Toronto stabbing 1st 2011 homicide

Toronto recorded its first homicide of 2011 with the stabbing death of a man after an early-morning knife fight on New Year's Day.

A second man is in hospital with serious injuries. The altercation took place near Portland Street. and Queen Street. West around 2:30 a.m.

Police are searching for several suspects who fled the scene.

More than 1,000 dead birds fall from sky in Ark.

BEEBE, Ark. (AP) -- Wildlife officials are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over an Arkansas town.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday that it began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. the previous night. The birds fell over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area.

Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe said the birds showed physical trauma, and she speculated that "the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail."

The commission said that New Year's Eve revelers shooting off fireworks in the area could have startled the birds from their roost and caused them to die from stress.

Robby King, a wildlife officer for the agency, collected about 65 dead birds, which will be sent for testing to the state Livestock and Poultry Commission lab and the National Wildlife Health Center lab in Madison, Wis.

Rowe said that similar events have occurred elsewhere and that test results "usually were inconclusive." She said she doubted the birds were poisoned.

Son of Iranian woman sentenced to death urges clemency

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning,
with her son Sajjad Ghaderzadeh during a meeting at a provincial welfare organisation
in Tabriz, 633 km (396 miles) northwest of Tehran, January 1, 2011.

(Reuters) - An Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery was allowed out on prison leave to have dinner with her daughter and son on Saturday, hours after he had appealed to the judiciary to spare her life.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's sentence to be stoned to death was suspended after an international outcry, but she still faces possible execution by hanging.

After having dinner with her children at the same place where her son Sajjad Ghaderzadeh had earlier talked to reporters, Ashtiani said she was not tortured while in prison, adding "these are all rumors."

"Whatever interview I have given so far, I have given voluntarily. No one has forced me. I have spoken on my own accord," she told reporters.

Ghaderzadeh, who faces his own court case after talking to two German reporters about his mother's sentence, told foreign media earlier on Saturday his mother had violated Islamic law but called for compassion and forgiveness.

Fatality confirmed in Australian flooding; airport to close for weeks

(CNN) -- Massive flooding that has swept through Queensland, Australia, and claimed at least one life will likely force the evacuation of at least 1,000 people and close a regional airport for weeks, an emergency agency said Sunday.

The flooding has directly impacted about 200,000 people, according to Emergency Management Queensland, and has affected an area roughly the size of the entire state of New South Wales. Rockhampton, Queensland, is the worst-hit major population center, the agency said.

On Sunday, a spokesman for the agency said floodwater is receding in certain areas but is also flooding local towns as is recedes.

Rockhampton's regional airport closed Saturday afternoon and is expected to remain closed for the coming weeks, Emergency Management Queensland said Sunday. Meanwhile, other modes of transportation in the area were essentially reduced to boat travel, as all roads, major highways and the railway leading in and out of the city were flooded.

Report: Foot-and-mouth disease spreading in South Korea

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- South Korean officials confirmed additional cases of foot-and-mouth disease despite nationwide quarantine efforts, the Yonhap News Agency reported Sunday.

Two milk cows at a dairy farm in the central city of Cheonan tested positive for the disease, the news agency said, citing officials in South Chungcheong province. The government ordered the slaughter of all 50 animals on the farm to stop the disease's spread, according to Yonhap.

Food and mouth disease is a highly communicable disease that affects cattle, swine, sheep, goats, deer and other animals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is characterized by a fever and blister-like lesions and erosions on the animal.

Investigators detected the latest outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the country on November 28 on a pig farm in the southern city of Andong. The disease has since spread to areas around Seoul in the northern part of the country.

More than 643,000 livestock have been ordered culled -- or slaughtered -- so far across the country, Yonhap said, with at least 67 confirmed cases of the disease so far.

The toll of affected livestock is at the country's highest level since 2002, when 160,000 were slaughtered, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries confirmed. Livestock markets have been closed across the country while the government oversees animal vaccinations.

The ministers of public administration and agriculture issued a statement last week saying it was safe to continue eating meat, noting that foot-and-mouth disease does not spread to humans.