Hotel guests, who included about 2, 000 international journalists covering the war, were asked to lie on the floor while rooms were searched, said CNN producer Linda Roth, who was on the 17th floor when the operation began.

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The flexible, 140-seat auditorium and presentation area, will feature a puppet bridge for string puppet operators to work from and a floor trench for rod puppet operation.

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Inside the resort's signature-pink 23-storey Royal Towers, the vast casino on the ground floor is the beating heart of the entire Atlantis operation.

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"That operation ... always leads to finding other things, whether it's floor issues, window issues, (air conditioning) issues, whatever the case might be, " he said.

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Sledge described the operation generously: the rooms teeming to the scrolled plaster ceilings with bud-heavy green stalks, the floor cabled with sprinklers, the walls lined with foil reflectors to maximize the ripening effects of the solar-spectrum lamps, the stereo chattering NPR talk radio to cover the drone of the daytime light banks, and classical music to give the plants a cultural heritage through the cool damp night.

NEWYORKER: Lostronaut