Wellington - People switched off their lights in 44 cities and towns throughout New Zealand at 8:30 pm (0830 GMT) Saturday to kick off the worldwide 2008 Earth Hour event designed to draw attention to global warming.

If hopes of the organizers, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), are realized, by the time the hour from 8:30 to 9:30 pm local time has passed around the globe, 1 billion people in more than 1,000 cities would have spent 60 minutes in darkness to show their concern about the excessive use of energy and its impact on the environment.

Phnom Penh  - The elegant woman has dainty hands and long, narrow feet. Her limbs are incredibly limber - she easily bends back her fingers until they touch her forearm, her toes at a 90-degree angle - the results of decades of training and dedication.

Vong Metry, 56, has been a classical dancer since the age of 5, an occupation that carried a death sentence after 1975, when Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime overran the country, killing almost everyone who was not a farmer or worker.

Bali Island, Indonesia  - Residents and tourists on the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali on Thursday celebrated the annual Day of Silence, a Hindu New Year observance during which the island shuts down and people are banned from the streets.

The New Year, called Nyepi, is one of the most important religious events for Balinese Hindus, and this year, they welcomed the Saka New Year of 1931.

Hong Kong - Life would be meaningless and not worth living without the internet, nearly one in seven Hong Kong youngsters said in a survey released Friday.

Just under 14 per cent of 1,800 respondents aged 12 to 25 insisted they could not live without the internet while 80 per cent described it as essential.

One-quarter of respondents in the high-rise, high-tech city of 7 million, where 77 per cent of households have broadband access, said they used the internet for more than four hours a day.

New Delhi  - Bank manager Sudhir has never heard of credit derivates and has no clue about investment funds. He is just about capable of doing basic arithmetic and calculating interest rates.

But while his counterparts in posh Western office towers worry about gaping holes in their balance sheets, the 13-year-old's business is going strong.

Still, the bank's staff and customers are far from free of fear of losing their livelihoods. They are street children in India's capital, New Delhi.

Mogila, Bulgaria  - When a Roma from a southern Bulgarian clan is looking for a bride, he goes to the traditional gathering which his folk stage in Stara Zagora each year in late winter or early spring - though as of recently some brides want to dance more than to marry.

Gypsy families from the clan have for centuries presented their daughters for marriage at the so-called bride market in Mogila, a village 220 kilometres south-east of Sofia, on the first Saturday after Easter fasting begins.