“The cause of the explosion will be the subject of a joint investigation by the police and Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service,” local police said in a statement.

“We would ask that the media and public do not speculate about the circumstances surrounding the incident, but at this stage there is no indication this is terrorist related.”

The apparent explosion occurred Sunday evening on a stretch of road containing commercial and residential properties close to the city centre.

The electricity supply to a number of properties in the area was cut while emergency services deal with the incident, police said.

The Fire and Rescue Service said it received calls shortly after 7:00 pm (1900 GMT) from the public reporting an explosion and a building fire.

It immediately dispatched six fire engines, a spokeswoman said.

“We were en route when the police called to say a building had collapsed,” she added.

Additional specialist search and rescue units were then dispatched, including a search and rescue dog, according to the spokeswoman.

“We’ve got no indication of what the cause is at this moment,” the spokeswoman said.

Six people were taken by ambulance to Leicester Royal Infirmary hospital following the incident, according to University Hospitals of Leicester, which runs three area medical facilities.

“Two of these patients are in a critical condition, while four are walking wounded,” it said on Twitter.

Officials had earlier advised people only to attend the accident and emergency department “if absolutely necessary”.

The fire service spokeswoman also said representatives from gas and electric provider companies were in attendance at the scene, under routine procedures.

Pictures and videos posted on social media showed a property engulfed in flames visible from a distance, with rubble and debris scattered around.

Graeme Hudson told AFP he lives close to the scene and felt the blast.

“It was very scary,” he said. “I live five minutes away… but my house shook. I went out and saw massive smoke and big flames.

“I quickly went out to see what’s happened,” he added. “(I) didn’t stay for long there because (I felt) unsafe for my 11-year-old son.”

The actress, who was 54, died of a cardiac arrest in Dubai late on Saturday, 24 February, where she was to attend her nephew Mohit Marwah’s wedding.

Considered by many as the first female superstar of Hindi cinema, Sridevi was an actor-par-excellence whose versatility remains unmatched. From comedies to romance to tragedies, Sridevi did it all with élan.

Starting as a child artiste in late 1970s in Tamil cinema, Sridevi ruled as the top female star of the 80s to the early 90s starring opposite the leading actors of the era, including Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth.

According to reports, the actor was accompanied by her husband Boney Kapoor and younger daughter Khushi.

The news of her death was confirmed by Sridevi’s brother-in-law and actor Sanjay Kapoor who left for Dubai after learning of Sridevi’s tragic demise.

Sanjay, however, could not reveal more details as he was on his way to Dubai.

A versatile actor, Sridevi made her Bollywood debut in 1978 with “Solva Sawan”.

But it was only after five years with Jeetendra-starrer “Himmatwala” that she gained commercial success. Her beguiling eyes, scintillating screen presence and acting prowess soon made her one of the most sought-after artistes in the Hindi film industry.

While films like “Mawaali” (1983), “Tohfa” (1984), “Mr India” (1987) and “Chandni” (1989) kept her at the top in the box-office game, her outings like “Sadma” (1983), “ChaalBaaz” (1989), “Lamhe” (1991), and “Gumrah” (1993) earned her critical acclaim.

She went on a hiatus for 15 years after starring in home production – “Judaai” – co-starring her brother-in-law Anil Kapoor and Urmila Matondkar. It was director Gauri Shinde’s “English Vinglish” in 2012 that marked Sridevi’s comeback.

Her nuanced performance as a middle-class woman, learning to speak English to feel accepted by her family, won accolades, and the film was also a commercial success.

Last year, she was seen in revenge-drama – “Mom” – opposite Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Akshaye Khanna. She shot for a special appearance in superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s upcoming film – “Zero” – which releases in December.

Before she made her entry into Bollywood, she had left a mark in South Indian films. She marked her entry into the world of cinema with Tamil film “Thunaivan” in 1969. She also worked in Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada films.

