A controversial young Nepali girl worshipped by many Buddhists and Hindus as a Kumari, or "living goddess", has given up her divine position following a request from her family, an official said yesterday.
The 11-year-old Sajani Shakya was revered for nine years as the Kumari of the ancient temple-town of Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu, in a centuries-old tradition.
"She is no more a Kumari," said Dipak Pandey, a senior official of the state-run Trust Corporation that oversees the cultural affairs in the deeply religious nation. Mr Pandey said Sajani's family wanted to perform their own religious rituals which required her to give up her divine position and rejoin her family.
Last year, Sajani made international headlines after she visited the US to promote a film by British company about the ancient practice. Some religious authorities criticised the trip, saying it was against tradition. They even threatened to strip her of the title, but the threat was later withdrawn.
Robot easing lonely hours
A friendly dog can make older people feel less isolated - and it appears to make little difference if that wagging tail belongs to a robot doggie or the real thing.
Researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri compared a 16-kilo floppy-eared mutt named Sparky with AIBO, a far-from-lifelike robot dog, to see how residents of three US nursing homes would respond.
"The most surprising thing is they worked almost equally well in terms of alleviating loneliness and causing residents to form attachments," said William Banks, a professor of geriatric medicine who worked on the study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.
Prof. Banks said pets have been shown to help older people feel less isolated. "It really improves loneliness considerably," he said.
Fugitive father caught
The father of an abandoned toddler, who is wanted in New Zealand for allegedly killing his wife, has been arrested in the US, New Zealand media reported over the weekend. Nai Yin Xue, 54, was caught in the town of Chamblee near Atlanta, after being tied up by members of the local Chinese community until police arrived, the New Zealand Press Association said.
Mr Xue hit local headlines in September after security camera footage showed him abandoning his three-year-old daughter, Qian Xun Xue, at a railway station in Melbourne, Australia, before boarding a flight to Los Angeles. She was dubbed "Pumpkin", after the brand of Pumpkin Patch clothing she was wearing.
The body of Mr Xue's wife, Anan Liu, 27, was found in his car outside the couple's home in Auckland, four days after Mr Xue abandoned his daughter in Melbourne. The baby has since gone to live in China with her grandparents.
'Cage fighting' on prime time
CBS is bringing mixed martial arts, the bone-crunching combat sport popularly known as "cage fighting," to prime-time television this spring, the US network said. Branded as barbaric by critics in the 1990s for its lack of rules, mixed martial arts, or MMA, has evolved into a more mainstream sport that bars biting, eye-gouging, head-butting and strikes to the groin.
But fierce punching, kicking, karate, judo and wrestling moves - with no protective gear - are still very much a part of the sport. One of its biggest stars, the bald, bearded Kimbo Slice, has become a YouTube.com sensation for video clips showing him punching his adversaries into submission within 30 seconds.
Beginning in April or May, CBS plans to broadcast four MMA events each year as two-hour live specials airing on Saturday nights, a time period once reserved for such family fare as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart and The Carol Burnett Show.
Saturday nights have become a virtual dead zone for broadcast networks generally due to drastically changing viewer habits. CBS now devotes much of its Saturday prime-time line-up to movies, the news magazine 48 Hours Mystery and reruns of its hit crime dramas.
Prisoners in song contest
Bad Luck, Free Like the Wind, and Waltz of the Prisoner were top crowd pleasers as convicts faced off at a prison in Lima to sing in the Peruvian underworld's version of the popular TV show American Idol.
Augusto Flores won first prize for a song he wrote called Your Visit, about waiting for news from his family and friends. He won a guitar, a trophy and a pair of shoes. Winners of American Idol competitions, which gives ordinary people a chance at stardom, win recording contracts and global fame.