A Hindu woman has her hand painted with henna during the Teej festival in the northern Indian city of Allahabad yesterday. Hindu women fast and pray for the good health and long life of their husbands during the Teej festival.
Arrested in cash-for-corpse gang murder probe
Chinese police have arrested members of a gang suspected of murdering more than 100 disabled or elderly people and selling their corpses in a bizarre scheme to avoid cremations, a newspaper said yesterday.
Burials have traditionally been seen as the most respectful way to handle the dead in China, but were discouraged after the Communists came to power in 1949 to conserve farmland and eradicate superstition.
The bodies were bought by wealthy families and sent for cremation in lieu of deceased relatives who were then secretly buried, the South China Morning Post reported.
The killers would trail their victims, usually mentally disabled or elderly people, "drag them into vehicles in remote areas and either strangle or poison them", the newspaper said.
Corpses would sell for €1,000 each, it said, without specifying the charges against those being held.
Storm humour on signs in New Orleans
As Hurricane Gustav blew through nearly deserted streets in New Orleans on Monday, messages left by fleeing residents on the shuttered homes bore silent testimony to the city's sense of humour.
Three years after Hurricane Katrina's waters flooded 80 per cent of the city, a weaker Gustav appeared to have listened to the evacuees' tongue-in-cheek appeals for mercy.
"Be Good Gustav, Not Like That Bitch Katrina!," read a sign in the city's historic Garden District, while another on a shop front nearby said "New Orleans: Proud to Swim Home!"
"It's New Orleans' way of dealing with it. Just leave a message saying no matter what it does, we're still coming back," said Carol Silverton, a life-long resident.
National Guard troops and police had a strong presence on the streets to deter the kind of looting that followed Katrina, but owners also left fair warning.
"Don't try. I'm sleeping inside with a .357, a pit bull, and six big snakes!" read one message brushed on the plywood shutters of a rug shop close to the city centre.
A shuttered home in the historic Garden District declared: "Two dawgs and one ex-husband. Beware!"
German university town plans new tax on prostitutes
The German university town of Marburg is planning to introduce a tax on its prostitutes based on the size of the establishment where they conduct their business, a local official said yesterday.
Rainer Kieselbach, spokesman for the city of Marburg that is better known for being the home of the world's oldest protestant university, said the lump sum tax was aimed to raise an estimated €90,000 in annual tax revenues.
"The prostitutes will be taxed for their services, but not for the entertainment acts, such as table-dancing," Mr Kieselbach said. "We decided to tax them based on the size of their working rooms - a daily flat rate of €2.50 per 10 square metres."
A group of 22 masked prostitutes protested against the tax in a city council meeting last week.
Prostitution is legal in most of Germany and sex workers are required to pay income tax as well as value-added tax.
'Give us a plug,' Cambridge asks EastEnders
Cambridge University is asking script-writers of popular soaps like EastEnders to give it a plug to help break down its elitist image.
It wants to feature amid the usual TV soap tales of rivalry, sex and revenge in an attempt to attract more state-educated students.
"It is an opportunity to show we are contemporary and modern ... and interested in the best students," said a University spokesman.
"We are looking to use media that people watch every day. You cannot rely on newspapers alone."
Coronation Street and Emmerdale have also been approached, as have other popular programmes such as Top Gear and Doctor Who.
"We have had a number of warm letters already and one hot lead from one production company," the spokesman added.
EastEnders already features a storyline involving pupils whose families are hoping they will make it to Cambridge or its academic rival Oxford.