Besides Boney and Khushi, she is survived by older daughter Janhvi Kapoor, who is currently working towards making her entry into the Hindi cinema. Sridevi was step-mother to actor Arjun Kapoor and his sister Anshula, who Boney had from late first wife Mona.

Condolences poured in from across the country. Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Malayalam legend Mohanlal and nearly every Bollywood celebrity posted tweets expressing their grief.

Here are her seven best performances:

Sadma- Released in 1983, the film brings out the story of a girl traumatised by an accident and starts behaving like a child. Sridevi delivered an amazing performance in both the Hindi remake and the Tamil original Moondram Pirai.

Nagina- All we remember from the revenge story is the snake woman played by Sridevi. The very famous song ‘Main Teri Dushman’ that was picturised on Sridevi made the film what it is.

Mr. India- No one can ever forget the performance of Anil Kapoor and Sridevi in this iconic film. The actress playing a journalist with her outstanding comic timing is incredible.

Chandni- This film came as a turning point in Sridevi’s career. The impeccable performance of the actress in the romantic drama won our hearts.

Chalbaaz- We saw the powerhouse actress in a double role. The actress brought all the fun on the screen and made us laugh.

Lamhe- A coming of the age film where Sridevi plays the character of a girl who falls in love with an older man, the lover of her late mother. Starring Anil Kapoor and Sridevi, Lamhe became one of the most memorable films by the actress.

English Vinglish- Finally, her comeback on the silver screen came with this movie. Though she had no need to prove her craft, this film brought out a different side of the actress.

The man appeared with the words “Peace + Love” emblazoned on his chest after the men’s 1,000m speed skating medal ceremony at the Gangneum Oval in Gangneum.

Photos show him running across the ice, and even attempting a pirouette.

Time magazine has identified the man as British-based Mark Roberts, who has pulled similar stunts at more than 500 events worldwide.

An Instagram user, who was watching an interview of the ceremony on television, recorded the moment when Roberts climbs across the railing and undresses to reveal his tutu.

As he begins his routine, he takes a hard fall on the ice, but quickly picks himself up.

He was later shown in photos being escorted away by Olympics officials.

On the Instagram post, one user commented that it was a shame Roberts could not spread his message a little more tastefully considering it was the Olympics.

However, several others found humour and even inspiration in the situation. “Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear tutus,” a Twitter user wrote.//AFP

    The shock death of the beloved Indian star aged 54, who reportedly passed away while attending her nephew’s wedding in the emirate late Saturday night, prompted an outpouring of grief among fans and fellow Bollywood actors.

“I have no words. Condolences to everyone who loved Sridevi. A dark day. RIP”, tweeted actress Priyanka Chopra.

Born Shree Amma Yanger Ayappan, Sridevi made her acting debut aged just four, and went on have a career spanning over four decades.

She appeared in a string of blockbuster hit films including Chandni, Mr India, Mawali and Tohfa.

She was awarded the Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, for her services to the film industry.

“Saddened by the untimely demise of noted actor Sridevi. She was a veteran of the film industry, whose long career included diverse roles and memorable performances,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter.

“My thoughts are with her family and admirers in this hour of grief,” he added.

Indian social media and news channels were buzzing with tributes to Sridevi.

One of Bollywood’s leading actors, Akshay Kumar, too expressed his shock at the “untimely demise.”

“A dream for many, had the good fortune of sharing screen space with her long ago and witnessed her continued grace over the years,” Kumar tweeted.//AFP

Trump used a speech to conservatives just outside Washington to step up his campaign of “maximum pressure” designed to force North Korea to roll back its weapons programs.

“We imposed today the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before,” Trump claimed at the end of a lengthy campaign-style address Friday.

In light of past US embargoes, that is likely an overstatement, but Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin confirmed the sanctions covered “virtually all the ships” North Korea is “using at this moment in time.”

