Year of the Goat starts on a high with River Hongbao carnival and Chinatown celebrations
The colours were bright, performances spectacular and happiness aplenty. Chinese New Year celebrations at River Hongbao in Marina Bay and Chinatown ushered in the Year of the Goat in grand style.
At the annual River Hongbao carnival, the show stealer was the heartstopping high-wire act by tightrope walker Adili Wuxor.
The 43-year-old from Xinjiang, China, danced, laid down and walked blindfolded while balancing on an 80m-long steel wire, no thicker than a bunch of four pencils (2.8cm).
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Denmark buries Jewish shooting victim
Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt (above right) led hundreds of mourners Wednesday at the funeral of a Jewish man who was among two people killed in a shooting spree in Copenhagen that has terrorised the country.
Security was tight as crowds gathered at a Jewish cemetery in Copenhagen for the funeral of 37-year-old Dan Uzan, with large numbers of police along with sniffer dogs, and snipers posted on nearby rooftops.
The weekend attacks on a cultural centre and a synagogue blamed on a 22-year-old Danish man of Palestinian origin who reportedly became radicalised in prison, have raised questions about security in the normally peaceful nation.
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Abducted albino baby boy found dead with limbs severed in Tanzania: Police
Tanzanian police said on Wednesday they had found the mutilated body of a one-year-old albino boy whose abduction renewed calls for tougher action to stop the killing of albinos for their body parts, prized in black magic.
An armed gang snatched Yohana Bahati from his mother at their home in northwestern Tanzania's Geita region on Sunday, a month after the government announced a nationwide ban on witch doctors, who are accused of encouraging attacks on albinos.
More than 70 albinos, who lack pigment in their skin, hair and eyes, have been murdered in the east African nation in the past decade, according to UN figures, many hacked to death and body parts removed to make charms and spells that witch doctors claim bring good luck and wealth.
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Cycling: Armstrong pleads guilty to careless driving - report
Disgraced former US cycling star Lance Armstrong has pleaded guilty to careless driving in connection with hitting two parked vehicles and having his girlfriend take the blame, the Aspen Daily News reported Wednesday.
Armstrong, who admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs in 2013 after being stripped of seven Tour de France triumphs the year before, posted a cheque for US$238.50 (S$324) to pay a fine and court costs, according to court records.
Paying the fine and pleading guilty means Armstrong, 43, will not have to appear in court. A March hearing date had been set in the matter.
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Pussy Riot's first English song is a tribute to police chokehold victim Eric Garner
Russian punk-rock group Pussy Riot released their first song in English on Wednesday, a musical tribute to Eric Garner, the unarmed black man whose death in a police chokehold last summer sparked wide protests against police violence.
Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina recorded the song, I Can't Breathe, in New York last December after a grand jury decided not to indict a white New York City police officer in Garner's death.
The pair said they dedicated their first song in English to Garner and titled it, I Can't Breathe, which were the words he repeated before his death.
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