Talk about practising what you preach: A smitten Archbishop Desmond Tutu declared “love” on Wednesday for Burmese democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi.
Giggling with excitement, the South African anti-apartheid campaigner and man of peace could hardly contain himself while speaking via videolink from a New York conference to Suu Kyi in Myanmar.
“I love you,” Tutu told Suu Kyi, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was released from years of house arrest last November but still rarely appears in public.
“I must return the compliment and say: ‘I love you,’” she replied from the slightly fuzzy satellite TV picture.
The impromptu exchange sent Tutu and the watching conference room of political and business leaders into fits of laughter.
Praising Suu Kyi for her peaceful resistance to the Burmese military regime and resilience during years of house arrest, Tutu spoke at length about her moral qualities. (AFP)
Model students
A couple have built a scale replica of one of the major sights on a city’s skyline from Lego.
Clare Currie, 26, from Alfreton, and Luke Dolman, 28, from Derby, spent more than 30 hours and used 1,500 Lego pieces to construct the detailed model of the University of Derby’s main site in Kedleston Road from the original plans.
The couple, who have been together for seven years, are hoping the model will scoop them a prize at the Lego Fan Weekend in the toy’s homeland of Denmark this weekend. Their model includes hundreds of glass pieces to represent the many windows of the three towers and even a tiny replica of a university bus. (PA)
YouTube hit
Members of a choir which found fame through a TV talent contest have expressed their bemusement after unexpectedly finding a new fan base – in Malaysia.
One of their cover versions has become a YouTube hit after a group of men attending a wedding in the Far East parodied the Welsh singers’ performance.
A group of nine friends, known as The Jimbang, filmed themselves miming to Only Men Aloud’s take on Robbie Williams’ hit Angels. It was first broadcast as a “surprise presentation” at a wedding in Malaysia, before being uploaded on to the internet. (PA)
Call the coastguard
A couple whose vehicle got stuck down a ravine in Brazil were rescued after they rang relatives in the UK, who then alerted their local coastguard.
The pair, in their early 60s, rang a member of their family in Eastbourne, East Sussex, after their mobile home became trapped in a remote area of the Amazon rainforest, around 200 miles south-west of the city of Manaus.
Their relative rang Dover Coastguard, who forwarded their details on to Falmouth Coastguard, which acts as the international liaison station for the UK. Fred Caygill, of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, said staff at Falmouth Coastguard then contacted the relevant authorities in Brazil, and a helicopter team was sent out to rescue the couple. (PA)
Dog eating carnival
A dog eating carnival in China dating back more than 600 years has been banned after public outrage at the cruel way the animals are slaughtered, state media said yesterday.
The dogs are killed and skinned in the streets of Qianxi township in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang during the festival, which is usually held in October, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The gruesome festival celebrates a local military victory during the Ming dynasty in which dogs were slaughtered to ensure they did not bark and alert the enemy, the report said.
Thousands of web users swamped social networking sites to criticise the carnival and call on the local government to intervene, the report said. (AFP)
Missing professor
Students puzzled by the absence of a professor later discovered he had a very good excuse for missing the first day of class – he had died months ago.Students at the University of Pennsylvania waited an hour for Henry Teune to arrive to take a political science class, and had started to think he had forgotten about his first lecture of term.
But then the students received an email from university officials informing them Mr Teune had died in April and apologising for not cancelling the class. (PA)
Bargain coffins
A firm in Romania is trying to make the cost of dying more affordable by offering cut-price coffins.
Ilie Troanca said he is beating the recession blues with bargain coffins which sell for around £100 in Transylvania, home of the Dracula legend.
Coffins are big business in Romania, a country of 22 million, which has an ageing population but where scarcely anyone is cremated. Regular coffins can sell for hundreds or thousands of pounds depending on how fancy they are and, in addition to buying a plot, families often have to pay bribes to graveyard caretakers to secure a decent burial site. (PA)