Speaking to reporters in Pyeongchang Saturday on a visit to the Winter Olympics, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: “Hopefully we’ll see a change on the part of the North Koreans to start to denuclearise the peninsula, that’s what our focus is.”

She added: “I can tell you the president won’t make the mistakes the previous administration has and be soft or weak.”

Trump’s administration is locked in a nuclear standoff with Pyongyang, which is trying to develop missiles that could deliver an atomic weapon to major US cities.

The latest sanctions are designed to put the squeeze on North Korea’s already precarious economy and fuel supply.

In his speech Friday Trump had been expected to provide details of measures that target “56 vessels, shipping companies, and trade businesses,” but skipped that part of his prepared remarks.

“Frankly hopefully something positive can happen,” he said instead.

During a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump said sanctions were only the first step.

“If the sanctions don’t work, we’ll have to go to phase two. Phase two may be a very rough thing,” he said, without elaborating.

Mnuchin said there were signs the punitive measures were starting to have an impact, but did not elaborate.

The North Korean military and broader economy depend heavily on imports of coal and oil from China and Russia.

China, Pyongyang’s only major ally, has steadfastly rebuffed Washington’s calls for a full oil embargo — fearing the chaotic collapse of the Pyongyang regime — but has accepted caps agreed at the United Nations.

– Reaffirming ties with Seoul –

The timing of the new measures coincides with the arrival in South Korea of Trump’s daughter Ivanka.

She is attending the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics, which have taken place against the backdrop of the crisis.

The 36-year-old businesswoman and now top aide to her father has been tasked with reaffirming US ties with South Korea, which have been strained over how to deal with the North.

She was hosted in Seoul by President Moon Jae-in, who has long advocated talks rather than confrontation with North Korea.

“Mrs. Trump delivered a personal message to President Moon from President Trump about today’s North Korea related sanctions announcement at a small meeting at the Blue House,” the White House said.

“They also discussed the continued effort on the joint maximum pressure campaign against North Korea.”

South Korean officials, who sit in a capital well within range of conventional North Korea artillery, have been spooked by Trump’s talk of military confrontation.

US officials worry meanwhile that North Korea is luring Moon into talks that are designed to go nowhere.

North Korea’s delegation at the closing ceremony will be headed by top general Kim Yong Chol, who is widely blamed for a series of attacks against the South including the 2010 sinking of a warship, with the loss of 46 lives.

The White House spokeswoman said Ivanka would probably sit apart from the North Korean delegation at Sunday’s closing ceremony.

It is the latest violence to hit Rakhine, which is festering with ethnic tensions and has been roiled by communal violence in the north against the Rohingya and insurgencies in other parts of the state.

Bombings in the state capital are rare however.

“Three bombs exploded and three other unexploded bombs were found. A police officer was injured but not seriously,” a senior officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The blasts took place around 4:00am (2130 GMT Friday), the officer said.

One exploded in the compound of the state government secretary’s home, while the two others hit in front of an office in the city and on a road leading to a beach.

A local official from the state government also confirmed the explosions.

The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

“Some streets are being blocked by police already because of the bomb blasts,” Zaw Zaw, a local resident of Sittwe, told AFP by phone.

In recent months unrest in Rakhine has been concentrated in the state’s northern wedge, where a sweeping military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim community last August pushed nearly 700,000 refugees across the border to Bangladesh.

The state capital Sittwe lies around 100 km south of the epicentre of that conflict.

The explosions come almost exactly six months to the day since northern Rakhine was plunged into crisis on August 25 when Rohingya rebels raided police posts, killing at least a dozen officials.

Myanmar’s military responded with a ruthless campaign that the UN says amounts to ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population, who are now overwhelmingly based in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Myanmar authorities deny committing any atrocities but have blocked UN investigators from investigating the conflict zone, where thousands of Rohingya are believed to have been killed.

Sittwe was once home to a sizeable Rohingya population but most were forced to abandon their homes by deadly communal violence in 2012.

