Sunday, 1 February 2009
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Friday, 30 January 2009
Thursday, 29 January 2009
A man is dead and his fiancee is fighting for her life after a suspected poisoning.
Couple 'poisoned' at restaurant
Lakhvinder Cheema, 39, was pronounced dead at London's West Middlesex Hospital after falling ill following a meal at a restaurant with his wife-to-be Gurjeeta Kaur.
Miss Kaur, 21, is seriously ill and being treated at the same hospital with her family by her bedside.
Mr Cheema's former lover, Lakhvir Kaur, is in custody after being arrested by detectives investigating the apparent poisoning.
A second person, a 54-year-old man, is also being held in connection with the inquiry in Windsor, Berkshire, Scotland Yard said.
Doctors suspect the couple consumed a cyanide-type poison but are divided over the exact substance, it is understood.
Further toxicology tests are taking place following a post-mortem examination at Fulham mortuary.
Officials from the Health Protection Agency were brought in by police after Mr Cheema died in the early hours of Wednesday.
They searched his modern semi-detached house in Princes Road, Feltham, west London, for potentially dangerous substances.
Girls Marry Frogs
Seven-year-old Indian girls 'marry' frogs
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The young ‘brides’, Vigneswari and Masiakanni, hail from the village of Pallipudupet in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district. The wedding ceremony, a highlight of the annual Pongal (harvest) festival, was conducted to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village.
The girls wore traditional gilded saris and gold jewellery and married their amphibian grooms in front of hundreds of villagers. The frogs were tied to long sticks decorated with garlands for the lavish marriage ceremonies. The subsequent celebrations had all the usual elements of a traditional marriage including a sumptuous feast.
Sadly, there was no fairy tale ending as neither frog transformed into a handsome prince. In fact, Vigneswari and Masiakanni weren’t even required to share a kiss with their husbands. Both brides simply bid their grooms farewell before returning to their normal lives. As for the frogs, they were thrown back into temple ponds after the ceremony.
The bizarre tradition of marrying frogs is rooted in the story of the Hindu God Shiva who turned himself into a frog following a quarrel with his wife Parvati. She cried for days causing disease to spread throughout local villages.
When the villages asked for help she sent them to find Shiva and plead with him to marry a young girl. She herself posed as the girl, and when Shiva agreed to marry her they returned to their original god forms and the outbreak was cured.
Dad threw girl, four, from bridge
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Police said Freeman was involved in the custody battle and had appeared in a family court on Tuesday and Wednesday. The two other children had been in Freeman's car when he pulled over on the West Gate Bridge in morning rush-hour traffic and dropped the girl into the Yarra River, said Detective Inspector Steve Clark.
Stunned witnesses called police, who were able pull the girl from the river within 10 minutes of receiving the alert. She was barely alive, with multiple internal injuries. She was taken by helicopter to Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital, where she died about four hours after the fall. "It's a dreadful set of circumstances," Supt Clark said. "Often you think you've seen it all but you haven't."
About an hour later, Freeman was arrested with the two surviving children outside the family court, where witnesses described him as visibly distressed, Supt Clark said. The bridge is an eight-lane road that is the main route from central Melbourne to the west. A court official said the custody hearing over the children had ended on Wednesday without a ruling because the parents had agreed to share access.
