1. David Beckham honored

    Soccer star David Beckham was honored in England on Sunday with the BBC’s lifetime achievement award.

    A teary-eyed Beckham, watched by wife Victoria and sons Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, said: “I’m really humbled* to receive an award for something I have always loved and continue to love doing.”

    2. S. Korean drill

    South Korea said on Sunday bad weather was delaying the start of a live-fire exercise that prompted* North Korean threats of war, adding that it had no plans to scrap* the drills despite international calls for restraint*.

    3. Boat sinking

    Rescuers on Sunday searched for survivors after an overcrowded boat carrying around 150 people capsized* on a river in northeastern Bangladesh leaving at least 37 dead, all of them women and children. Local police chief Jane Alam said most passengers were asleep when the boat rammed* a cargo vessel and sank on Saturday night in the middle of the river Surma at Alipur, 240 kilometers northeast of the capital Dhaka.

    4. Snow in Europe

    Heavy snow disrupted European air travel over the weekend and stranded* hundreds of drivers in their cars as far south as Italy as a white Christmas appeared increasingly likely for many places.

    Britain was hit by more blizzards* that shut its biggest airports and hit road and rail traffic on the busiest weekend for travelers before Christmas.

    5. Philippines fire

    A fire rapidly swept through a budget hotel in the northern Philippines on early Sunday, burning to death 15 people and injuring 12 others. Many of the victims were nursing students in town to take a licensing exam, officials said. The fire raged* for eight hours and gutted* the Bed and Breakfast Pension House in Cagayan province’s capital of Tuguegarao city.

    6. Time’s Person of the Year

    Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook Inc., was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” on Wednesday for “creating a new system of exchanging information” and “changing how we all live our lives.”

    Zuckerberg, 26, began the world’s largest social-networking site in 2004. The service, with more than 500 million users, has helped people connect with each other and changed definitions* of privacy*, Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel said in a letter on the magazine’s Web site.

    7. Assange free from prison

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released on bail* on Thursday — confined* to a supporter’s 600-acre estate but free to get back to work spilling* U.S. Government secrets on his Web site as he fights Sweden’s attempt to extradite* him on allegations* of rape and molestation.

    The silver-haired Australian, who surrendered to British police on December 7, will have to observe a curfew*, wear an electronic tag and report to police every day. (SD-Agencies)