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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