Taipei  - A Taiwan rooster has been spared the fate of being killed, cooked and eaten because of its good looks, the chicken's raisers said Monday.

In February, the Shifang School for Mentally Retarded in Taichung, central Taiwan, bought 20 chicks to raise, intending to sell them when they grew up to raise funds for the cash-strapped school, Wei Cheng-feng, executive director of the school, said.

Shanghai  - Jo-Wilfried Tsonga blamed clueless ball kids for his opening loss at the Masters Cup, with the petulant French player perhaps finding excuses for his own rookie mistakes on court.

A debutant at the year-end event, the hyper-fit 23-year-old who won the Paris title a week ago said he "lost energy" waiting for hardd-working ball kids to fetch him his towel frequently between points as he went down in Gold group play to Nikolay Davydenko in three sets.

"When I ask for my towel, my towel didn't come," lamented Tsgona, "When I ask for a ball, the ball didn't come. That's it."

London, Nov 10 : Hollywood actress Dame Helen Mirren may have made waves with her toned body, but at 63 she no longer feels sexy.

The ‘Coming Through’ actress, who was recently pictured looking absolutely toned in a two-piece, revealed that she does not look sexy anymore and would rather prefer a comfortable nightie to a well-toned body.

“The camera lied, it just happened to catch me at the right angle. In truth, I look c**p!” the Daily Express quoted Mirren, as telling Good Housekeeping magazine.

Washington, Nov 10 : A new study has revealed that women with a history of serious mental illness are much more likely to have babies that are stillborn or die within the first month of life.

For the study, researchers at the Centre for Women''s Mental Health at The University of Manchester examined almost 1.5 million births in Denmark between 1973 and 1998, including 7,021 stillbirths.

The risk of stillbirth and newborn deaths from any cause was at least twice as high for mothers admitted with a serious psychiatric illness than for women with no such history.

Singapore  - The Singapore Exchange (SGX) has proposed the creation of an integrated Asian stock market, its chief executive officer Hsieh Fu Hua said Monday.

He called on the ASEAN Exchanges and Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) to forge links that can be extended to the entire Asia-Pacific region.

"These multilateral gateways in trading, clearing and settlement will then help us create a single and more significant Asian marketplace," he said at the 12th general meeting of the Asia-Pacific Central Securities Depository Group in Singapore.

London, Nov 10 : The first global marine-life census has led to the discovery of more than 200 new marine species, including giant sea stars that can grow up to 60cm across.

According to a report in Nature News, the findings, which come from the 2,000-strong international marine-scientist team, will be released at the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity in Valencia, Spain on November 11-15.

Other new species discovered include a type of giant bacteria living in the eastern South Pacific that can grow several centimeters long.

The researchers said that the bacteria could be “living fossils” that developed in the earliest ocean when oxygen was either absent or much diminished, living on hydrogen sulphide.