Britain’s advertising watchdog on Wednesday ordered Tourism Australia to pull down its posters promoting the country in an "irreverent" Australian fashion because they contain mild swearing. The Advertising Standards Authority told the tourism agency to remove the lot and not to use swear words again in future posters.
A lovelorn Chinese herdsman who is the world’s tallest man has finally found his other half in a sales clerk who comes up to his elbow, state media reported on Wednesday. Bao Xishun, who stands 2,36m, will marry 1,68m Xia Shujun, who is also half the groom’s age at just 28, the Beijing News reported.
In Google’s vision of the future, people will be able to translate documents instantly into the world’s main languages, with machine logic, not expert linguists, leading the way. Google’s approach, called statistical machine translation, differs from past efforts in that it forgoes language experts who program grammatical rules and dictionaries into computers.
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Potential witnesses into the murder of cricket coach Bob Woolmer have either left Jamaica or not come forward. Security video shows just a sliver of the crime scene. And wild rumours seem in greater supply than facts. Investigators have announced no arrests or breakthroughs — raising questions of whether the investigation trail has gone cold.
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Champions Australia and top-ranked South Africa hoped rain would not play spoilsport after a sodden start to the World Cup second stage Super Eights. Australia will resume their opening game against hosts West Indies on Wednesday after rain forced play to be abandoned after they amassed 322 for six in 50 overs.
Two armed men took over a bus in the Philippine capital Manila on Wednesday and were holding 31 nursery school children and two teachers hostage, apparently to highlight corruption in the country. The gunmen, believed to be armed with grenades, an Uzi submachine gun and a revolver, freed one child who was running a fever in a three-hour stand-off.
Robert Mugabe’s time as Zimbabwe’s ruler is drawing to a close and his last days in office could be ”nasty, short and brutish”, his former right-hand man, Jonathan Moyo, said on Tuesday. He said Mugabe would face a ”very high threat of a palace coup” if he refused to retire voluntarily.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is pushing the United Nations to declare a no-fly zone over Darfur, enforced if necessary by the bombing of Sudanese military airfields used for raids on the province. The initiative comes as a classified report by a United Nations panel of experts alleges Sudan has violated UN resolutions by moving arms into Darfur.
Businesswoman Danisa Baloyi has relinquished all her posts with companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), she said through her spokesperson on Tuesday. Baloyi’s move follows her removal last Tuesday from the board of the Absa Group and Absa Bank due to public disclosures related to irregularities at Fidentia.
British government officials will release evidence on Wednesday designed to prove that British marines seized by Iranians last week were patrolling well inside Iraqi waters and should never have been captured. The evidence will include maps, detailed co-ordinates and photographs of the area.