Dog fighting is a popular pastime in Afghanistan, and bombers have targeted fights in the past
Eight people have been killed by two bombs at a dog fight in the volatile southern Afghan province of Kandahar.
The blasts on Sunday occurred in Arghandab district, on the outskirts of Kandahar city, a police spokesman said. Five policemen were injured.
Nato forces have been battling to take control of Kandahar from the Taliban, whose heartland it is.
All the dead were civilians, Arghandab district chief Shah Mohammad told the AFP news agency.
Twelve civilians were also injured, AFP reported, quoting Afghan interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary in Kabul.
No group has yet said it carried out the attack, but the Taliban regularly target large public gatherings.
Dog-fighting competitions, which were banned under the Taleban regime, are a popular pastime in Afghanistan.
In February 2008, at least 65 people were killed by a suicide bomb at a dog fight in Kandahar.
On Saturday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a buzkashi match in northern Afghanistan, killing at least three people. Buzkashi is a precursor of the modern game of polo, played with the body of a headless goat which is filled with sand.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Earthquake victims were remembered at churches in Christchurch and across New Zealand on Sunday
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Victims of this week’s magnitude 6.3 earthquake that devastated the centre of Christchurch have been honoured at church services across New Zealand.
Tuesday’s quake killed at least 145 people; some 200 are still missing.
Prime Minister John Key said there was still a glimmer of hope survivors could be found in the wreckage of the country’s worst-ever disaster.
But no-one has been found alive since Wednesday, and rescuers working for a fifth day are only finding bodies.
In the meantime, engineers say at least a third of the buildings in the centre of Christchurch will need to be demolished, while hundreds of damaged suburban homes may also have to be pulled down.
Mr Key said the disaster “may be New Zealand’s single most tragic event”, outstripping a 1931 quake in Napier which killed 256.
He said a two-minute silence would be held on Tuesday at 1251 local time (2351 GMT Monday), a week after the quake struck.
Having met relatives of the dead and missing, Mr Key said: “It’s fair to say they fear the worst but there is still a glimmer of hope.”
Families of the missing have appealed for the process of identifying dead bodies to be accelerated, but officials have asked for patience.
Updating the lists of the dead and missing was a slow and methodical process, said police spokesman Dave Cliff.
“We are going through it as fast as we possibly can in order to get the deceased reunited with their loved ones,” he said.
Rescuers from 10 countries, including Britain, Japan and the United States, have been searching broken buildings and piles of debris, as aftershocks continue.
Rescuers say they are losing hope of finding the scores of people still missing
Emergency worker Phil Parker said teams of eight to 12 people were still going into buildings, but said the work was tough and unpredictable.
“We won’t be going into buildings that are deemed unsafe, that’s why we’re checking them now, but there’s always that danger of the buildings coming down on us,” he told the BBC.
Many damaged buildings will have to be pulled down, said Auckland University structural engineer Jason Ingham.
“We’ve collected some data over the past couple of days and it’s looking like about one-third of the buildings (would be condemned),” he told TVNZ.
For many residents, it is all too much, and there is an exodus from Christchurch, says the BBC’s Phil Mercer in the city.
Officials believe up to 22 bodies may lie beneath the rubble of Christchurch Cathedral; as many as 120 are thought to have been killed inside the collapsed CTV office block, including Japanese, Chinese and Philippine nationals; many others are presumed dead inside the destroyed Pyne Gould Guinness building.
Power has been restored to most of the city but water supply remains a problem, with residents being urged to boil water for drinking or cooking due to contamination fears.
The quake struck at a shallow depth of 5km (3.1 miles) early on Tuesday lunchtime, when the South Island city was at its busiest.
CLICKABLE Select the images for more details.
Bexley
Streets in the north-eastern suburb of Bexley were flooded as the quake caused water mains to burst, which coincided with heavy rain.
Pyne Gould Guinness
The multi-storey Pyne Gould Guinness Building, which normally houses around 200 workers, collapsed. A number of people were thought to be trapped inside.
Cathedral
The 63m spire of the city’s Anglican cathedral was toppled by the earthquake. A New Zealand TV reporter took a look inside the damaged building.
CTV building
Part of Christchurch’s Canterbury Television [CTV] building completely collapsed in the earthquake. Some 24 people have been rescued from the building, but police said there might be between 60 and 120 bodies trapped underneath.
Oxford Terrace
In the aftermath of the earthquake, Rhys Taylor took this video on Oxford Terrace, 50 metres away from the city’s main hospital. He said: “Cars were being used as ambulances to transport the injured.”
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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Shout about it: Quirky prop usage is one way modern couples are displaying their individuality
Weddings – royal or not – are a big deal for those involved. Most couples expend much of their energy and resources on documenting the day so they can remember every detail, but has the way we preserve those memories changed?
As the royal wedding approaches, Kate Middleton and Prince William, and their team, will be frantically preparing. The sheer scale of the task is something most ordinary couples couldn’t contemplate, but one thing the young royals won’t have to worry about is whether the photos will turn out OK.
With the world’s press watching their every move on 29 April, this is one event that will be documented ad infinitum.
Tradition will surely dictate that the wedding photos for the heir to the throne and his future queen involve some pretty hefty formal family line-ups. Whether the couple add a modern twist to the proceedings is yet to be seen – video clips on YouTube or a page on Flickr perhaps?
One potential modern take on the wedding video was ruled out recently, when St James’s Palace announced that the event would not be filmed in 3D, despite requests from broadcasters.
