WINDSOR A former high school teacher was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail and two years' probation for having sex with a 15-year-old student.

During his sentencing hearing, court heard how Powers's three-month affair with the girl last year was discovered by a school janitor who noticed the pair emerging separately from the music room after having sex.

MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA Princess Cruises was flying more than 2,600 passengers home with full refunds this weekend after a fire -- possibly caused by a cigarette -- broke out aboard a giant ship, leaving a Georgia man dead and 11 people injured.

The fire broke out around 3 a.m. Thursday as the Star Princess sailed through the moonlit Caribbean, charring some 150 rooms and leaving a big black spot on the white ship.

TORONTO A Chinese-Canadian group hailed a federal promise yesterday to formally apologize and consider compensation for a head tax Canada once forced on Chinese immigrants.

Heritage Minister Bev Oda held a meeting with dozens of Chinese-Canadians, some of whom paid the levy, to discuss how Ottawa could best rectify a historic wrong imposed for nearly 40 years beginning in 1885.

Roughly 81,000 Chinese immigrants paid $23 million to enter Canada under the head-tax scheme between 1885 and 1923. The Chinese Exclusion Act followed, barring Chinese immigrants altogether until it was repealed in 1947.

NEW YORK A police officer rescued an eight-month-old boy from the frigid waters off Staten Island after he saw the baby's father jumping with him into the harbour.

"It was crying. It was in distress," Officer Brian Sheehy, 29, said of the baby, who had been floating on his back about six metres from shore Thursday morning.

Nacir Walker was rushed to St. Vincent's Hospital Staten Island, where he was listed in stable condition. His father, 32-year-old Charles Walker, was pronounced dead.

Adwaita, the Aldabra tortoise whose name means "the one and only" in the local Bengali language, arrived at the zoo in 1875. But zoo officials say he was much older.

"According to records in the zoo, the age of the giant tortoise, Adwaita, who died on Wednesday, would be 250 years approximately," said zoo director Subir Chowdhury.

The world's oldest documented living animal is Harriet, a 176-year-old Galapagos tortoise who lives at the Australia Zoo north of Brisbane. She was taken from the island of Santa Cruz by Charles Darwin in the 19th century.

Malibu Investments, the condo developer that dug up the 1833 dock last week, delivered a corner section of the structure to the Friends of Fort York for preservation yesterday.

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