Picture News 3
-
Village people look at the body of an elephant, killed in a collision with a train, lying on the railway track at Chandrapur, in India. -
A security guard watches over Four Nudes, by Chang Yu, at an auction preview in Hong Kong. -
Women in a bar in Newcastle celebrate new licensing laws allowing bars across the UK to stay open for longer - in some cases for 24 hours. -
AP - Thu Nov 24, 1:13 PM ET
Metropolitan Police officer Antonio Atkins feigns a bite out of the leg of a costumed turkey outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005. The hotel was serving up to 300 traditional Thanksgiving meals along with candlelight, fine linens, silver and china, inside a Mayflower moving trailer for first responders who were on duty for Thanksgiving. The little pilgrim at left is Rebecca Hunsberger of Washington. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) -
AFP - Thu Nov 24, 7:12 PM ET
At dawn : Thousands of Native Americans participate in a sunrise 'Unthanksgiving Day' ceremony on Alcatraz Island, home to the ruins of the former federal prison in San Francisco Bay. (AFP/Kara Andrade) -
AFP - Thu Nov 24, 7:17 PM ET
New toy : An Iraqi girl looks at US soldiers from 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment after receiving a puppet given by them while patrolling a neighborhood southwest of Baghdad. (AFP/Mauricio Lima) -
AFP - Thu Nov 24, 7:20 PM ET
Aftermath : A wounded Iraqi woman tries to hold back her tears inside a hospital in Baghdad after she was wounded in a car bomb blast in the town of Mahmodiyeh. (AFP/Sabah Arar) -
AFP - Thu Nov 24, 7:33 PM ET
Dismount : Australia's Joshua Jefferis dismounts from the parallel bars at the 38th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Melbourne. (AFP/William West) -
AFP - Thu Nov 24, 7:39 PM ET
Very large tub : Indian Sikh devotees take a holy bath near the Golden Temple in Amritsar on the day celebrating Guru Teg Bahadur, the ninth Guru of the Sikhs who was publicly beheaded in Chandni Chowk in Delhi by the Moghul rulers in 1675 for defending Hindus facing forcible conversion to Islam. (AFP/Narinder Nanu) -
AFP - Thu Nov 24, 7:43 PM ET
Lone boat : A boat crosses the Songhua river in the northern Chinese city of Harbin where a slick of carcinogenic benzene has now reached after a chemical plant explosion, severely polluting one of China's biggest rivers causing water supplies in the city to be cut for millions of people and sparking pollution fears in neighboring Russia. (AFP/Peter Parks) -
AFP - Thu Nov 24, 7:48 PM ET
Barely there fashion : A model presents a creation by a Malaysian designer during the fashion week in Kuala Lumpur. (AFP/Teh Eng Koon) -
Late night in Luton
Open all hours?
While the debate continues about what effect new extended licensing laws will have, what happened in the Bedfordshire town of Luton the night the new measures came into force?
Along the Park Street strip drinking past 11pm is already commonplace, with closing times staggered until 3am to avoid everyone piling onto the streets at the same time.
Will the new law make a difference? -
Business as usual
Barman James Fox works in the Bat and Barrel. The pub already has a 3am licence as it has a function room.
They have applied to open between 10am and 5am and expect to hear in January if they have been successful. Even then, they expect to mostly stick to 10am until 11pm opening hours, as they do now.
"We'll just lock the front door and if anyone else wants to come in they can knock on the side door," he said. -
Image overhaul
In the past 18 months Luton has made efforts to deal with drink-related crime and disorder.
After it was voted one of the country's worst towns it decided to try to clean up its image with the Luton Safe scheme.
Licensees now regularly meet to decide whether certain culprits should be banned from the town's bars and for how long (up to 12 months). -
On the look-out
For John O'Reilly, landlord of The Castle, the new laws mean he will open for an extra hour-and-a-half so as not to lose business to the late-opening pubs. As to whether it will cut drinking, he doubts it.
Will it cut drink-related trouble? Luton's solution is to have town centre bar managers communicating with walkie-talkies to keep a close watch on pub-goers.
A group swigging from an open bottle of whisky pass by. In seconds Mr O'Reilly is on the radio. -
Know your limits
Out on the town are Louise Brown, 26, and Richard Hall, 24, who both work for a major brewery firm.
Perhaps unsurprisingly they are glad of the extra pub time.
"It's about choice. It's about being able to spend more time in the pub with your friends," said Ms Brown. "I don't think I'll be drinking more. I know my limits, I think a lot of people do."
Mr Hall agrees. "We work hard, we don't finish work until 8pm, so now it will be more relaxed." -
Warm welcome
Security on the door of Yates's pub is Kylie McCracken. She welcomes the new law.
Different closing times means people will not all be out on the street at once, she said. With everyone leaving at the same time "people tend to erupt around each other".
But her colleague Andy Workman disagrees.
"People aged 19 to 20 just don't know their limits," he said. "So people will get drunker. It's going to make my job hard." -
'Hype over nothing'
Inside, manager of YatesÂ’s Paul Newton does not foresee the new rules making much difference to business tonight.
"I think it's a lot of hype over nothing. November is always a quiet month," he said.
Even so, while he began the evening planning to shut at 11pm as usual, in the event he stays open an extra hour-and-a-half as there is still some custom around. -
'We're not cosmopolitan'
In Brookes bar, Ian Hindler, a 26-year-old IT worker and geologist Russell Ball, 27, both from Luton, can't agree on the new laws.
"We've been talking about it all evening," said Mr Hindler. "Although it's made no difference to our plans tonight."
"I don't think it will make much difference, but I think it is a good thing to do."
"We are not a cosmopolitan society," argues Mr Ball. "You can't compare us to European standards. Their culture is different." -
Quiet night
Taxi drivers Abid Aziz and Dave Abbasi are expecting more trouble with longer drinking hours – but so far it has been a quiet night.
People are not that aware of the changes, they say.
"Give it a week or two and I think everyone's going to understand what's going on," said Mr Abbasi. -
Time to go home
It is 2am and the last of the town's open pubs - The Park and Brookes – are closing.
As the last stragglers emerge into the fierce cold outside, nobody but nobody is hanging around.
Just 30 minutes later Luton is deserted.
Words: Anna Browning
Pictures: Phil Coomes -
Thanksgiving Day
Across the US, people are celebrating Thanksgiving, commemorating the day in 1621 when pilgrims and native Americans are believed to have shared a meal together. -
One of the iconic events marking Thanksgiving is the balloon parade in New York, sponsored by Macy's department store. -
There was extra excitement this year as one of the giant balloons hit a lamp post and fell to earth. -
Being overseas does not stop US forces around the world joining in with the festivities. At a US base near Sarajevo a feast was laid on for the soldiers.