“You have to have a proper first dance, you can’t get away with just shuffling about in circles. Everybody wants to have their five minutes of fame and get it online”
Debbie Diggle Wedding planner
It’s certainly the case that the way most brides and grooms choose to preserve their brief moment in the limelight has been evolving, away from the stuffy and predictable. We’ve pretty much moved on from the obligatory procession of relatives standing shoulder-to-shoulder in photos, and interminable, shaky 80s-style videos.
Creativity has been creeping in, with couples leaning more towards candid reportage and documentary-style stills and video. Meanwhile new technology has influenced the wedding experience as it has all other elements of life.
“We have heard from a wedding party who tweeted from the aisle to say ‘we’ve done it, we’re married’,” says Miranda Eason, editor of You and Your Wedding and Cosmopolitan Bride magazines.
At wedding video company High Definition Bride, based in West Sussex and London, even the most basic of packages offer compressed iPhone, mobile and web versions of wedding videos for their clients.
“It just offers something new if they can get it on their phone and show it to their friends,” says owner Anthony Aurelius.
The memories don’t always stop on the wedding day… post-event shoots known to some as “trash the dress” have become fashionable
Although most couples stick to a lower budget, up to 20 each year pay nearly £4,000 for the firm’s top-rate package – a four-camera shoot with a TV director that includes “diary room”-style messages from their loved ones, he says. One hundred edited DVDs are then sent out directly to the wedding guests a week later.
Anthony says that as technology has become cheaper – such as the high-definition cameras and editing equipment they use – it has opened up more possibilities for brides and grooms.
However, it has also opened the market to more and more operators who “think they can film and edit”, he adds – a view which is echoed by professional photographers who have seen a rise in amateur competitors since the advent of digital technology.
Although he has a clear interest in a flourishing wedding video sector, he does say he believes its “naff image”, which was perhaps prevalent for a while, has turned around.
“Consciousness is shifting because of [video-sharing website] YouTube and the availability of cameras – the public are thinking more and more about what they could do with it.”
The briefest of searches for wedding footage on YouTube turns up a seemingly never-ending list of clips. Surprise entrances, first dances and serenades are becoming more popular, and those moments are being shared with millions of strangers.
“YouTube has made a huge different to the first dance,” says Debbie Diggle, a wedding planner and tutor for the Institute of Professional Wedding Planners.
“You have to have a proper first dance, you can’t get away with just shuffling about in circles. Everybody wants to have their five minutes of fame and get it online,” she says.
But would couples really ever attempt to choreograph their wedding memories to gain notoriety on the web?
One couple that became part of the YouTube wedding dance phenomenon are south London-based Julia Boggio, from New Jersey, and her British husband James Derbyshire.
There will be no shortage of cameras at the royal couple’s wedding
Their infamous re-enactment of the final dance in the film Dirty Dancing became a massive YouTube hit in 2007.
With nearly 8.5m hits to date, the clip led to numerous media interviews and an appearance on US chat show Oprah Winfrey, during which Julia twirled with the original dirty dancer Patrick Swayze.
Julia is an award-winning wedding and portraits photographer, but insists the video was not a publicity stunt – it was posted online 18 months after their marriage when they became aware of YouTube as a way to share the moment with friends in the US, she says.
Conscious that weddings can seem formulaic to guests who often attend several each year, Julia and James did the dance to create a “stand-out” moment that suited their creative personalities, she says.
But she adds that she did meet one client who said she had a “bone to pick” with her – a friend had aspired to copy the Julia-James phenomenon with a big wedding dance number, involving lots of her guests, and hoped it would prove an internet success.
“The bride really wanted the dance to go on YouTube and to get loads of hits. But she was being really ‘bridezilla’ about it – her intention was to get famous, and that’s not really how these things happen.”
Julia’s work has a “niche” blend of quirky, fashion-shoot style photography that she says helped pioneer the use of props in wedding stills.
“They want people to come away from the wedding and say ‘that was so them’”
Miranda Eason You & Your Wedding
“People are treating their weddings more like a show and they’re having fun with it.
“I see the personalities of the couples coming out so much more strongly. They are drawing influences from all sorts of places now, like wedding blogs,” she says.
With her husband’s input they also do videos, with the aim of producing a “documentary about two families coming together” – a process so intensive they take on no more than five per year, at £6,000 each.
But it’s not just the wedding event itself – recording the “story” has expanded beyond the day with numerous photographic and video businesses offering pre and post-wedding shoots to add to the portfolio.
This includes the relatively recent phenomena of a US and Australian craze they call “trash the dress” – also known as “treasure the dress”, “rock the frock” or, in Julia’s case, the “I do redo”.
A post-wedding shoot, it usually takes place at a venue that contrasts with the couple’s wedding, and in some cases does involve literally “trashing” the outfits, such as by jumping into the sea or rolling in mud.
“The point is to do things they weren’t able to do on the wedding day. It extends the wedding experience and varies it. Sometimes people get a bit depressed after the wedding and want to do something as a couple, or they simply want another chance to wear an expensive dress they have only had on once,” says Julia.
Whatever people choose to do, says wedding magazines editor Ms Eason, it is more likely nowadays that they will use the different ways available to them to “put their own stamp” on the event.
“What they want is to find their way to capture the unfolding story of the day. They want people to come away from the wedding and say ‘that was so them’.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Arriva Trains Wales services will be affected from midnight on Saturday until Tuesday morning 
