The Taj Mahal hotel was fully lit up for the first time after the Mumbai attacks last night. The 105-year-old landmark, one of two luxury hotels hit by Islamist militants in the Mumbai attacks, reopened yesterday. Indians of Muslim and Hindu faiths held roses and chanted religious verses to mark the reopening of Mumbai's Trident hotel.
Police with sniffer dogs patrolled outside the hotel, which welcomed guests for the first time since Islamist gunmen attacked the Trident and nine other sites in Mumbai last month, killing at least 179 people.
"We are feeling sad as we are reminded of the events, but we are also happy that the hotel is open again," said Rashmi Mehra, a regular at the Trident's Frangipani restaurant, who lost a friend in the November 26-29 attacks.
"We are going to see if we can get a table for lunch - we were told it's fully booked."
Grumpy earthquake miracle pig
A pig that survived 36 days buried in the rubble of May's massive Sichuan earthquake has been voted China's favourite animal, but the attention has made him fat, lazy and bad-tempered, state media said.
The hog, trapped in a sty after the 7.9 magnitude quake,was bought by a local businessman who was moved by its ordeal and named "Zhu Jianqiang", or "Strong Pig".
It survived by eating charcoal and drinking rainwater. Now it has been voted top of an online poll of animals "who moved China" this year, the weekend edition of the China Daily said.
Other top animals included a dog that guarded its elderly owner when he was sick and accompanied him to hospital, and a cat that almost died of grief when its partner was run over by a car.
Homeless get caviar
Down-and-outs and hard-up pensioners in Milan will enjoy a rare Christmas treat this year: choice beluga caviar confiscated from traffickers.
Italian police seized over 40 kg of the delicacy, worth some €400,000 ($558,300), from two men who last month smuggled it into the country from Poland for sale in the shops of Milan and the rest of the wealthy Lombardy region.
The head of the local forest police who carried out the raid kept the bounty in barrack fridges for several weeks, but realised it would soon go bad. "Tests showed us the food was still perfectly OK to eat but it couldn't be stored much longer, so we decided to give it to the poor," Juri Mantegazza told Milan daily Corriere della Sera.
Homemade porno film-maker detained
A Chinese woman who became an online sensation after posting a homemade pornographic film of herself on the internet has been detained in Shanghai, according to state media. The 12-minute-video showed the woman, surnamed Huang, performing "sexual acts", the official China Daily said in its weekend edition, without elaborating.
"It soon became one of the most popular downloads on the mainland, with thousands of people downloading it last month," the report quoted the local police.
The woman set up a blog, hoping to profit from her notoriety and sell interviews with herself for up to 30,000 yuan ($4,383) a time, the newspaper said.
Despite the police's best efforts, the video is still available online, it added, without saying what penalty the woman may have to pay.
Pornography is illegal in China, although it is widely available on pirated DVDs throughout the country and on the internet.
Saga of fake tiger photos takes new twist
A saga in China about a farmer nearly jailed over photos he took of a critically endangered tiger that were later judged to be fake has taken a new twist - the photographer now claims the pictures were real.
Zhou Zhenglong, a 54-year-old farmer from a mountainous county in northern Shaanxi province, was awarded a 20,000 yuan ($2,922) bonus last year, after he produced pictures which authorities said were evidence of a South China tiger.
The pictures, which showed a tiger crouching in a forest setting, sparked an internet furore led by experts who identified the photos as fakes. Local media accused officials of endorsing them as a means of promoting tourism in a poor region. But Mr Zhou, who was given a suspended jail sentence this year for the fraud, has returned to his original claim that he really did photograph a tiger, the official Xinhua news agency said in a report on its website (www.xinhuanet.com). "I declare that the tiger picture was real, and was not faked," Mr Zhou wrote.
Work on long-delayed memorial starts
Work on a long-delayed memorial to the half million Roma and Sinti killed by the Nazis began in Berlin after a decade of controversy over wording on the tribute. The monument, a circular well containing dark water, will be located at the centre of the German capital, close to the Reichstag Parliament building. Israeli artist Dani Karavan designed the memorial, due to be completed next year. "The memorial will show the important position these crimes hold in Germany's memory," Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said at a ceremony including groups representing the victims.
"The guilt cannot die away," he said. In recent years Berlin has completed memorials to several groups of people persecuted in the Holocaust, including a central monument to murdered European Jews. An estimated six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust but homosexuals, conscientious objectors, communists and Jehovahs Witnesses were also murdered.