TOPICSApplebee's International Inc.Olive Garden Italian Restaurants (CNN) -- Two mothers expressed outrage Friday night that their young children -- about 1,000 miles away and days apart -- were inadvertently given alcohol by servers at franchises of national chain restaurants.

Jill Vanheest, whose 2-year-old son was given sangria on March 31 at an Olive Garden in Lakeland, Florida, told HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell that she's having difficulty accepting what happened.

"They poisoned my child right in front of me," Vanheest said Friday. "There aren't really words for how distrustful that makes me feel, how angry I am."

Just over a week later, on April 8, Taylor Dill-Reese said that her 15-month-old son was given alcohol during a meal -- rather than the apple juice he'd ordered -- at an Applebee's in Madison Heights, Michigan.

She said that the staff there explained that the boy got the wrong drink due to a mix-up at the bar, after containers for apple juice and margarita mix (which has tequila and triple sec) were somehow switched.

This week, Applebee's issued a statement apologizing to the parents of Dominic Wilson Jr. "for the stress and worry this caused them." It vowed to immediately retrain servers on the company's "beverage pouring policy" and change to pouring apple juice only from single-serve containers, like a juice box.

"We recognize our responsibility to constantly assess our safety policies and procedures to ensure they are rigorous and consistently followed," the Kansas-based chain said. "We believe today's strong actions make a statement to our guests of all ages around our commitment to provide a safe and enjoyable dining experience."

But Dill-Reese told Velez-Mitchell on Friday that she's not convinced.

The mother, who is 18 and was at the restaurant with her son and fiance, said she was particularly angry given that a similar incident happened before at Applebee's -- namely, a 2006 case in which a 5-year-old boy was given a Long Island iced tea, which contains rum, gin, vodka and tequila, at a New York City establishment of the national chain.

"it's just sad, the simple fact that this isn't the first time this happened (or) that they were going to change the way they were going to serve drinks," the mother said. "Why wait two, three kids later to change the way you serve drinks? What if my son was the one that died?"

Steven Krawitz, a personal injury attorney who represented the family involved in the 2006 case, told HLN that -- whatever Applebee's and other restaurant's promises to change their policies for serving drinks to children -- a parent should never rely on a server fully when their son or daughter gets a beverage.

"The parent, unfortunately, cannot now trust what used to be a no-brainer," Krawitz said. "Restaurants are serving drinks for kids, millions of drinks, but now, given this sort of rash of ... unavoidable or unacceptable mistakes, the parents now have to test the drink."

Police were called to the Applebee's in Michigan after Dill-Reese and her fiance noticed Dominic acting strangely -- "saying 'hi' and 'bye' to the walls (and) laid his head down like he was sleepy, then woke up and got really hyper," recalled the mother.

Once a server told the parents that the boy was given margarita mix, he was rushed to the hospital, where Dill-Reese said he had a blood-alcohol limit of .10. Applebee's, though, said that Madison Heights police conducted a field test and found the drink itself only registered a .014 alcohol level.

While Dill-Reese has already filed a lawsuit against Applebee's, Vanheest said she has not decided whether to do the same against Olive Garden.

Vanheest claims that her son, Nikolai, ordered an orange juice and started drinking it. But then a waiter "came over and said there's been a mistake, grabbed the cup and kind of scurried away."

Meanwhile, her son "was not acting like himself" -- climbing in and out of his high chair and people's laps, not responding to requests to calm down, and "just getting louder and louder."

When the restaurant's staff admitted that the boy had gotten sangria, which contains wine, the child was brought to the hospital. After some struggle, he was given intravenous fluids and had his blood drawn before being checked and eventually released.

"He ended up with a lot of bruises," Vanheest said.

After the incident came to light, Olive Garden released a statement in which it called the incident "unacceptable." The chain, which is headquartered in Orlando, Florida, said "we have implemented a change in our procedures to prevent this situation from happening again" -- though it didn't detail what those changes were.

"We take the responsibility that comes with serving alcohol seriously," the statement said. "As much as we strive for perfection, this was an unfortunate case of human error."

But Vanheest, the toddler's mother, said she's not yet ready to forgive.

"Just that their disorganization allowed this ever to happen -- it's extremely frustrating," she said. "I've lost all trust and all faith in them."

Watch ISSUES with Jane Velez-Mitchell Monday through Sunday at 7pm ET on HLN. For the latest from ISSUES click here.

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