In the World

HASSELT, Belgium - A storm swept through an open-air music festival in this eastern Belgium town Thursday, killing at least three people and injuring more than 70, an official said.

Ambulances and police cars raced to and from the site of the Pukkelpop festival, near the town of Hasselt, 50 miles east of Brussels, late Thursday.

Hugo Simons, Hasselt's head of emergency medical planning, told VRT radio that three people had died, 11 had been severely injured, and 60 had sustained light injuries.

Organizers estimated that 60,000 people were at the three-day festival, which started Thursday, when the storm broke. Many were streaming out of the grounds after the storm, which turned the festival site into a scene of mud and destruction within about 10 minutes.

Video from the site showed stage equipment dangling in high winds as rain-soaked concertgoers at the music festival ran for cover. Trees and branches all around the area were downed. Images of the disaster showed fallen lighting scaffolds. The three-day festival's lineup features internationally known acts, including Foo Fighters, Eminem, and the Offspring.

- AP

LONDON - British police arrested the Hollywood reporter for the defunct tabloid News of the World on Thursday, according to a person close to the investigation. He is the 13th person to be arrested in the scandal over phone hacking.

The reporter, James Desborough, worked for the newspaper in Britain for four years before being sent to Hollywood in 2009. It is not clear when the crimes he is suspected of committing - gaining illegal access to other people's voice-mail messages - took place.

Also Thursday, a private investigator who is one of the central figures in the scandal, Glenn Mulcaire, sued the newspaper unit of News International, Bloomberg News reported. In 2007, Mulcaire and a News of the World reporter were jailed in a phone-hacking case that News International executives had long maintained was the lone episode of phone hacking at the tabloid. - N.Y. Times News Service

NEW DELHI - A renowned Indian anti-corruption crusader plans to embark on a 15-day public hunger strike that will pit him and his thousands of supporters against the scandal-plagued government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his aides said Thursday.

Anna Hazare, who has been fasting since Tuesday, reached an agreement with police to hold the demonstration starting Friday to push for tough new anticorruption legislation, after a two-day standoff at a New Delhi jail.

Police had initially given Hazare permission to hold only a three-day public hunger strike, which he refused, but relented Thursday and agreed to allow him to hold a 15-day protest at a fairground in the capital. Hundreds of supporters camped outside the jail erupted in cheers at the news, threw flower petals in the air, and shouted, "Anna has won!" - AP