Today a small community of Rohingya are confined to a Muslim enclave in the city while more than 100,000 others are still living in squalid displacement camps outside the capital.

In a separate conflict in Rakhine state last month, seven people were killed and a dozen injured when police opened fire on a crowd of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists who were trying to seize a government office in the town of Mrauk U.

The violence prompted an ethnic Rakhine rebel group in the state to promise “serious” retaliation for the deaths of the protesters.

Around two weeks later the town’s administrator was found murdered on the side of the road.

Applause swelled around Bogota’s arena for the past month as Castrillon and other matadors taunted and dispatched bulls during the city’s annual bullfighting festival.

But animal rights activists, whose campaign is taking hold in a traditional bullfighting stronghold, point to the sparse attendances in the arena — well short of the 10,000 clamoring aficionados that once filled it for the month-long festival.

Castrillon is left feeling like a frustrated and misunderstood artist.

“You put your life on the line against the bull — the animal can die and so can I — so that in the end, society sees me as a murderer,” lamented the 25-year old.

Increasingly, Castrillon is protected outside the arena for what he does inside it, as bullfighting’s popularity wanes and campaigners grow bolder.

Two thousand police officers were on hand to protect the festival, more than is usually mobilized for a high-risk football match.

Bogota’s city hall justified the extra security by pointing to violent demonstrations that greeted the return of the festival to Bogota last year after a four-year absence, when it was banned by a leftist mayor.

The festival has been held in Bogota’s Santamaria bullring since 1931. But now it’s under so much criticism that there are increasing concerns among aficionados that bullfighting could be banned altogether.

– ‘Dying out’ –

As a backdrop to the blood and dust of Bogota’s arena, debate on a ban has been winding its way through the courts and the Congress.

This month judges decided that Congress must legislate on bullfighting’s fate by next year, either banning it altogether or extending a current exemption from Colombia’s animal cruelty laws.

The constitutional court ruled in 2015 that bullfighting was part of Colombia’s cultural heritage. But judges have since argued that the practice violates the country’s laws against mistreatment of animals.

It’s a move that concerns Castrillon.

“After leaving my family at the age of 14 to become a bullfighter, finding myself without bulls would not only be the end of a career, but a life,” he said.

Colombia is one of only eight countries in the world where bullfights are still held, along with Ecuador, Spain, France, Mexico, Peru, Portugal and Venezuela.

Even in these countries, laws are increasingly putting restrictions on the spectacle, including in Spain, where the Constitutional Court overturned a ban on bullfighting imposed by the region of Catalonia.

Andrea Padilla, spokeswoman for rights group AnimaNaturalis, said reopening the Santamaria Arena would not save bullfighting in Colombia.

“It is a dying practice. There is a generation that no longer goes to bullfights,” Padilla said.

– ‘Art of truth’ –

Supporters, like 55-year old breeder Bernardo Caicedo, insist bullfighting is “an art of truth, a life and death struggle between the bullfighter and the bull.”

In his ranch near Bogota, he says the “toro bravo” lives like a king until the age of five, when it is beast enough for the arena.

If it fights valiantly and is spared, it will be put out to stud for up to 12 years.

A ban would mean “the fighting bull would disappear, because it serves no other purpose,” said Caicedo.

But animal advocates consider that a “perverse” argument, according to Padilla. “It’s about keeping a breed just to go and massacre it in a public spectacle.”

For now, campaigners are putting their trust in bullfighting finally being put to the sword during the upcoming election period.

The government of President Juan Manuel Santos which leaves office in August, and presidential candidates from left or center, are all in favor of a prohibition.//AFP

The campaign would target the provinces of Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Hebei, where the practice is most prominent. The Ministry also provided a special hotline that the public can call to report “funeral misdeeds” in exchange for monetary reward.

