Spain: Scores of horse riders jumped their mounts through roaring flames in a Spanish village as part of an annual festival that locals say is an integral part of their culture, but animal rights groups have condemned. The festival, dubbed Las Luminarias, takes place in San Bartolome de Pinares, northwest of Madrid, on the eve of Saint Anthony's Day, Spain's patron saint of animals. Participants believe that horses who leap through the flames of specially constructed bonfires will be purified during the coming year. Organisers claim that the festival dates back some 500 years. Spanish political party the Animalist Party Against the Mistreatment of Animals described the festival on its website as an example of "clear animal abuse". The town's mayor Maria Jesus Martin Gomez disagrees. "The only thing I have to say is that the animals don't suffer anything at all. The government of Castilla and Leon assign us a vet and the City Hall hires another one. Every year they produce a report which has always been favourable and nothing has ever happened here."
United States: A former CIA officer has been arrested and charged with illegally retaining classified records, including names and phone numbers of covert CIA assets. Fifty-three-year-old Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested after arriving at JFK International Airport. He made an initial appearance today in federal court in New York, but will face charges in northern Virginia, where the CIA is located. According to court documents, Lee, a Hong Kong resident, served in the CIA from 1994 to 2007 as a case officer. A court affidavit states that in 2012, when Lee travelled to northern Virginia with his family, the FBI searched Lee's possessions and found two small books with handwritten notes containing names and numbers of covert CIA employees and locations of covert facilities.
Australia: A Queensland funeral home accused of swapping a grandmother's expensive coffin for a cheap pine box will not face criminal charges. Rockhampton funeral director Tony Hart last week told the Courier-Mail his company, Harts Family Funerals, only moved the woman's body to a crematorium in a cheaper box to protect the structural integrity of the A$1700 casket her family paid for. "Following extensive inquiries, investigators found no evidence to substantiate a criminal offence," a Queensland Police spokesperson said.
Koreas: The two Koreas are meeting for the third time in about 10 days to continue their discussions on Olympics cooperation, days ahead of talks with the IOC on North Korean participation in the upcoming Winter Games in the South. A flurry of Olympics-related meetings has provided a tentative thaw in long-strained ties. But the North's reluctance to discuss its nuclear weapons programme is raising scepticism over how long this mood of reconciliation will last. The Koreas have been discussing fielding a joint women's hockey team and having their athletes march under a "unification flag" depicting the Korean Peninsula, instead of their respective national flags, during the opening ceremony for the February 9-25 Games in Pyeongchang. Such steps require IOC approval.
![Visitors tour in front of a wire fence, hanging ribbons with messages wishing for reunification of the two Koreas and national flags at the Imjingak Pavilion in Paju, South Korea. Photo / AP](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/A4P5BI2IUUKTRKVG7N26BT6ZBI.jpg?auth=823dd87e47284a02d311cc10550851eb492361252a2b96b12abe27b0275cf13b&width=16&height=11&quality=70&smart=true)