■ India
Fire kills at least 45
An apparent electrical short circuit ignited a fire yesterday in a marriage hall in southern India which killed the groom and 44 others and injured about 60, including the bride, officials said. Some of the victims were burned in the flames, while others were crushed in a stampede down a narrow staircase, the officials said. "Forty-five bodies have been recovered from the marriage hall," said K. Manivasan, the top administrator for Tiruchi district in southern Tamil Nadu state, where the fire broke out at 8:45am. "About 60 have been admitted to various hospitals, some with burn injuries and others with injuries sustained in the stampede," he said. The bride, Jaishree Ramanathan, a schoolteacher, was in serious condition with burns, Manivasan said. The groom, Guru Raghavender, worked at an insurance company, he said.
■ New Zealand
Elephant escapes from zoo
An Auckland Zoo elephant named Burma disrupted rush-hour traffic when it staged a breakout yesterday, dropping a large log on an electric fence before marching out to munch leaves and grass at a nearby park, zoo officials said. Burma spent 25 minutes on the loose in Western Springs Park next to the zoo while police and fire fighters closed nearby roads and onramps to the city's busy northwestern highway as a precaution. The breakout began when the 21-year-old, 2.5-tonne Asian elephant broke the electric fence's circuits by dropping the large log, zoo director Glen Holland said. Burma then climbed into a moat and walked along the zoo fence. Next, she lifted a large gate from its hinges and walked into the adjacent park.
■ The Philippines
WHO issues sex warning
Asia's adolescents are turning increasingly to risky sexual behavior, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday, urging governments to do more to promote the sexual health of younger people. WHO regional chief Shigeru Omi said that while "social norms regarding sexual activity and sexual behavior have changed ... [the] environment to support the adolescents to face these changes has not." The organization's studies showed adolescents were uninformed about how best to avoid risky behavior that leads to unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, pregnancy-related complications and sexually transmitted diseases, it said. Acceptable, affordable and appropriate sexual health information and services were also lacking, while poverty and unemployment put adolescents in a vulnerable position, it added.
■ Hong Kong
Number portends better year
Last year's ceremony to predict Hong Kong's prospects yielded an unlucky number, and the following months saw SARS ravage the territory. This year, a Hong Kong official picked a better number. Lau Yong-fat, a top rural official, chose number 76 for the Year of the Monkey, from 100 numbered slips in a round bamboo container at the famous Che Kung Taoist temple in Shatin district. The number 76, according to tradition, augurs a mixed year of difficulty and opportunity for Hong Kong. It also means that unity can overcome any problem and pave the way for a better future. That number is certainly better than the No. 83 that Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho picked last year. That number, which means "nothing will be good" and portends a very difficult time, matched by what Hong Kong experienced last year.
■ United States
Priest growing marijuana
A Roman Catholic priest has been arrested for allegedly growing marijuana in his church living quarters. The Reverend Richard A. Arko, 40, was charged Wednesday with illegal cultivation of marijuana. He remained jailed Thursday on US$3,000 bail. Police said they found a marijuana growing system in a spare bedroom and confiscated about 35 potted marijuana plants ranging from 15cm to 1.2m tall, along with grow lights, electric transformers, air purifiers and instruction books for growing marijuana. They also seized two small plastic bags with marijuana.
■ United States
J-Lo and Ben split up
Hollywood's hottest couple, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, have split up, four months after calling off their wedding amid a media frenzy, J-Lo's spokesman said Thursday. "I am confirming the reports that Jennifer Lopez has ended her engagement to Ben Affleck," Lopez's New York based publicist Rob Shuter said. "At this difficult time, we ask that you respect her privacy," he added. Another source close to the US actress and diva said: "I can tell you that Jennifer and Ben have ended their engagement and that there are no plans for a reconciliation." Affleck's publicist however declined to comment on the break-up.
■ United States
Biblical nude camp to open
The first nudist resort created primarily for Christians in the US is due to open in Florida and its co-founder claims that he can provide passages in the Bible where nudity is prominently mentioned. "Depending on the version of the Bible you use, there are as many as 40 passages that refer to nudity," said Bill Martin, co-founder of Natura, which will be the first Christianity-themed nudist colony in the country when it opens in a Tampa suburb in April. "In Isaiah 20.2, God tells Isaiah to go into the wilderness naked for three years. So there's historical basis for a Christian nudist lifestyle," continued Martin, who is a Quaker.
■ Italy
Berlusconi reappears
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made his first public appearance in a month looking trim and tanned after weeks of media speculation he had had plastic surgery. But Berlusconi laughed off the reports, saying: "I spent three hours every morning to get back in shape. I didn't go on a Tibetan diet. Actually I had fun reading all of the fantasies that have come out in the newspapers." Berlusconi's vanishing act had been hot gossip in Italy's squares and cafes with media reports saying the 67-year-old had had a nip and tuck at a private Swiss clinic and undertaken a gruelling training regime. On Thursday evening he was stopped by journalists as he headed out for a shopping spree in central Rome.
■ Israel
Success gets police high
Israeli police had to close an entire floor of their station because the pungent scent of tonnes of confiscated marijuana was making them high, an Israeli newspaper said yesterday. The drugs, smuggled from Egypt, are kept in a storeroom of a police station in the southern town of Dimona. Police have confiscated so much, that the room is filled up almost immediately after its contents are sent to be incinerated. "Every time I came to work I felt ... like I was high," the Maariv newspaper quoted one officer as saying.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened