Terrorist acts and other violence killed at least 1,000 people and injured 1,800 in Iraq in January, a senior Iraqi Interior Ministry official said Friday.

Many parts of Iraq have been engulfed in sectarian and political violence for months, but the situation has been exacerbated by recent fighting in Iraq’s western Anbar province.

January’s death toll would be ahead of the monthly rate for 2013, which was the deadliest year in the Middle Eastern nation since 2098, according to United Nations data. The U.N. has said almost 8,000 people were killed in violence last year, most of them civilians.

January’s figures were compiled by Iraq’s Interior, Defense and Health ministries, the official said.

A Chinese businessman is fighting for his life after a woman fell to her death in a shopping mall – and landed on top of him.

Yu Li, 42, was shopping with his three-year-old son in a shopping mall in Changsha, Hunan province, in Southern China, when he was hit on the head by the unidentified woman as she plummeted from the fifth floor.

The man had gone to the shopping centre to buy his son a present for the Chinese New Year.

A police spokesman said: ‘He was walking towards the escalator, when he was struck by the falling woman. She was killed instantly and he was left badly injured.

‘The hospital tells us it is still a question of touch and go whether he will survive.

We are looking at CCTV footage to try and work out whether the woman jumped or was pushed.’

The Chinese New Year celebration, that comes at the end of this month is the biggest event on the annual Chinese calendar where the entire country takes a week off to spend time with their families.

The boy was treated for shock before being handed over to his mother and was not hit in incident.

chomped, they chowed, they chewed. Wings disappeared and, in two competitors’ cases, reappeared, but it was 5-foot-7, 125-pound mother-of-four pulled off ‘the greatest performance in Wing Bowl history,’

Molly Schuyler devoured 363 chicken wings in 30 minutes at a competitive eating contest in Philadelphia.

Ms. Schuyler flew past the previous long-standing record of 337 wings as she finished the last round of the 22nd annual WIP 94 Sportsradio Wing Bowl.

At 8 a.m. the 120-pound woman virtually swallowed the wings for her breakfast as second-place finisher Patrick Bertoletti from Chicago could only chomp home in second place with a total of 356 wing.

Ms. Schuyler, whose performance host Angelo Cataldi dubbed ‘the greatest ever’, won $22,000.

Each year, Wing Bowl brings out some of the region’s best competitive eaters, who themselves have to prove their worth to qualify for the event by performing a miraculous feat of eating.

To qualify for the Wing Bowl, Schuyler ate nine pounds of cottage cheese in 114 seconds. She also holds a world record for eating a 72-ounce steak in less than three minutes.

All Pro Eating, the world’s only independent competitive eating organization, lists her as the world’s number one female.

Thai anti-government demonstrators say they will keep up protests in Bangkok ahead of a controversial national election in a nation gripped by a bitter, protracted political crisis.

The protesters have been campaigning for months against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, fueling unrest that has left 10 people dead and hundreds more wounded.

Authorities have tightened security ahead of the vote Sunday, with 10,000 security personnel on standby.

In recent weeks, the anti-government demonstrators have blocked candidate registrations and early voting in parts of Bangkok and southern Thailand, the regions from which they draw their support.

Amid the bursts of violence, Thai authorities declared a state of emergency last week, giving extra powers to security forces and drawing criticism from human rights advocates.

But the government says it has no plans to use force against protesters, who plan to hold marches in central Bangkok on Friday and Saturday.

The protest leaders say they want as many of their supporters as possible to join them Sunday in the streets of Bangkok for what they describe as a “picnic” that they hope will shut down the city on the day of the election.

An emaciated man survived 16 months adrift at sea, eating turtles, birds and fish and drinking turtle blood, having floated over 8,000 miles from Mexico to a remote Pacific atoll, it was claimed on Friday.

A Norwegian researcher said that the man – who only speaks Spanish and has a long beard and hair – was not in a good condition after his 24-foot fibreglass boat washed up on the reef at Ebon Atoll.

In a story reminiscent of the Tom Hanks film Cast Away, the man, dressed only in ragged underpants, apparently set off from Mexico heading for El Salvador in September 2012 with a companion, who died at sea several months ago.

Details of his survival are sketchy, Ms Fjeldstad added, as the man only speaks Spanish, but he said his name was Jose Ivan.

Mr Ivan indicated to Ms Fjeldstad that he survived by eating turtles, birds and fish and drinking turtle blood when there was no rain.

No fishing gear was on the boat and Mr Ivan suggested he caught turtles and birds with his bare hands.

According to Ms Fjeldstad, the Marshall Islanders who found Ivan took him to the main island on the atoll to meet Mayor Ione de Brum, who put in a call to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Majuro.

“He’s staying at the local council house and a family is feeding him,” said Ms Fjeldstad, who added that the man had a basic health check and was found to have low blood pressure.

But he did not appear to have any life-threatening illness and was able to walk with the aid of men on the island.