TAIPEI (Reuters) - A Taiwanese man’s show of love for his girlfriend has backfired after an arrangement of candles in the shape of the words “I love you” started a blaze at a hotel.

The couple found their room aflame when they walked in 40 minutes after the man surnamed Lin had set the candles alight, local media reported on Thursday.

“Lin was arrested by the police later and brought to trial,” the China Post newspaper said. He was charged with endangering public safety.

Lin, a frozen-food deliveryman, agreed to pay the suburban Taipei hotel T$120,000 ($17,800 pounds) for damage caused by the blaze on May 31, media reported.

A county prosecutor later suspended the indictment in exchange for an apology letter and a donation of T$30,000 to a family-and-children fund, media and a county spokesman said.

SONKAJARVI, Finland (Reuters) - Julia Galvin came to Finland looking for a man that would carry her 120 kg over a 253-meters track — the incentive being the chance to win the wife-carrying world title and beer worth her body weight.

In the end the Irish woman was carried by an English man through a pool and across hurdles. She did not make the gold, but said she would keep trying until the title and the beer was hers.

“I think I am worth carrying because I am a walking party,” she said.

Wife-carrying is one of a host of bizarre contests that Finns, who can tend to gloominess in the long winter dark, have devised for the scant months of summer when the sun hardly sets and people’s mood turns frolicsome.

Forty-eight couples from 13 countries, including Kenya, Australia and Canada, gathered in the remote Finnish village to complete the track.

Estonia reigned supreme once again, as Alar Voogla sprinted home in just over one minute to win the Baltic country’s 11th title, with Kirsti Viltrop clinging upside-down to his back.

“Yesterday we have had a really bad luck, because we fell and we lost our first place in the sprint and today it’s super,” Viltrop said, after completing the main track.

Germany took away the silver and England the bronze, while hosting Finns had to do with a win for the 100-meter sprint, organized as a side-competition to the world-known event.

While some competitors are nearly professional athletes, others do it for fun or as a hobby. Third-place winners Ash Davies and Aila Bruce put extra thought in designing their costume, to get the extra edge.

“We came with our costume designer all the way from England — she has designed this especially, so we can compete, streamline you know, aerodynamic tuning,” Davies said.

Some 5,000 people came to view the event, set deep in forests and lakes a couple of hours’ drive from the Arctic Circle.

The contest is rooted in the legend of Ronkainen the Robber, said in the 19th century to have tested aspiring members of his gang by forcing them to lug sacks of grain or live swine over a similar course.

It also purportedly stems from an even earlier tribal practice of wife-stealing, in honor of which many contestants now take up the challenge with someone else’s wife.

It has also inspired others to organize events such as sauna sitting, swamp football, cell phone throwing or karaoke singing. All are part of a summer bonanza of events that rake in visitors and cash for as long as the midnight sun shines.

SEOUL (AFP) - A jilted South Korean has lost a court bid for repayment of the money he spent on his dates, a report said on Tuesday.

The Korea Times said the high court reversed a lower court ruling in favor of the 30-year-old, identified only as Park, who claimed he spent 10 million won (9,615 dollars) on his wooing.

It said a 27-year-old woman surnamed Im dumped Park in March last year.

The following month, he made her sign a written promise to repay the sum he allegedly spent on their dates. When Im failed to comply, he went to court.

The lower court ruled in his favor but the high court decided she had been coerced into signing the promise.

LONDON (Reuters) - It is the one moment every man wants to get right — and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong.

The luckless 28 year-old’s dreams of giving his sweetheart, Leanne, 26, the ultimate proposal have literally vanished into thin air.

Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question.

But as he left the shop, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring — and quite possibly the affections of his girlfriend — sailing away over the rooftops.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he told The Sun newspaper.

“I just watched as it went further and further into the air.

“I felt like such a plonker. It cost a fortune and I knew my girlfriend would kill me.”

Hajji spent two hours in his car trying to chase and find the balloon, without success.

“I thought I would give Leanne a pin so I could literally pop the question,” he said.

“But I had to tell her the story — she went absolutely mad. Now she is refusing to speak to me until I get her a new ring.”

He is hoping the ring will still turn up.

“It would be amazing if someone found it,” he added.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai officials urged Buddhist monks on Tuesday to avoid using social networking Web sites to woo women after an advocacy group found some monks were doing just that.

The request came as police in the northeast detained a monk accused of using a Web site to lure a woman to his temple and raping her.

“I call on Hi5 users to tell the monks to leave the site if they are found using it,” junior minister Jakrapob Penkair told reporters after a Buddhist monitoring group said some monks were flirting on the Web site popular with Thai users.

Reports of monks caught using or selling drugs or having consensual sex with women are not uncommon in the Thai media, which reported on Tuesday a 23-year-old monk was caught raping a teenager he lured to his room through the Web site.

A senior Culture Ministry official said monks should not be banned from the cyberspace, but should turn this “crisis” into “opportunity” by bringing Buddha’s teaching to the young.

“Instead of using the Net to flirt with young girls, monks should find ways to preach Dharma and lead them in the right direction,” said Ladda Thangsupachai, head of the Cultural Surveillance Center.