Letters addressed to God lie in a sorting room of a post office in Jerusalem yesterday. Hundreds of letters addressed to God arrive in Israel each year, most around Jewish holidays, to be placed between the stones of the Western Wall.
Mob burns church in Indonesia's Moluccas
An angry mob burned a church and more than 40 houses in Indonesia's Moluccas islands, injuring five people, after allegations that a local Christian teacher offended Islam, police said yesterday.
The Moluccas, in the eastern part of predominantly Muslim Indonesia, has a substantial Christian population.
"We are trying to anticipate anything as early as possible because the effect of communal or religious conflict is wide," Rubiani Pranoto, regional operational head of the national police headquarters, told a news conference in Jakarta.
Some parts of the Moluccas were hit by separatist, communal, and religious tension after former President Suharto stepped down in 1998. A peace pact was signed in 2002 and, while there has been sporadic violence since then, the area remains relatively peaceful.
Organisers to get tough on ticket touts
London 2012 organisers plan to crack down on ticket touts and make sure the games are readily accessible to real sports fans.
"We will be monitoring activity very closely using the security services," Paul Deighton, chief executive officer of the London organising committee (LOCOG), told the Department of Culture, Media and Sport committee yesterday.
"There are very sophisticated ways of managing it and we will be aggressive about hunting them down."
This year's Beijing Games was marred by empty seats at many venues while illegal ticket sales around the Olympic Park were rife. One raid outside the Bird's Nest Stadium caught more than 200 people, including many foreigners.
Deighton said the ticketing policy, to be published in 2010, would aim to ensure tickets were widely available for sports fans at affordable prices when they go on sale in 2011.
England to ban tobacco displays in shops
The display of cigarettes and tobacco in shops will be banned in England under proposals outlined by Health Secretary Alan Johnson yesterday.
The move aims to cut the number of young people starting smoking and follows similar measures planned or already imposed in other countries including Scotland and Canada.
The government estimates that 200,000 children aged between 11 and 15 are regular smokers despite the withdrawal of all tobacco advertising since 2002 and the raising the legal age for purchasing tobacco to 18 from 16.
But representatives of small grocers and newsagents said they earn up to a third of their revenue from tobacco sales and complained the plan would hit hard a sector already struggling as the economy slides.
"Smoking is a habit which is hard to break and causes 87,000 deaths a year in England alone."
Two human bird flu cases
Indonesia has confirmed two new cases of human bird flu, the first officially reported since September in the country which remains the hardest-hit by the deadly virus, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.
A nine-year-old girl in Riau province developed symptoms on November 7 after poultry apparently died at her home, the WHO said in a statement. She was hospitalised five days later and discharged on November 22 after recovering.
A two-year-old girl from East Jakarta died on November 29 after developing symptoms on November 18, WHO said. "Investigations into the source of her infection suggest exposure at a live bird market."
The two latest cases took Indonesia's known number of bird flu infections to 139, including 113 deaths, since 2003, according to the UN health agency.
It was not immediately clear why the WHO toll does not include a 15-year-old Indonesian girl in central Java whose doctor said she had died in early November.