Funeral strippers are exactly what the name suggests: women dressed in sexy lingerie or revealing clothes that are hired to dance or sing at funerals in some rural areas of China. In one instance that was reported to the officials, the women performed on stage in front of an electronic screen that displayed a headshot of the deceased and the message “We offer profound condolences for the death of this man.”

Below is a trailer for a documentary on the phenomenon:

Grieving families hire these performers in order to entice more people to pay their respects to the dead. The Chinese government first began to conduct operations against the custom in 2015, but funeral strippers continued to be a part of the ceremony in provinces. The Ministry now pursues a crackdown—in which police can break up funerals—to end the “obscene, pornographic and vulgar performances.”

According to the state-run Global Times, China’s tradition of entertaining mourners started as early as the Qing Dynasty. But the striptease was added only during the 1990s, which is often attributed by experts to fertility worship.

“In some local cultures, dancing with erotic elements can be used to convey the deceased’s wishes of being blessed with many children,” Huang Jianxing, a professor at the Fujian Normal University Sociology and History Department, told Global Times.

“From the perspective of folklore, festivals and rituals such as the Chinese New Year are the critical time for people to lay down their lives and embrace the death. That’s the moment for them to release their passion at the funeral.”

While the Ministry as well as the state media have attacked the custom for being a “low culture” and a “toxin for public morality”, some people believe that it is more important to provide the rural population with better cultural products that could enrich them spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually rather than criticize them for keeping the tradition.

“I don’t take the performances as ‘trash of traditional rural culture.’ It has an inheritance of local civilization. Rather than simply decrying them, it is more important for the authorities to provide the rural people with finer cultural products,” said Professor Huang.

Prajin, who is also justice minister, said Tapiola raised the issue, asking what would happen next.

“I informed him that the government does not yet know the details and that he will be briefed as soon as I have more information,” Prajin said.

There will be another meeting between Prachin and Tapiola at the Justice Ministry soon.

The NLA yesterday voted overwhelmingly in a closed-door meeting to turn down all of the proposed candidates. A new round of selection kicked off immediately and will have to be completed within 90 days, according to the law. Under the law, candidates who get a majority of NLA votes would become new EC members. But all seven candidates received less than the required minimum of 125 of 248 votes.

An NLA source said the rejection followed some legislators’ concern that the controversial initial selection process might have damaged public confidence in the new EC and more problems might ensue. The seven candidates would have filled vacancies in the Election Commission, the key agency responsible for holding elections. The move was viewed by some as another attempt by the junta to prolong its hold over power and delay the promised election.

NLA President Pornpetch Wichitchonlachai said on Thursday that the current EC members, acting as caretakers after being dismissed by the new EC organic law, were still working in strong spirits.

There were no students or staff injured as the school day had ended earlier at 11.20am. However, SK Batu 4 afternoon session pupils fled upon seeing thick smoke and fire billowing from SK Sentosa.

Two wooden blocks housing the primary school’s office, staff room, hall and religious room were destroyed in the fire that started at around 12.15pm.

“Most of the pupils and staff of SK Sentosa had already returned home. Only a few were still around,” said a school official.

The fire is believed to have started at the school’s office area.

Staff who were still around noticed thick smoke and immediately evacuated the office, while telling other pupils still in the school compound to leave.

The building was razed within 30 minutes.

SK Sentosa principal Sofiah Mohd Ali said the school was temporarily using a block next to SK Batu 4 as they are supposed to shift to a new site in nearby SMK Kabota on March 5.

“Thankfully, that no one was hurt in the fire,” she said, adding that most of the school’s administrative files, computers and other equipment were destroyed.

“It’s very sad,” she said, adding that the school had an enrolment of 139 students as well as 26 teachers and support staff.

Tawau Fire and Rescue Services Department station chief Sharudi Delamin said four fire trucks with 19 firemen rushed to the scene after receiving a distress call at 12.28pm.

They were able to put out the fire by 1.05pm and stop it from spreading to an adjacent block built out of wood,” he said, adding that they were investigating the cause of the fire.