Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks wanted to vanish because she feared she could not be the perfect wife. She picked Austin, Texas, as her original destination after seeing actor Matthew McConaughey talk about his hometown on TV. And she funded her odyssey by cashing a cellphone rebate check and emptying an old bank account.
Big Brother is watching Big Brother. Australian lawmakers have been tuning into a risqué late night edition of hit reality TV show Big Brother — and they don’t like what they’re seeing. The show features a group of contestants who are sealed off in a house where their every move and comments are caught on cameras and microphones dotted around their temporary home.
Manufacturers are ”bleeding” because of the strong rand, which should depreciate to 7,50 to the dollar by the end of next year, the University of Stellenbosch’s Bureau for Economic Research (BER) said on Wednesday. Chief economist at the BER, Pieter Laubscher, said that South Africa cannot sustain the current account deficits brought on by the rand.
An Australian woman braved bites and scratches to bring the family cat back from the dead with the kiss of life. ”His breath wasn’t that bad — I’d do it again,” said mother of three Kelly Johns on Wednesday of the weekend drama at her home in Toowoomba, Queensland.
Twelve French troops were convicted in a Paris military court of stealing cash last year from an Côte d’Ivoire bank they supposedly were protecting, the Ivorian daily Fraternite reported on Wednesday. The troops stole about 000 dollars from the bank in the rebel- held town of Man in the country’s northwest.
The United States and Mozambique inked a trade and investment framework agreement on Tuesday in Washington with the goal of increasing economic ties. United States Trade Representative Rob Portman and Mozambican Minister of Industry and Commerce Antonio Fernando signed the deal.
At least eight people have been arrested in two towns in eastern Zimbabwe after they tried to stop police demolishing their makeshift homes, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Residents of Marondera and Wedza fought running battles with the police, who are carrying out a controversial clean-up campaign, the Daily Mirror said.
French Open champion Rafael Nadal insists he will not be Wimbledon king this year despite his blistering passage into the second round. The 19-year-old, who one day hopes to become only the second Spanish men’s champion at the All England Club, crushed American veteran Vince Spadea 6-4, 6-3, 6-0 on his Centre Court debut.
AngloGold Ashanti has decided to continue operations in the volatile east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the gold mining company said in a statement on Tuesday. It said a team of senior executives recently conducted a review of the company’s exploration activities in the DRC in the wake of a recent scandal that involved it paying ”protection money”.
Arms supplied by G8 countries are being used by regimes that violate human rights, impoverish their people and fight their neighbours, a report by leading development agencies and campaigners warns on Wednesday. The G8 countries — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US — account for 84% of all worldwide arms supplies.